The Industrial Revolution’s toll on human health is being read directly from the bones of the people who lived through it. Historians have only scattered snapshots of how rapid urbanisation, mechanisation, and early climate change affected disease and lifespan. This project closes that gap by merging two sources of evidence: human skeletal remains and documentary records. By analysing age at death, cause of death, and chronic health conditions across the UK and USA, the team will map how social status, gender, and proximity to rural or urban environments shaped people’s risk of disease. If successful, the research will produce a working database and spatial maps showing which aspects of industrialisation posed the biggest health threats and how public health measures altered those risks. That knowledge could inform archaeological policy and help modern planners understand the long-term health consequences of rapid urban growth and environmental change. The findings also speak directly to UN sustainable development goals around public health and infrastructure. While the project is historical, the patterns it uncovers—especially around social compliance with hygiene measures and the health effects of built landscapes—carry lessons for contemporary climate and urban policy.
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The Industrial Revolution (IR) profoundly altered every aspect of life around the world. While we increasingly understand the impact of increased mechanisation of manufacturing and agriculture, rapid urbanisation and climate change, we only have snapshots about how these impacted the landscape of human health. We will address this challenge by investigating mortality (age-at- and cause-of-death) and morbidity (chronic health conditions and the lived experience) on a large scale in the UK and USA. Uniquely this research will interweave data gleaned from human skeletal remains and documentary evidence to investigate the lived experience of individuals and their risk factors for disease within a spatial framework. Research Questions: Which aspects of IR posed the biggest risks to health (social or environmental)? What is the interaction between these risks, and can we identify the compounding effects of this interaction? To what extent did spatial patterns like proximity to rural or urban environments and rate of urbanisation impact patterns of acute disease, chronic disease, infant mortality and adult longevity? Was the experience of industrialisation in the US different to the UK? Were there any pre-existing conditions that mitigated or exacerbated the effects of IR on health that differed between the UK and US contexts? Were there differential patterns of health and longevity related to social status, or demographic trends? Were some sub-sections of society able to buffer themselves more effectively from environmental risks? Objectives: Integrate data for location, chronological date, adult and infant/child morbidity and mortality (M&M) Establish and compare chronological and spatial patterns of health for pre-industrial to industrial eras rural, urban and rapidly urbanising areas Britain and the USA Investigate the impact of public health measures on M&M. Establish differences in status, gender and age-related health. This project will place the lived experience of the people of IR centre stage and, with GIS tools, a working database will be created to encourage future scholarship and document preservation. Our research will help develop archaeological policy and will inform the evolving research agenda for industrial bioarchaeology in the UK and USA. The demographic and geographic patterns identified for the UK and USA may have far reaching implications globally - our edited volume identified many common patterns in health during IR around the world (Crane-Kramer and Buckberry 2023). Thus, it will raise awareness of the importance of the bioarchaeology of this period globally, allowing us to understand the commonalities and differences that the industrial, economic, and social development of countries had on health. Our research has the potential to spark more holistic analyses of the people of IR across the world, moving towards more systematic and widespread research. Our research speaks to UN grand challenges around sustainable societies, specifically relating to public health, infrastructure and quality of life. It will educate the public about the importance of social compliance to public health measures (such as vaccination and hygiene recommendations) and the close relationship between the industrialised built landscape and climate change, both of which have an environmental effect on M&M.
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