Three Stories and a Funeral

Paleopathological study uses complex terminology, including medical jargon, to describe and understand a disease process and/or diseased individual. Such terminology might not be comprehensible and accessible to non-bioarchaeologists, including similarly affected individuals. This is especially the case when considering the interplay of disease with disability. How is disability defined, recognized, and understood in past peoples? Can this be communicated using nontraditional mechanisms? Developing other or nonstandard mechanisms for communication of bioarchaeological and paleopathological studies is vital for public understanding of and engagement with the discipline. This project studied a small cemetery assemblage from Roman Alington Avenue in Dorset. Osteobiographies were developed for those buried within the cemetery, and then, following grounding in disability theory and using a feminist standpoint theory approach, three interweaving fictive narratives were written about three specific individuals. One of these three was an individual previously diagnosed as having Langer-type mesomelic dwarfism. In writing the narratives, the implications of the constructions of possible bodily impairment and socially constructed views of disability were considered. Through this writing, focusing on bodily materiality and object-relations, the constructive effects of the interactions between the three people themselves and between them and their physical and social environments became clear regarding Roman views of disability, thereby producing new knowledge and understanding. This article explores the potential of integrated narrative fiction to enable communication of the implications of putative disability in one past group.