Care in Medieval Transylvania: A Bioarchaeological Study

This thesis examines the skeletal remains of two disabled adults collected from the Bogoz archaeological site (1100-1700) in Mugeni, Romania. Mugeni (in Hungarian, Bogoz) is home to an ethnic culture known as the Szekely, whose history has been lost (Bethard 2019, p. 254). This thesis conducts a microhistorical bioarchaeology of caregiving behaviors for Burial 13 and Burial 150 to concurrently reinsert disabled individuals into the historical narrative and to contribute to Szekely history.
Four theoretical backgrounds- microhistory, social bioarchaeology, osteobiography, and the Bioarchaeology of Care- are synthesized to organize analysis. First, this thesis documents biological identifiers, pathologies, mortuary treatment, and the physical, socio-cultural, and economic lifeways (Tilley & Schrenk 2017, p. 2). Then, models of care are developed to analyze multiscalar intersectionalities to understand the broader implications of medieval and early modern Transylvania (Peltonen 2001, p. 348; Walton 2008, p. 6). This approach will serve as an example for the continued investigations of care provisions for disabled and/or impaired persons, contributing to the historical narrative (Bethard et al. 2019, p. 267; Hosek 2019, p. 47).