Bones of evidence present a picture of past lives

Ian McGee discusses how osteoarchaeology can provide an insight into diagnosing health and illness in our ancestors and how doctors and archaeologists are combining their skills to investigate the medical mysteries of the past. Disciplines within the study of both medicine and archaeology have shared a sporadic but consistently common path in the past 150 years. Sir Bertram Windle, College President at University College Cork from 1904 to 1919, established archaeology as a new academic discipline in the university (serving as Professor of the Department from 1910-1915), which had been known until the early years of the 20th century primarily…