One Health Archaeology Research Group

The One Health Archaeology Research Group provides a forum to support interdisciplinary approaches for the study of past human, animal and environmental health and the contribution of these long-term records to current global health challenges.

The One Health approach explicitly acknowledges that the wellbeing of humans, animals and environments are linked. In the past, as in the present, health experiences were shaped by complex social, ecological and biological interactions. Archaeology is uniquely placed to deliver long-term integrated and contextualised biological and cultural records. These can provide powerful insights into the complexity of these past interactions. In doing so, archaeology also has the potential to offer long view perspectives to current global health challenges.

One Health Archaeology logo featuring a handprint, a pawprint and a plant icon
Words and symbols associated with One Health Archaeology

The research group

This research group is concerned with the investigation of the diverse relationships between humans, animals and their environments that shaped past health in its broadest sense. Our work combines evidence and proxies generated through different disciplinary approaches to understand the influences, contexts and outcomes of these interactions. It is represented by a range of ongoing fieldwork and laboratory projects, combining contextual, osteological, biomolecular, palaeodietary, and modelling approaches. 

This group provides an interdisciplinary forum for research supported by a seminar series, workshops, social events, and excellent laboratory facilities. We provide an interdisciplinary research community for students on the MSc in Human Osteoarchaeology, and postgraduate researchers in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology.

The group organises a seminar series featuring both internal and external speakers. You can find details of the most recent series at the link below.


Current and recent projects: 

  • ‘ArchaeoFINS - medieval archaeology of fishing around the Irish and North Seas’ – Sam Leggett; Leverhulme Trust Funded
  • ‘Life histories of health and disease: a multidisciplinary approach to assessing the impact of vitamin D deficiency on childhood and later adult health outcomes’ – Sophie Newman and Sam Leggett; Munro Research Grant Fund)
  • The Mount Pleasant, Alton Cemetery Project – Sam Leggett and Emma Smith, with Robin Fleming (Boston College)
  • ‘Passage Tomb People: Investigating the social drivers of passage tomb construction’ - Jessica Smyth et al. (University College Dublin) and Jonny Geber (University of Edinburgh) | https://passagetombpeople.com/
  • ‘Harvested Bodies’: Biocultural Linkages of Structural Violence and Identity – Jonny Geber (University of Edinburgh; Leverhulme Trust Funded), Jenny Bergman (Lund University Historical Museum), Niels Hammer (Medical University of Graz)
  • ‘Trevelyen’s Corn: Bone chemistry and Famine relief aid in 19th century Ireland’ - Barra O’Donnabhain and Mila Pravda (University College Cork), Julia Beaumont (University of Bradford), Jonny Geber (University of Edinburgh)
  • ‘England’s earliest aristocrats? Mapping migration and diet among Earls Barton’s first burial population’ - Duncan Wright (Newcastle), Oliver Creighton (Exeter), Sam Leggett (Edinburgh); National Environmental Isotope Facility (NEIF) Funded

We have ongoing rich collaborations with a range of external research groups and organisations, such as:

  • National Museum of Scotland
  • The Division of Macroscopic and Clinical Anatomy, Medical University of Graz
  • School of Archaeology, University College Dublin
  • Croatian Academy of Sciences
  • Department of Archaeology, University College Cork
  • Department of Anatomy, University of Otago
  • Scottish Universities Environment Research Centre (SUERC)
  • Royal Veterinary College
  • The Historical Museum at Lund University
  • Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh
  • The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh
  • Surgeons’ Hall Museums
  • Boston College
  • UCL
  • University of Bristol
  • MOLA Northampton
  • Body-Politics Project - https://body-politics.com/ 

  • Emma Spencer – ‘Maternal Care and Mortality in Medieval to Post-Medieval Scotland’ (supervisors: Jonny Geber, Cordelia Beattie)
  • Sha Nevin - ‘Human-Animal Relationships in Late Medieval and Early Post-Medieval Urban Scotland: A Case Study of the Royal Burgh of Aberdeen’ (supervisors: Robin Bendrey, Jonny Geber)

  • Dadar M, Bendrey R, Taylor G M, and Shahali Y (2025), The history of brucellosis in the Middle East: insights for contemporary health challenges. Frontiers in Microbiology 16: 1571087.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2025.1571087
  • Fleming R, Leggett S and Smith E (2025) Rethinking Grand Narratives: Mobility, Diet, and Health in a Small Corner of Early Medieval Hampshire. Speculum 100(3). The University of Chicago Press: 619–652. https://doi.org/10.1086/736018
  • Fibiger, L., Iraeta-Orbegozo, M., Koledin, J., Laffoon, J. E., Makarewicz, C. A., Mylopotamitaki, D., Bruyere, C., Booth, T., Bronk-Ramsey, C., Layfield, R., Anchieri, L., Huang, Y., Kjær Knudsen, A., Niemann, J., Radmanović, D., Oldham, N. J., Shaw, B., Tracy, S., Nylund, S. & Daly, S., Winter-Schuh, C., van Acken, D., Ringbauer, H., Mittnik, A., Ramos-Madrigal, J., Schroeder, H. & Molloy, B. (in press). A large mass grave from the Early Iron Age indicates selective violence toward women and children in the Carpathian Basin. Nature Human Behaviour.
  • Leggett, S., Hakenbeck, S., O’Connell, T.C. (in press). Large-scale Isotopic Data Reveal Gendered Migration into early medieval England c AD 400-1100. Medieval Archaeology.
  • Fibiger, L., Ahlström, T., Meyer, C. & Smith, M. (2023) Conflict, violence, and warfare among early farmers in north western Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120 (4), e2209481119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.220948111
  • Geber J and O'Donnabhain B (2020) "Against shameless and systematic calumny": Strategies of domination and resistance and their impact on the bodies of the poor in 19th century Ireland. Historical Archaeology 54: 160–183. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-019-00219-2
  • Geber, J., Pickard, C., Macaud, S., Sten, S., & Carlsson, D. (2023). King Olaf’s men? Contextualizing Viking burials at S:t Olofsholm, Gotland, Sweden. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 33(5), 802–815. doi:10.1002/oa.3211
  • Hamerow, Helena, Sam Leggett, Christel Tinguely, and Petrus Le Roux. ‘Women of the Conversion Period: A Biomolecular Investigation of Mobility in Early Medieval England’. Antiquity 98, no. 398 (5 February 2024): 486–501. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.203.
  • Lambert, Tom, and Sam Leggett. ‘Food and Power in Early Medieval England: Rethinking Feorm’. Anglo-Saxon England 49 (2022): 107–53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675122000084.
  • Leggett, Sam. ‘A Hierarchical Meta-Analytical Approach to Western European Dietary Transitions in the First Millennium AD’. European Journal of Archaeology, 21 July 2022, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2022.23.
  • Leggett, Sam, and Tom Lambert. ‘Food and Power in Early Medieval England: A Lack of (Isotopic) Enrichment’. Anglo-Saxon England 49 (2022): 155–96. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0263675122000072.
  • Strand, Lisa Mariann, Sam Leggett, and Birgitte Skar. ‘Multi-Isotope Variation Reveals Social Complexity in Viking Age Norway’. iScience 25, no. 10 (21 October 2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.105225.
  • Leggett S (2021) Migration and Cultural Integration in the Early Medieval Cemetery of Finglesham, Kent, through Stable Isotopes. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 13: 171. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-021-01429-7
  • Michael DE, Fibiger L, Ziota C, Gkelou L and Molloy B (2021) Exploring the efficacy of comparative bioarchaeological approaches in providing answers on marginality and networking: The example of Late Bronze Age Achlada in Florina, Northern Greece. Bioarchaeology International 5: 21-46. https://doi.org/10.5744/bi.2021.1005
  • Pickard C and Bonsall C (2020) Post-glacial hunter-gatherer subsistence patterns in Britain: dietary reconstruction using FRUITS. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 12: 142. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01087-1
  • Newman SL, Keefe K, Caffell AC, Gowland RL, Bekvalac J, Holst M and Heyerdahl-King I (2023) Growing Old in the Industrial Age: Aging, Health, and Social Identity in Elderly Women (Eighteenth–Nineteenth Centuries A.D.). Bioarchaeology International, 7(3) https://doi.org/10.5744/bi.2023.0003
  • Newman SL and Hodson CM (2021) Contagion in the Capital: Exploring the impact of urbanisation and infectious disease risk on child health in nineteenth century London, England. Childhood in the Past 14(2): 177-192. https://doi.org/10.1080/17585716.2021.1956059
  • Smyth J, Geber J, Carlin N, O’Sullivan M, and Griffith S (2025). Notes from the archives: Re-analysis of skeletal assemblages from three later fourth millennium BC Irish passage tombs. In: Hofmann D, Cummings V, Bjørnevad-Ahlqvist M, Iversen R (eds) The early Neolithic of Northern Europe: New approaches to migration, movement and social connection. Sidestone Press, Leiden, pp 147–158

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