Migration to the Medieval Middle East With the Crusades Piers D. Mitchell 1 * and Andrew R. Millard 2 1 Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, 7E Charing Cross Hospital, London W6 8RP, UK 2 Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, UK KEY WORDS caesarea; levant; oxygen isotopes; strontium isotopes ABSTRACT During the 12th and 13th centuries thousands of people moved from Europe to the Middle East to fight, undertake pilgrimage, or settle and make a new life. The aim of this research is to investigate two populations from the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, by determining who was born in Europe and who came from the Middle East. Oxygen and strontium stable iso- tope analyses were conducted on the enamel of teeth from skeletal remains excavated from Crusader contexts. Twenty individuals from the coastal city of Caesarea (10 high status and 10 low status), and two local Near East- ern Christian farmers from the village of Parvum Geri- num (Tel Jezreel) were analyzed as a control sample. Results were compared with known geographic values for oxygen and strontium isotopes. The population of the city of Caesarea appears to have been dominated by Eu- ropean-born individuals (probably 19/20, but at least 13/ 20), with few locals. This was surprising as a much higher proportion of locals were expected. Both controls from the farming village of Parvum Gerinum had spent their childhood in the area of the village, which matches our understanding of limited mobility among poor Medi- eval farmers. This is the first time that stable isotope analysis has been applied to the study of the migration of peoples between Medieval Europe and the Middle East at the time of the crusades. In view of these find- ings, we must now rethink past estimations of popula- tion social structure in Levantine coastal Medieval cities during the Crusader period. Am J Phys Anthropol 140:518–525, 2009. V V C 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. The crusades to the Middle East were a momentous time in the history of the Medieval Europe. In the 12th and 13th centuries hundreds of thousands of Europeans traveled to the eastern Mediterranean either in military expeditions, as pilgrims, or for trade (Setton, 1989; Riley-Smith, 1999). Many settled there and lived in the Frankish states, which were established along the coast on land that is now part of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Cyprus (see Fig. 1). It is important to know where the European settlers lived and how well they integrated with the local popula- tion. This information can be used to understand the cul- tural structure of cities, towns, and villages, the makeup of the armies of the Frankish states, religious life in holy sites, health inequalities, and discrimination and tolerance between invading and indigenous communities (Prawer, 1972; Mitchell, 2004). For example, previous work has presumed that those individuals buried in well-built, high status graves around the Cathedral of St. Peter in Caesarea would have been Europeans, and those individuals buried in poorly-built, low status graves outside the city walls would have been indigenous Christian groups such as Melkites and Jacobites (Smith and Zegerson, 1999). Attempts to compare the health of these two populations were then made, suggesting the ‘‘local Christians’’ buried outside the city walls had lon- ger life expectancy than the ‘‘Europeans’’ buried around the cathedral. However, it remains unclear how reliable burial location might be for identifying geographic ori- gins in a case such as the crusades. The quality of burial architecture, for example, might reflect wealth more than cultural background. Attempts have been made to assess cultural diversity and cultural dominance using linguistic methods (Aslanov, 2002), historical methods (Prawer, 1980), and building style (Ellenblum, 1998) to determine the population structure of these Frankish states in the Latin East. However, such approaches tend to give a broad impression for a large region, rather than specific information relating to an individual per- son. This article reports a pilot project that attempts to demonstrate that such specific information can be obtained using dental isotope analysis of excavated Cru- sader period skeletal material. SITES UNDER INVESTIGATION The two sites studied were Caesarea (Qaisariya) and Parvum Gerinum (Tel Jezreel) (see Fig. 1). Caesarea was a city built in the Roman Period on the Mediterranean coast (Holum et al., 1988; Raban and Holum, 1996). In the Crusader period (12th to 13th century CE) it lay within the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem, which cov- ered an area similar to Israel, Palestine, and western Jordan today. Caesarea contained a cathedral, monas- teries, harbor, castle and was defended by a moat and Grant sponsor: The British Academy; Grant number: SG-39159. *Correspondence to: Piers D. Mitchell, Faculty of Medicine, Impe- rial College London, 7E Charing Cross Hospital, London W6 8RP, UK. E-mail: p.mitchell@clara.co.uk Received 12 October 2008; accepted 10 April 2009 DOI 10.1002/ajpa.21100 Published online 15 June 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). V V C 2009 WILEY-LISS, INC. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 140:518–525 (2009)