Death on the Rock: The old St Bernard's Hospital Project

LANE, KEVIN; BENADY, SAM; POMEROY, EMMA; GRANT, JENNIFER; WARD, DEVIN

Gibraltar

Exposición; University of Gibraltars programme of lectures on Gibraltars History; 2016

University of Gibraltar

In 2014, during construction work at the ex-Civil Hospital, Gibraltar, human remains were uncovered. The ex-hospital is on the site of a 16th Century Spanish hospice. Excavations led by the Gibraltar Museum revealed a major, previously unknown burial ground containing more than 200 skeletons. Between 2015-2016, we undertook initial cleaning and registration of the human bones. Our preliminary results are presented here, assessing the human remains against the historical context of the site and Gibraltar, and focussing on certain oddities, primarily, that the majority of the remains belong to men, aged between 15 and 35 years. We discuss a discrepancy between the absolute dates of the remains ? 15th Century ? and the extant material culture ? 16th-17th Century. Ongoing analyses will help to resolve the chronology and offer new insights into the functioning of this early modern hospital and the health and movements of people at a time of incipient globalisation.