PALEOPATHOLOGY AT THE KHAN-EL-AHMAR SITE - HEALTH AND DISEASE IN A BYZANTINE MONASTERY IN THE JUDEAN DESERT, ISRAEL

The present study describes the skeletal material that was uncovered a t the crypt of the monastery of St Euthymius at Khan-el-Ahmar, in the Judean Desert, near Jerusalem. Comparative morphometric analysis with contemporaneous populations and the palaeodemographic and palaeopathol ogical data disprove many historians' well accepted notions regarding early Christians in the Judean Desert. In the present paper we suggest that the majority of people who were buried at the Khan-el-Ahmar mona stery derived mainly from the autochthonous population of the region a nd were not migrants or fugitives from surrounding countries. It appea rs that this community of monks lived in a rather protected environmen t despite their desert surroundings. In the monastery, they maintained a high level of personal hygiene, had adequate food supplies and were not subjected to repeated acts of violence from their neighbours.