Anna Moles (UCL) - 2014-15 Students
anna.moles.14@ucl.ac.uk

Urbanism and its impact on human health: a long-term study at Knossos, Crete

Using human skeletal material from the site of Knossos, Crete, my project aims to investigate the changing health, dietary and demographic characteristics of the population, across almost three millennia of urban occupation from 2000 BC-700 AD. Knossos provides an extremely well-documented exemplar for Mediterranean urban development and a relatively stable climate across the period allows changes through time to be assessed in terms of its internal dynamics (e.g. two long-term cycles of urban formation and collapse), and broader social and political context (e.g. periods as a local centre, as one of a few major centres on the island), and in terms of its changing off-island importance within Aegean and East Mediterranean political and economic networks.