Palaeoparasitology in the study of early medieval Islamic society from Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

Parasites are present in all ecosystems and need hosts for their survival. When it comes to human hosts, it is not unusual that this heterospecific interaction can cause a pathological condition in the host. Many factors from medieval era have often been documented: population´s diet, housing, demographic data, resources and how these were exploited. In the specific case of the early medieval Islamic societies of the Iberian Peninsula, a scarce number of paleoparasitological studies has been carried out, which could allow us to study in depth the conditions in which these individuals lived. For this reason, paleoparasitology has proved to be a useful tool for the anthropological purposes and scientific insight of the true conditions of early medieval Islamic individuals, we consider that the data provided by this discipline are, to date, incontrovertible in our field of study. In this way, this article aims to present the techniques to obtain paleoparasitological samples and their subsequent treatment in the laboratory, to identify evidence of parasites within these populations.