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. 2018 Jan 24;13(1):e0191757.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0191757. eCollection 2018.

Dental disease and dietary isotopes of individuals from St Gertrude Church cemetery, Riga, Latvia

Elina Petersone-Gordina  1 , Charlotte Roberts  1 , Andrew R Millard  1 , Janet Montgomery  1 , Guntis Gerhards  2
Affiliations

Dental disease and dietary isotopes of individuals from St Gertrude Church cemetery, Riga, Latvia

Elina Petersone-Gordina et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

This research explores oral health indicators and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data to explore diet, and differences in diet, between people buried in the four different contexts of the St Gertrude Church cemetery (15th- 17th centuries AD): the general cemetery, two mass graves, and a collective mass burial pit within the general cemetery. The main aim is to assess whether people buried in the mass graves were rural immigrants, or if they were more likely to be the victims of plague (or another epidemic) who lived in Riga and its suburbs. The data produced (from dental disease assessments and isotope analyses) were compared within, as well as between, the contexts. Most differences emerged when comparing the prevalence rates of dental diseases and other oral health indicators in males and females between the contexts, while isotope analysis revealed more individual, rather than context-specific, differences. The data suggested that the populations buried in the mass graves were different from those buried in the general cemetery, and support the theory that rural immigrants were buried in both mass graves. Significant differences were observed in some aspects of the data between the mass graves, however, possibly indicating that the people buried in them do not represent the same community.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Map of Latvia.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Location of St Gertrude Church cemetery in Riga.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Demographic profile of the population.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Average M1 attrition scores in all contexts.
Fig 5
Fig 5. Prevalence of medium-severe calculus deposits in adults and children.
Only total (deciduous and permanent) prevalence is given in this figure for calculus in children.
Fig 6
Fig 6. δ13C and δ15N values in the St Gertrude and Jelgava populations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Publication types

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), award reference number AH/K502996/1, http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/ (EPG), and the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Wadsworth Fellowship), http://www.wennergren.org/ (EPG). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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