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Don’t Forget the Children! A Review of the Consequences of Natural Disasters and Epidemics on Childhood Health and Mortality in the Past

SQUIRES, Kirsty, HOOKWAY, Esme and Márquez-Grant, Nicholas (2022) Don’t Forget the Children! A Review of the Consequences of Natural Disasters and Epidemics on Childhood Health and Mortality in the Past. Childhood in the Past. pp. 1-22. ISSN 1758-5716

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Abstract or description

Natural disasters, pandemics, and epidemics have devastating impacts on communities. Poverty, famine, ill health, social isolation, and death are some of the consequences of such events. Transformations in culture, religion, political and economic stability, and other social aspects can also be attributed to catastrophic incidents. Whilst such events have been well documented and studied, little attention has been given to their effect on children. Using osteoarchaeological and historical evidence, this review article explores how children appear to have been affected during, and in the aftermath of, natural disasters and epidemics. A range of cases from Antiquity to the modern day is provided, alongside three focal case studies. This research demonstrates analogies with the present-day where countries face disease outbreaks, droughts, floods, and earthquakes. Ultimately, the findings presented in this paper illustrate the extent to which these events shaped the lives and deaths of children in the past.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: “This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Childhood in the Past. 'Kirsty Squires, Esme Hookway & Nicholas Márquez-Grant (2022) Don’t Forget the Children! A Review of the Consequences of Natural Disasters and Epidemics on Childhood Health and Mortality in the Past, Childhood in the Past'. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.”
Uncontrolled Keywords: Epidemic; pandemic; natural disasters; famine; childhood health; child mortality;child sacrifice; bioarchaeology
Faculty: School of Law, Policing and Forensics > Forensic Sciences and Policing
Depositing User: Kirsty SQUIRES
Date Deposited: 16 Feb 2022 15:49
Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 01:38
URI: https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/id/eprint/7186

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