Reconsidering obstetric death and female fertility in Anglo-Saxon England
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Citations
Health status in Lowland Medieval Scotland : a regional analysis of four skeletal populations
Cultures of Death and Dying in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
A molecular portrait of maternal sepsis from Byzantine Troy
References
Palaeodemography and earlier British populations.
Gussage All Saints—an Iron Age Settlement in Dorset. ByG. J. Wainwright. Department of the Environment Archaeological Reports No. 10. H.M.S.O.1979. 202pages, 37 plates, 113 figures. Prices £18.00.
The Bioarchaeology of Children: Perspectives from Biological and Forensic Anthropology
An Anglo-Saxon obstetric calamity from Kingsworthy, Hampshire.
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Frequently Asked Questions (13)
Q2. How long does it take to extrude a foetus?
putrefaction takes longer than forty-eight to seventy-two hours and extrusion would have to overcome an un-dilated, un-plastic, cervical canal, while the foetus was itself decomposing.
Q3. What are the common types of double burials?
The most common types of double burials are: child and woman (22 per cent), man and woman (19 per cent) and infant and woman (12 per cent) (Stoodley 2002).
Q4. How many times did the risk of infant mortality decrease after maternal death?
infant survival was diminished after maternal death (5.1 times) and the risk of infant mortality (in the first year of life) was twenty-eight times that of an infant with a living mother (Ganatra, Coyaji and Rao 1998: 565).
Q5. What is the predominant interpretation of coffin birth?
in archaeology the dominant interpretation for extruded and partially extruded foetuses is currently a phenomenon known as coffin birth: the post-mortem extrusion of a foetus into the grave (Lewis 2007: 35).
Q6. What was the role of the local agency in the death of a child?
Death in childbirth was a democratic tragedy affecting the whole social spectrum but the treatment of the individual was determined through local agency, the result of negotiations that took place within a particular funeral party during a specific set of chronological and social circumstances.
Q7. What was the position of the female in grave 146?
At Castle Dyke, Barton-on-Humber, a female aged 35–40 carried in-utero a thirty-seven-week foetus, she was positioned in grave 146 with her right hand over her extended abdomen.
Q8. What is the reason for the uterine contractions?
Plausibly uterine contractions could be ‘caused by the onset of rigor mortis’ (Schulz, Püschel and Tsokos 2005: 275); however, this is in fact an inhibiting factor because of the restriction of tissue.
Q9. What is the significance of the Anglo-Saxon laws on female fertility?
This system created a network of social rules, marriage restrictions and taboos which acted to control female fertility, placing emphasis on the mature body.
Q10. Why are complications in pregnancy the highest cause of death among adolescent girls?
They are also the result of cultural circumstance, with complications in pregnancy as the highest cause of death among adolescent girls because of a preference for early fertility (Conde-Agudelo, Belizán and Lammers 2004; Patton et al. 2009).
Q11. What was the cause of the fetus’s movement?
The laminae on her fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae were fused, a congenital anomaly, but her movement was probably unaffected (Waldron 1994: 58, 64).
Q12. What is the probability of death among women who were under the age of 20?
The highest probability of mortality was identified among women who were aged less than 20 with an increased risk after 35 years; the first and fifth (or further) pregnancies were the most dangerous.
Q13. What is Calvin Wells’ approach to maternal mortality?
Calvin Wells’ conservative approach to maternal mortality derives from the certainty of identification (Chadwick Hawkes and Wells 1975; Wells 1978).