ABSTRACT
The lack of sanitation predisposed them to gastrointestinal diseases such as dysentery, while the frequent sieges and scarcity of food have left many records of malnutrition. Archaeology is an approach which is not hampered by many of these problems and the specialty involved with analysis of human skeletal remains for evidence of disease is termed palaeopathology. Remains can be studied for the wide range of diseases we now know exist and we are not limited to those diseases which had been identified by the medieval period. While diagnosing individual cases of various diseases is obviously important, study of human skeletal remains allows research at the level of a population rather than just an individual. Cases of treponemal disease have been excavated from Europe dating well before Columbus and 1492, confirming that the group of diseases was present hundreds of years before his voyage to the New World.
