Abstract:
An essential part of paleopathology is the study of diet and nutrition as well as inferring
aspects of diet and nutrition from the skeletal pathology. Interpretation of nutritional and
metabolic disease-related pathologies often provides additional insight into the daily social
and cultural practices of people. However, precise diagnoses of specific vitamin-related
deficiencies in archaeological skeletal remains are still quite problematic and specific
diagnoses are rarely possible. This partly stems from the fact that many nutritional or
metabolic diseases do not necessarily result in an osteological response and when they do,
the comorbidity and analogous osteological responses to vitamin deficiencies may hamper
the definite diagnosis of nutrition-related disease.
