DIAGNOSTIC UNCERTAINTY IN PALAEOPATHOLOGY: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ZEYTINLI ADA CRANIAL LESIONS ДИАГНОСТИЧЕСКАЯ НЕОПРЕДЕЛЁННОСТЬ В ПАЛЕОПАТОЛОГИИ: ЭПИСТЕМОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ КРАНИАЛЬНЫХ ПОРАЖЕНИЙ С ОСТРОВА ЗЕЙТИНЛИ-АДА

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Köroğlu T., ATİK B., Suata F., Rühli F., ACAR S., Alpaslan O., ...Daha Fazla

Materialy po Arkheologii i Istorii Antichnogo i Srednevekovogo Prichernomor'ya, cilt.2026, sa.22, ss.353-372, 2026 (Scopus)

Özet

Palaeopathological diagnosis moves from a macroscopic lesion to a disease label through several inferential steps, each carrying its own uncertainty. This study examines eleven previously unstudied crania from the Byzantine assemblage of Zeytinli Ada, a monastic and healing complex on an island off the Erdek peninsula, Marmara Sea, Türkiye. The commingled material, which precludes postcranial association for any individual, is treated not as a limitation but as a condition exposing the epistemic structure of palaeopathological reasoning itself. A four-layer inferential model, the Layered Palaeopathological Inference Framework (LPIF), is applied: macroscopic observation, differential diagnosis, osteobiographic inference, and population-level interpretation. Rhinomaxillary destruction, basicranial lytic activity, and anaemia indicators recur across the adult series and support a treponemal reading in most of it (7 of 10 adult individuals scoring 2 or above on a Hackett-based matrix); with a series of this size the count is descriptive and carries no prevalence estimate. It aligns with a previously published tertiary syphilis case from the same site (ZK-61). One subadult cranium (CR-9) is reclassified from probable treponemal disease to infantile scurvy, based on a differential matrix and radiographic exclusion of thalassaemia and congenital syphilis. The results argue that diagnostic confidence depends less on the number of criteria met than on how explicitly inference is marked as it gives way to speculation, particularly in commingled series where anatomical completeness cannot be assumed.