No / Digitised Diseases is a major web-based 3D resource of chronic disease conditions that manifest change to the human skeleton. The resource was established through funds from Jisc, the University of Bradford and Bradford Visualisation. The multidisciplinary team involving project partners Museum of London Archaeology and the Royal College of Surgeons of England undertook a program of mass digitization of pathological type specimens from world-renowned archaeological, historic and medical collections at the University of Bradford, in London and York. We continue to augment this resource through ingestion of new content. The resource was always envisaged as needing to appeal to a diverse user community, having impact not just among academic and clinical beneficiaries, but also enriching the wider understanding of public health in the past. From the outset, our focus was on making sure that the digitized paleopathological exemplars were represented and understood within a broader clinical context. In essence we wanted to emphasize the impact of living with disease and disability in an era before modern therapies were available and the significance of care provision that would have been required at a societal level, given the longevity of many of these conditions.

Bioarchaeologists and palaeopathologists have recently turned their attention towards one critical aspect of the study of the history of disease: health-related caregiving. In response, an approach, the bioarchaeology of care, and, within it, the web-based Index of Care (IoC) have been developed to enable the identification and interpretation of past caregiving. Here, we apply the IoC to Burial 86, a young adult (18–25 years) female from the late Mississippian period, Dallas cultural phase Holliston Mills site (40HW11; ca. ad 1348–1535), TN. Burial 86 exhibits pathologies specific to treponematosis. They also exhibit a suite of pathologies indicative of physical impairment, including a varus angular deformity in the right tibia that is potentially the result of a malaligned pathological fracture. Following the IoC, we determine that Burial 86 probably experienced moderate clinical impacts on several domains (e.g., musculoskeletal system) with various functional impacts on essential activities of daily living. This means that Burial 86 likely had a disability and likely received caregiving, though it is impossible to determine if the care was efficacious. That care was provided likely reflected the community of Holliston Mills' more egalitarian socio-political structure, which was unusual for the late Mississippian. It may also reflect Burial 86's agency, the presence of adequate resources at the site, as indicated by high frequencies of high status mortuary artifacts, or a combination of these factors. The mortuary program for Burial 86 does not indicate that they were marked as being different—in status or other social categories—than other community members. This study highlights how bioarchaeological evidence can be used to explore the downstream effects of chronic infections, such as treponematosis, throughout the body and across the life course, and the opportunities for health-related caregiving in past societies that these processes can potentially create.

Yes / This chapter describes a collaborative project funded by Grants for All, Arts Council England, led by artist Karina Thompson, together with researchers from the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC), School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences, University of Bradford. The artworks took digitised historic clinical radiographs and digitised human skeletal pathological data from the landmark Digitised Diseases, and From Cemetery to Clinic digital bioarchaeology resources developed by colleagues from Visualising Heritage as a starting point. In addition to a series of small-scale installations displayed alongside the Biological Anthropology Research Centre teaching collection, large-scale exhibition pieces were displayed as part of national and international exhibitions. Collectively these works draw attention to the potential of digital bioarchaeology, whilst ensuring the importance of humanising the documentation of disease through time.