Health-related caretaking in an institutionalized setting: Applying the Index of Care to Burial 1 from the mid-19th to early-20th century Mississippi State Asylum, Jackson, MS.

This project employs a modified version of the Bioarchaeology of Care (BoC) in an analysis of Burial 1 from the Mississippi State Asylum, Jackson, MS. Burial 1 is a skeletal individual recovered from the historic MSA cemetery. Notably, Burial 1 exhibits recidivistic cranial trauma in the form of cranial depression fractures (CDFs) and significant entheseal changes in the upper extremities. However, because there is no identifying information associated with Burial 1, interpretations of the caretaking they may have received, both prior to and after institutionalization, include short- and long-term outcomes from their community and the MSA. Additionally, Burial 1’s CDFs and subsequent traumatic brain injury likely increased their risk of being institutionalized and created complications for them in the MSA. Despite the limitations of this study, future research applying a modified BoC could lead to otherwise unknown information about the lived experiences of institutionalized patients in historic institutions of care