When it comes to being healthy, a high socioeconomic status certainly doesn’t hurt—and a new study reveals that this was true even during medieval times.
Using a combination of osteological analysis and Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry, researchers studied skeletal remains from five medieval burial sites of 102 females and 125 males across all age groups, assessing bone mineral density and stature. The burial sites included a royal burial church and a Dominican monastery—both representing high-status individuals—as well as three sites representing parish populations, all in Eastern Norway.
The results, published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, showed that there were indeed observable differences in bone density among the remains of the higher-status individuals, whose bone density measured about 0.07 g/cm2 higher than their lower-status peers. The higher-status individuals were also determined to be about 1.85 centimeters taller.
However, the differences were not evenly distributed across different age groups. When the authors split the subjects into young adults, middle adults, and old adults and also separated the results by age, they found the greatest differences were between “old adult” females in the high-status versus low-status group.
“The increased BMD in elderly females in the high-status group may reflect nutritional and lifestyle factors influencing BMD from an early age. High-status females had such favorable living conditions enabling them to, e.g., recover from years of multiple pregnancies and depletion of bodily resources to a much larger degree than the parish population females. They could pay for upkeep and care in old age and would probably have enjoyed a varied and nutritious diet,” the study’s authors wrote.
Younger age groups with a lower socioeconomic status may have experienced the relative benefits of daily exercise associated with labor, as opposed to a more sedentary lifestyle for their wealthier counterparts.
This could balance out some of the potential benefits enjoyed by the wealthier group, such as better housing, dietary practices, or medical care.
“Our findings indicate that femur neck BMD may be a valuable skeletal indicator of SES,” the study’s authors note.