ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the evidence for intestinal parasites in Europe over the centuries and then discusses its significance for reconstructing aspects of daily life in people who lived there. The parasitic environment of Europe prior to the introduction of agriculture is virtually unknown, as the vast majority of evidence for parasites retrieved from European archaeological sites is dated to the Neolithic and subsequent time periods. The paleoparasitological record of the Roman Period is quite extensive, with many different species being identified from Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland. Since the 1980s European paleoparasitologists in Britain and Germany have become increasingly interested in the epidemiology of helminth infections, as well as in the depositional processes that created the archaeological strata of different medieval sites. Based on the available evidence, whipworms and roundworms were the most widely distributed species in Europe, both in time and space.
