From grandmothers to granddaughters: Generational agricultural knowledge among rural women in British Mandate Palestine.

Palestinian peasant families had to adapt and survive under political and economic conditions dictated by European occupation and Zionist settler colonialism. Women had a major role in contributing to the efforts for survival and acquiring their status in the rural economy and the wider national struggle against British policies. Rural Arab families constituted the vast majority of the Palestinian population before the Nakba, or those displaced from their villages during the war on Palestine in 1948, and the formation of the State of Israel. The agricultural knowledge Palestinian women had and passed from one generation to the other was an important element for the survival of the peasant families under the different periods in which colonial countries and Zionist settlement shook the base of their economic existence.

Educating gender: The economic and spiritual battles over land and Mapuche children in Araucanía, Chile, 1897-1922.

This article examines the role of gender as an embodied site of political control and resistance within Mapuche-Capuchin relations in the early period of Bavarian Capuchin mission-building in Chile (1897-1922). The study frames agricultural science education as a civilizing method employed in the Capuchin mission schools, targeting Mapuche children. The aim was to educate Mapuche children in Christian and Western gender roles, moral behavior, and rural economic occupations. Amid the overarching conflict over land rights and privatization between Mapuche communities and the Chilean government, the state's support for the Capuchin order's evangelizing mission was perceived as a long-term strategy to appropriate Indigenous lands and assimilate the Mapuche into the rural and urban workforce. The article illustrates how the conflict over embodied gender roles disrupted Mapuche socioeconomic relations.

Scrapbooks as Sites of Technology: The Women's Institute and the Material Culture of 1960s Rural England.

Using scrapbooks created by members of the Women's Institute in England in 1965, this article offers a rare insight into women's lived experience and interaction with new technologies and services, in domestic and communal spaces, which show how rural women diligently recorded the new behaviors, emotions, and challenges surrounding rural life. Scrapbookers show multiple and sometimes contradictory attitudes, representing themselves as modern housewives proficient with new consumer durables, while also critiquing the inequalities heralded by new goods and services. Rural women were not simply bystanders to technological change but represented themselves as both consumers and producers of new forms of knowledge, through their use of material culture. Scrapbookers used their creations to archive the emotional labor they performed in their homes and communities, illuminating an important but often overlooked component of consumption.

Lanka Mahila Samiti, Mary Rutnam and girls' education.

This article engages with the maternal education politics in late colonial Sri Lanka by looking at the implementation of maternal health in the gendered syllabus of middle-class girls' schools. After decades of gender-specific education, the 1930s saw a homogenisation of teachings in these schools through the impact of Mary Rutnam's health manuals. Rutnam was a Canadian doctor who had been living in Sri Lanka for most of her adult life and was seen as a local. She was also active in establishing women's and girls' organisations and political groups. Especially the Lanka Mahila Samiti (LMS) was greatly influential and still is today. The LMS specifically aims at educating the rural women in maternal health and other forms of hygiene with the goal to increase their political and cultural agency. This article examines the relationship between Rutnam's handbooks for girls' schools and the globality of the discourse of motherhood, on the one hand, and the hierarchical divide between the urban middle-class woman and the rural woman, on the other hand. I will argue that by applying the classist discourse of eugenics and hygiene, the teaching of maternal health was transformed in Sri Lanka to create a notion of motherhood that was detached from religion, as it previously was so often framed by it but was highly racialised and classist. This notion of motherhood continues to exist and informs the teaching of sexuality in contemporary Sri Lankan middle-class girls' schools.

New insights into early medieval Islamic cuisine: Organic residue analysis of pottery from rural and urban Sicily.

Sicily, during the 9th-12th century AD, thrived politically, economically, and culturally under Islamic political rule and the capital of Palermo stood as a cultural and political centre in the Mediterranean Islamic world. However, to what extent the lifeways of the people that experienced these regimes were impacted during this time is not well understood, particularly those from lesser studied rural contexts. This paper presents the first organic residue analysis of 134 cooking pots and other domestic containers dating to the 9th -12th century in order to gain new insights into the culinary practices during this significant period. Ceramics from three sites in the urban capital of Palermo and from the rural town of Casale San Pietro were analysed and compared. The multi-faceted organic residue analysis identified a range of commodities including animal products, vegetables, beeswax, pine and fruit products in the ceramics, with a complex mixing of resources observed in many cases, across all four sites and ceramic forms. Alongside the identification of commodities and how they were combined, new light has been shed on the patterning of resource use between these sites. The identification of dairy products in calcite wares from the rural site of Casale San Pietro and the absence of dairy in ceramics from the urban centre of Palermo presents interesting questions regarding the role of rural sites in food consumption and production in Islamic Sicily. This is the first time organic residue analysis of ceramics has been used to explore foodways in a medieval multi-faith society and offers new pathways to the understanding of pottery use and resources that were prepared, consumed and combined, reflecting cuisine in different socio-economic environments within the pluralistic population of medieval Sicily.

The Major Source of Antioxidants Intake From Typical Diet Among Rural Farmers in North-eastern Japan in the 1990s.

BACKGROUND: Previous Japanese studies have led to the erroneous conclusion of antioxidant capacity (AOC) intakes of the overall Japanese diet due to limitations in the number and types of food measured, especially in rice and seafood intake. The aims of the study were to construct an AOC database of foods representative of the typical Japanese diet and to clarify the high contributors to AOC intake from the overall diet of the Japanese population. METHODS: Commonly consumed foods were estimated using 3-day dietary records (DRs) over the four seasons among 55 men and 58 women in Japan. To generate an AOC database suitable for the typical Japanese diet, hydrophilic (H-)/lipophilic (L-) oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) values of foods in each food group were measured via validated methods using the food intake rankings. Subsequently, we estimated the AOC intake and the AOC characteristics of a typical Japanese diet. RESULTS: Of 989 food items consumed by the participants, 189 food items were measured, which covered 78.8% of the total food intake. The most commonly consumed types of antioxidant-containing food were tea, soybean products, coffee, and rice according to H-ORAC, and soybean products, fish and shellfish, vegetables, and algae according to L-ORAC. CONCLUSIONS: The characteristics of high AOC intake in rice and seafood more appropriately reflected the Japanese-style diet. Further studies are expected to clarify the association between food-derived AOC and its role in preventing or ameliorating lifestyle-related diseases.

Coming of age in the Netherlands: An osteological assessment of puberty in a rural Dutch post-medieval community.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study is to apply pubertal stage estimation methods to a sample from a rural community: the post-medieval Dutch skeletal collection from Middenbeemster. Puberty is a key developmental period involving transition to physical adulthood with broad societal relevance through its impact on fertility, morbidity, and mortality. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Individuals (n = 55), including 27 of known sex and age-at-death, between the ages of 8 and 25 years were assessed for six skeletal markers indicative of pubertal growth spurt. Recent novel osteoarchaeological methods from Shapland and Lewis are used to reconstruct the timing and duration of pubertal stages. RESULTS: Pubertal acceleration occurred earlier in females (10.38 years, n = 8) than males (13.30 years, n = 6), whereas maturation occurred later in males (21.36 years, n = 11) than females (19.30 years, n = 5). Onset appears earlier and completion later compared to other archaeological skeletal samples with osteoarchaeological evidence of puberty. Age shortly after menarche was reconstructed at 20.45 years, substantially later than historic records and bioarchaeological research reports suggest. CONCLUSION: This early onset and late completion caused a "stretch" of the overall duration of puberty compared to other collections, especially of the last three stages. This prolonged development is reflected in historically known social expectations for the Netherlands, for example, that marriage and children should not occur before about 22-23 years of age. Increasing the range of past peoples with puberty stage reconstruction will permit more insightful interpretations of the biological and cultural patterns of this important life stage.

Safe Villages during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic in Spain and Portugal.

The 1918-1919 influenza pandemic had a significantly different impact on mortality rates in Spanish and Portuguese provinces and cities. In this study, several small villages have been identified which were not affected at all by the Spanish influenza pandemic. These all shared a number of features in common: their villages were very small, comprising only a few hundred inhabitants; they were located in mountainous regions, with very poor transport infrastructure; and they were self-sufficient and capable of fulfilling their basic alimentary needs. Their inhabitants were conscious of the problem and acted together, effectively isolating themselves from surrounding villages. Since these villagers managed to avoid direct contact with ill people from other municipalities, the flu was not transmitted and the pandemic did not arise in their villages. In this paper, it is proposed that the human habitability spaces that meet these characteristics, I call them "Safe Villages" or "Shelter Village". Knowledge of the circumstances in which the 1918-1919 flu pandemic developed and of the means employed to resist it can help us to take relevant measures when faced with future pandemics.

There and back again: A zooarchaeological perspective on Early and Middle Bronze Age urbanism in the southern Levant.

Multiple arguments for or against the presence of 'urban' settlements in the Early Bronze Age of the southern Levant have identified the need to compare these settlements against their rural hinterlands through multiple lines of evidence. This meta-analysis of zooarchaeological data from the region compares and identifies patterns of animal production, provisioning and consumption between the supposed "urban" and rural sites of the southern Levant from the Early Bronze (EB) against the (more widely recognised urban) Middle Bronze (MB) Ages. It also identifies distinct and regionally specific patterns in animal production and consumption that can be detected between urban and rural sites of the southern Levant. The taxonomic and age profiles from EB Ia and Ib sites do not demonstrate any urban versus rural differentiation patterning, even though fortifications appear in the EB Ib. Beginning in the EB II and clearly visible in the EB III, there is differentiation between rural and urban sites in the taxonomic and age proportions. Differentiation is repeated in the MB II. The clear differentiation between "urban" and rural zooarchaeological assemblages from the EB II-III and MB suggest that rural sites are provisioning the larger fortified settlements. This pattern indicates that these sites are indeed urban in nature, and these societies are organized at the state-level. From the EB II onwards, there is a clear bias in the large centres towards the consumption of cattle and of subadult sheep and goats with a corresponding bias in smaller rural sites towards the consumption of adult sheep and goats and a reduced presence of cattle. After the emergence of this differential pattern, it disappears with the decline in social complexity at the end of the Early Bronze Age, only to come 'back again' with the re-emergence of urban settlement systems in the Middle Bronze Age.

Community Health in Rural America During the Mid-20th Century.

The Council on Rural Health (1945-1975) of the American Medical Association (AMA) collaborated with domestic health care organizations in the mid-20th century to improve access to health care in rural areas. This council promoted health and farm safety education, public health measures, insurance plans, and construction of health facilities. It also lobbied state and county medical societies to form rural health committees. AMA archive materials document these activities and demonstrate physicians' involvement and investment in the communities they served.

Sex differences in the patterning of age-related bone loss in the human hallucal metatarsal in rural and urban populations.

OBJECTIVES: Age-degenerative features of the metatarsals are poorly known despite the importance of metatarsal bone properties for investigating mobility patterns. We assessed the role of habitual activity in shaping the patterning and magnitude of sexual dimorphism in age-related bone loss in the hallucal metatarsal. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Cross-sections were extracted at midshaft from micro-computed tomography scan models of individuals from medieval rural (Abingdon Vineyard) and early industrial urban (Spitalfields) settings (n = 71). A suite of cross-sectional geometry dimensions and biomechanical properties were compared between populations. RESULTS: The rural group display generally stronger and larger metatarsals that show a greater capacity to resist torsion and that have comparatively greater bending strength along the medio-lateral plane. Men in both groups show greater values of cortical area than women, but only in the urban group do men show lower magnitudes of age-related decline compared to females. Women in rural and urban populations show different patterns of age-related decline in bone mass, particularly old women in the urban group show a marked decline in cortical area that is absent for women in the rural group. DISCUSSION: Lifetime exposure to hard, physical activity in an agricultural setting has contributed to the attainment of greater bone mass and stronger bones in young adults. Furthermore, over the life-course, less of this greater amount of bone is lost, such that sustained activity levels may have acted to buffer against age-related decline, and this is most pronounced for women, who are expected to experience greater bone loss later in life than men.

A submerged 7000-year-old village and seawall demonstrate earliest known coastal defence against sea-level rise.

We report the results of underwater archaeological investigations at the submerged Neolithic settlement of Tel Hreiz (7500 - 7000 BP), off the Carmel coast of Israel. The underwater archaeological site has yielded well-preserved architectural, artefactual, faunal and human remains. We examine and discuss the notable recent discovery of a linear, boulder-built feature >100m long, located seaward of the settlement. Based on archaeological context, mode of construction and radiometric dating, we demonstrate the feature was contemporary with the inundated Neolithic settlement and conclude that it served as a seawall, built to protect the village against Mediterranean Sea-level rise. The seawall is unique for the period and is the oldest known coastal defence worldwide. Its length, use of large non-local boulders and specific arrangement in the landscape reflect the extensive effort invested by the Neolithic villagers in its conception, organisation and construction. However, this distinct social action and display of resilience proved a temporary solution and ultimately the village was inundated and abandoned.

The influence of the lunar cycle on spontaneous deliveries in historical rural environments.

BACKGROUND: Many societies and their medical practitioners throughout the world have historically linked lunar phases to the frequency of births. During more recent decades, academics have discussed this alleged relationship using modern data, obtaining differing results. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study is to analyse the relationship between the phases of the moon and the frequency of deliveries in a rural historical context without electricity, and among women of low nutritional status. These characteristics are similar to some current rural areas in certain developing countries. The exceptionality of this case will allow us to test several of the existing theories on how the moon could influence births, particularly those related to lunar light. We will also analyse nulliparous and multiparous differences over the very long term. STUDY DESIGN: This study is a retrospective cohort analysis. In total, 23,689 births have been considered for 1484 lunar cycles between 1810 and 1929. Birth registers have been obtained from the Catholic parish archives of 10 rural Spanish agrarian villages. All the deliveries analysed were natural, without any medical follow-up, within the home and with little medical assistance. RESULTS: Using simple descriptive statistical techniques, we can conclude that there is no pattern with which to link lunar phases with the frequency of births. We can also conclude that neither electricity nor the rural environment affects this alleged relationship; neither have we found any relationship related to either the nulliparous or the multiparous and lunar phases. CONCLUSION: The analysis of a 120-year period has shown that there is no predictable influence of the lunar phases on the frequency of births. The myth of such a lunar influence can claim no scientific evidence from a historical perspective. Neither the arrival of the electric light nor the lower number of deliveries per woman have modified birth patterns. Deliveries by rural women of low nutritional status are not linked to the phases of the moon, and consequently the medical services in developing countries should disregard this belief; they do not need to take account of the phases of the moon with respect to their daily organisation.

A tale of two cities: A comparison of urban and rural trauma in Medieval Denmark.

OBJECTIVE: This study explores the differences in frequency and type of trauma found in two Medieval cemeteries in Denmark, as well as the cultural and community implications of those differences. MATERIALS: We examined 235 skeletons from the cemetery at Tjærby (rural) and 170 skeletons from the cemetery at Randers (urban) for trauma from the Medieval period in Denmark, 1050 to 1536 CE. METHODS: Trauma was assessed through macroscopic examination and odds ratio and relative risk assessments were run to assess the difference in trauma. RESULTS: There was no significant difference in the presence of trauma between the rural and urban cemeteries or between males and females. There were some significant differences in relative risk for trauma between the two cemeteries. CONCLUSIONS: The division and variation in trauma between the two cemeteries is most likely related to differences in economy and occupation. SIGNIFICANCE: There are relatively few studies that examine the difference in inherent risk of trauma between rural and urban Medieval communities, especially in Denmark. This research also adds to the growing body of literature in paleopathology that uses epidemiology to explore the parallels between patterns of trauma and community lifeways. LIMITATIONS: The cemeteries are approximately 5 km distance from each other so similarities in the sample could be a result of location. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH: A wider sample of Medieval cemeteries in Denmark needs be added to this analysis to provide a more complete picture of trauma patterns during this time period.

[Biological Standards of Living in Rural Catalonia over the Long Run: A Comparison with Urban Areas (1840-1960)]. / Niveles de vida biológicos en la Cataluña rural en el largo plazo: una comparación con las áreas urbanas (1840-1960).

OBJECTIVE: to assess the long-term evolution of biological living standards in rural Catalonia and to compare it with the corresponding figures in urban areas. METHODS: using data from military records of conscripts from six towns in western Catalonia, we construct an annual height series. Height is standardised at the age of 21 years. We also construct a body mass index (BMI) for conscripts born in 1891 and 1934-39. The annual height series for western Catalonia is systematically compared to the series for Reus, Catalonia's second largest city during the second half of the 19th century. RESULTS: comparing the cohorts born in the periods 1840-49 and 1951-60, we find that height increased by 5.7 centimetres over this period. However, the increase was not distributed equally over time. In the second half of the 19th century, rural heights stagnated over the long run and declined relative to urban heights. In the cohorts born in the decades between 1910 and 1950, rural heights rose by more than 5 centimetres, and converged with those of Reus. CONCLUSION: we provide new evidence for the current debate on the rural-urban height gap. Between the 1840s and the 1950s, heights in rural western Catalonia grew at rates similar to those recorded in certain urban areas, but growth rates differed depending on the period of analysis. This study underlines the importance of adopting long-term perspectives, and stresses that rural-urban height differences tend to be time-and space-specific.

Objetivo: analizar la evolución en el largo plazo del nivel de vida biológico en la Cataluña rural y explorar hasta qué punto esta fue diferente a la de las zonas urbanas. Métodos: utilizamos datos de los registros militares de seis localidades rurales del poniente catalán con los que construimos una serie anual de estatura estandarizada a la edad de 21 años con las cohortes nacidas entre 1840 y 1960. También elaboramos un IMC para los reclutas nacidos en 1891 y 1934-1939. La serie rural de estatura se compara sistemáticamente con la de Reus, el segundo mayor centro urbano catalán de la segunda mitad del siglo xix. Resultados: los datos muestran que la estatura aumentó 5,7 centímetros entre las cohortes nacidas entre 1840-1849 y 1951-1960, aunque desigualmente distribuidos a lo largo del tiempo. En la segunda mitad del siglo xix hubo estancamiento en el largo plazo y divergencia con las estaturas urbanas. Entre 1910 y 1950 la talla rural mejoró en más de 5 centímetros y terminó convergiendo con la de Reus. Conclusión: se aporta nueva evidencia al debate sobre la brecha rural-urbana en el nivel de vida biológico. En el periodo analizado, las tasas de crecimiento de la estatura fueron parecidas en ambos ámbitos, aunque con diferencias según el periodo de análisis. Este estudio subraya la importancia de adoptar perspectivas de largo plazo y señala que las diferencias de estatura rural-urbana tienden a ser específicas de tiempo y espacio.

Oral health status in historic population: Macroscopic and metagenomic evidence.

Recent developments in High-Throughput DNA sequencing (HTS) technologies and ancient DNA (aDNA) research have opened access to the characterization of the microbial communities within past populations. Most studies have, however, relied on the analysis of dental calculus as one particular material type particularly prone to the molecular preservation of ancient microbial biofilms and potential of entire teeth for microbial characterization, both of healthy communities and pathogens in ancient individuals, remains overlooked. In this study, we used shotgun sequencing to characterize the bacterial composition from historical subjects showing macroscopic evidence of oral pathologies. We first carried out a macroscopic analysis aimed at identifying carious or periodontal diseases in subjects belonging to a French rural population of the 18th century AD. We next examined radiographically six subjects showing specific, characteristic dental pathologies and applied HTS shotgun sequencing to characterize the microbial communities present in and on the dental material. The presence of Streptococcus mutans and also Rothia dentocariosa, Actinomyces viscosus, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Tannerella forsythia, Pseudoramibacter alactolyticus, Olsenella uli and Parvimonas micra was confirmed through the presence of typical signatures of post-mortem DNA damage at an average depth-of-coverage ranging from 0.5 to 7X, with a minimum of 35% (from 35 to 93%) of the positions in the genome covered at least once. Each sampled tooth showed a specific bacterial signature associated with carious or periodontal pathologies. This work demonstrates that from a healthy independent tooth, without visible macroscopic pathology, we can identify a signature of specific pathogens and deduce the oral health status of an individual.

Medical provision and urban-rural differences in maternal mortality in late nineteenth century Scotland.

This paper examines the effect of variable reporting and coding practices on the measurement of maternal mortality in urban and rural Scotland, 1861-1901, using recorded causes of death and women who died within six weeks of childbirth. This setting provides data (n = 604 maternal deaths) to compare maternal mortality identified by cause of death with maternal mortality identified by record linkage and to contrast urban and rural settings with different certification practices. We find that underreporting was most significant for indirect causes, and that indirect causes accounted for a high proportion of maternal mortality where the infectious disease load was high. However, distinguishing between indirect and direct maternal mortality can be problematic even where cause of death reporting appears accurate. Paradoxically, underreporting of maternal deaths was higher in urban areas where deaths were routinely certified by doctors, and we argue that where there are significant differences in medical provision and reported deaths, differences in maternal mortality may reflect certification practices as much as true differences. Better health services might therefore give the impression that maternal mortality was lower than it actually was. We end with reflections on the interpretation of maternal mortality statistics and implications for the concept of the obstetric transition.