Illness and inclusion: mobility histories of adolescents with leprosy from Anglo‐Scandinavian Norwich (Eastern England)

Leprosy is one of the most notorious diseases in history, widely associated with social stigma and exclusion. This study builds on previous work to reevaluate the medicohistorical evidence for social stigma in relation to leprosy. This is achieved by isotopic and palaeopathological analyses of adolescent skeletons (10–25 years old) from the Anglo-Scandinavian (10th–11th centuries AD) parish cemetery of St. John at the Castle Gate in Norwich (Eastern England/East Anglia). Core enamel samples from premolar and molar teeth from 10 young individuals with diagnostic lesions for leprosy were selected for radiogenic strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (δ18O) stable isotope analyses. Isotope data did not exclude anyone from the regional range. Palaeopathological data and archaeological contexts suggest that those with visible signs of leprosy were buried with their local community and in a normative manner, thus challenging the notion of social exclusion experienced by people with leprosy throughout the Medieval Period. This study underscores the importance of bioarchaeological data in challenging broad medicohistorical and archaeological narratives.