I questioned one article, based on a general concern that there are either branches of the discipline or individual practitioners whose conclusions seem to lack the rigour of other branches of science. The particular article that was linked above appears to assert that every burial with a scallop shell is that of a pilgrim. Perhaps there is evidence of that, but what is it? Are there other plausible explanations for the presence of the scallop shell, presumably because it is a prized object, being interred with the body? Was there corroboration in writings of the time, not only of the prized nature of the scallop shell, but that it was only buried with a known pilgrim and not with some other person to whom the shell had been passed, eg as a gift. How does one account for individuals who might have had someone travel to Santiago on their behalf and return with a scallop shell, now no longer associated with the actual pilgrim? Was this practice even present in the time period of the burials being examined? I suggest that to a reasonably inquisitive reader, all of these things would go to weaken the strength of any conclusions based on a assertion that everyone buried with a scallop shell was a pilgrim.
As an aside, there is one Australian university where the Archaeology Department is in the Arts Faculty, and not in the Science Faculty. Given my clearly cynical views about this, I thought that this was entirely justified! It's not that I think that the practitioners don't apply themselves with due diligence to their work, but for all that they establish as fact about a matter, they are still faced with creating an interpretation of those facts that cannot be tested in the same way that can be done with other fields of scientific study.
The short answer is that one ought to avoid pronouncing on the research and methods outside one’s area of expertise.
A second very broad point is that the administrative houses of disciplines has almost nothing to do with the division of arts and sciences. How psychology sits in medicine in one location, in science in another, and in arts in another but teaches and researches entirely the same things has to do with Byzantine matters of organizational structure. Archeology ends up in arts fairly frequently in schools that do not run all 4 fields (largely an American convention, the 4 fields, anyway). Large branches of anthropology can end up in faculties of medicine because many of those in field teach things like gross anatomy, evolutionary biology, and clinical communications/ethmomethodology.
To object to something written for people *in field* for not starting *all over again* with what has been broadly established in many literatures from medieval history to religious history, to semiotics and studies of the sacred and the profane, as well as in the known reliance of many groups on shells as forms of currency with the scallop shell being one very particular form of currency is to object based on one’s own ignorance and not on the extant evidence that already exists for a discipline (that it does not need to rehash at the start of every paper). It is hardly the fault of the archeologists that their reach extended to a lay audience as broad as a thread in a camino forum.
To answer a few questions:
Things we now about burials: people do not get buried with the trash except in disasters. Objects buried with individuals are common signifiers to communicate the status or accomplishments of the person. We know that scallop shells were coveted if they came from the correct region, and that many were counterfeited or bought/sold along the way prior to completing the pilgrimage to Saint James (as they are now), but the *idea* was that one could not acquire one until having made it to Santiago and that having one would show one’s priest or magistrate or neighbour that you really had made the journey. It was the compostela for a largely illiterate population. It is not particularly difficult to determine where a particular shell originated (though I would not hold that to be true of the bleached ones easily purchased on the trail now). They could be from China for all I know, and one is not, in the tradition of things, supposed to have one prior to completion of the walk. If, on burial someone who had to abandon the trail contemporary trail before getting to Santiago still gets buried with their bleached shell, this study tells me that there is a very good chance their remains will still reveal a level of privilege distinct from a person buried near them in the pauper’s section.
We also know that those who had money but not time paid others to make pilgrimage for them… an early ‘in vicare pro‘ if you will, but the scallop shell for completion went to the one who had paid for it, and that person would be buried with it (just as my mother will be buried with her vicare pro compostela). That certainly satisfied the definition at the time of “pilgrim” — though it could, of course, confound some of the biology encountered in the remains of those who always enjoyed good health. The medieval structure of piety allows for this and the archeologists do not try to sort out who was a “true pilgrim” from “who sent someone else” as the point has to do with the
belief of the person not the action.
The authors report finding evidence in these bodies more frequently than in those buried in the same locations and eras without the shells, and that there are health and diet markers in the bones that give the biological markers to verify what we already know from medical historians: that those on pilgrimage often had access to better food for a significant period of time as compared to those who did not travel.
Here, we have to keep in mind that people had to get not only *to* the pilgrimage site, but also back from it… a 6 month journey would not be unusual, many would be longer, and the impact on the body of 6 months of better food access and reasonable but not wildly dangerous exercise will leave a signature. For many medical thinkers at the time, often also men and women of religious faith, those markers constituted miraculous cures.
Even on this point the researchers are cautious and argue that a single pilgrimage could not alter the isotope signatures for a lifetime. They are not, therefore, saying that one sojourn altered their health, they are saying that the presence of the shell might be a shorthand to predicting that such bodies will reveal the effect of social status on diet/exercise/leisure/health.
Sometimes the biological signatures are even visible to the naked eye (in bone density, evidence of injury and repair, wear-and-tear on joints, etc. Sometimes lab testing of bones, of chemical signatures left in clothing will reveal more information. Evidence from teeth, nails, hair… these are standard places to look for questions about diet. In this study, the isotope signatures in bones and collagen were compared across those with and without the shell in their burial accoutrements, and the presence of the shell reliably corresponds with alterations in diet associated with the benefits of general class status and of pilgrimage diet. The bodies
without shells buried with them show the markers of the much more limited largely rye-based diet (which, by the way, required roughly 100 loaves of bread per week to keep an average sized family fed, and was often “soaked” at the mill to provide false weights leading to less nutrition on the plate than one had paid for (hence the expression, “I got soaked” to mean that someone ripped you off). Few families could produce the hundred or so loaves per week so most were in a constant state of under-nourishment…
The article provides an extensive literature review that evidences the meaning and use of the shell in the records of the day. The article maps out how ancient records regarding health and putative pilgrimage are evidenced in the bodies as a correspondence. Id est, to have the shell is to be able to claim the status of a pilgrim (the cultural literature of the time establishes the point), and the person with that status bears the markers in their of enhanced social class to corroborate the benefits that a pilgrim status can sustain or confer.
The broader literature extensively cited in the article references historical constructs of the time is established enough that requiring the point be be redemonstrated is no more necessary than for a peer review panel to require a marine biologist to restate the meaning of water, nor that a theological dissertation be required to reiterate the importance of holy water at mass.
One might want to ask for an operational definition of “pilgrim” here, but that does not mean that the paper lacks rigour. It means that one is not versed in the background that allows the work to move from an established premise to test what the premise might show in the body. The question was not “Are these pilgrims?” the question was, “Will the remains of those who carry a symbol of pilgrimage tell us differential information about those who carry the symbol and those who do not?” And the answer, fairly simply, was “yes”, but there is no specific claim that it means that anyone privileged enough to carry the symbol was also a “true pilgrim” in the sense that gets tossed about now.
When one does not see in obvious terms how a method has been carried out or a conclusion reached, one writes to the author to ask for more information.