Isotope analysis reveals that social status and wealth had a profound impact on diet in medieval England, showing that people from different social groups in medieval Cambridge ate markedly different food.
The research, carried out as part of the ‘After the Plague’ project at the University of Cambridge and published in the journal Antiquity, analysed carbon and nitrogen isotopes preserved in bone collagen from individuals buried in Cambridge between the 10th and 16th centuries AD.
Historical documents suggest that medieval diets were dominated by grain products (bread, ale etc.) and supplemented with dairy, eggs, fruit and vegetables, while access to meat and fish varied widely depending on wealth, status, and religious rules.
However, such sources offer only a broad picture and don’t allow for a more complex, person-focused analysis of how social differences shaped real lives.
“Scholars knew that food was an important social marker in medieval England, and there are lots of textual references to different groups and classes eating differently,” says co-author of the study, Professor John Robb from the University of Cambridge. “We wanted to see if this was simply a stereotype or actually resulted in lifelong choices that affected people’s bodies.”
To answer this question, authors Dr Alice Rose and Dr Tamsin O’Connell deliberately took a “whole-town” approach. They sampled remains from four distinct burial sites representing different positions in medieval society: two parish cemeteries (one urban and one rural), a wealthy friary, and a hospital that provided charitable care for the poor. Together, these cemeteries reflect a broad cross-section of medieval Cambridge, from ‘ordinary’ townspeople to prosperous religious communities and the most vulnerable members of society.
“The isotopic data in itself doesn’t tell you exactly what people ate, but it does give you a general sense of where the protein in their diet came from,” Rose explains. “If people from wealthier contexts had higher isotopic values, suggesting more of their protein came from animal sources, then we can infer that they might have been eating more meat, fish, and/or dairy.”
The results were conclusive. The friars, who were well provided for in their wealthy religious institution, showed isotope values suggesting diets high in meat and fish, while the majority of the other townspeople displayed more limited access to animal protein.
“People in different social groups really did display different isotopic trends suggesting that they may have consumed different kinds of foods”, states Rose. “Ordinary people generally had nutritionally adequate diets compared to really poor people receiving charity at the hospital, but wealthier people were able to procure and consume meat, fish, and/or dairy more regularly.”
In particular, the friars clearly stand out as having much higher and more clustered isotope values than everybody else in the town. This is almost certainly due to the carefully regulated diets followed in medieval religious institutions, which could contain more animal protein than what most people could afford.
The research also highlights the huge variety in the diets of the people buried in the hospital, due to their varied social circumstances, as well as differences between urban and rural diet.
By studying an entire town across social boundaries, the research shows how inequality shaped everyday life in real, physical ways. These results offer a more human-centred understanding of medieval society, showing that, centuries later, social inequality can still be read in our bones.