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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Archaeol.
Sec. Archaeological Isotope Analysis
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fearc.2025.1525886
This article is part of the Research Topic Isotopic Research on Past Residential Mobility in the Aegean and its Immediate Periphery View all articles
Dietary Habits of Byzantine Kovuklukaya (Sinop, Turkey): An Isolated Society or Ostracised People?
Provisionally accepted- 1 Hacettepe University, Ankara, Türkiye
- 2 University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
- 3 The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tōkyō, Japan
During the medieval period, cultural attitudes towards leprosy often involved the exclusion of infected people from general society. People suffering from leprosy were often moved to live in separate places such as a specific district, village, or hospital. Such actions are social implications of how the disease and its sufferers were viewed and dealt with. This study aims to investigate whether Kovuklukaya was inhabited by segregated lepers.Methods: This was conducted by examining diet of individuals using stable isotope analysis of bulk bone collagen and compound-specific amino acids, and integrating these results with osteoarchaeological, pathological, and ethnographic data.The stable isotope values reveal a terrestrial C3 diet with little inclusion of C4 plants.The probable source of the animal protein would appear to be sheep and/or goat. Although there is a broad range of available and potentially exploited and consumed food resources in the Black Sea region, the narrow range of the isotopic values would suggest a similarity in the availability or choice of food resources at the different sites in the region.Discussion: A wide diversity in consumed food resources of ostracized people from different dwellings may be expected. However, the isotopic values suggest that the people of Kovuklukaya consumed a narrow range of food resources. This similarity may arise from the mountainous environment which may restrict the range of available food resources, but is more probably due to common dietary habits such as the regular consumption of the same kinds of foods, eating from the same pots, etc., in a closely related group, kin, or family. The homogeneous characteristic of the dietary habits at Kovuklukaya supports the premise that Kovuklukaya was a small mountain village or hamlet rather than a leper colony.
Keywords: Bone collagen, Amino Acids, Stable isotopes, δ 13 C and δ 15 N, Leprosy, mobility
Received: 10 Nov 2024; Accepted: 04 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Özdemir, Itahashi, YONEDA and ERDAL. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Kameray Özdemir, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Türkiye
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