SECOND DOOR ON THE RIGHT: The ruins of Saranda Kolones harbor inside information on Crusaders.COURTESY OF EVILENA ANASTASIOU/ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PALEOPATHOLOGY
In January 2012, Evilena Anastasiou took a tour of the ruins of Saranda Kolones, a medieval castle on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus built around 1200, after Richard I of England invaded the island during the Crusades. Anastasiou, a native Cypriot on break from graduate school at the University of Cambridge, snapped some photos of the castle’s excavated concentric ring walls, marveled at its architecture, and took a souvenir: a small sample of soil containing decomposed feces from one of the castle’s several latrines.
Anastasiou brought a gram of soil from the latrine containing the centuries-old poop back to Cambridge where she works with paleoparasitologist Piers Mitchell, studying human parasites and their hosts from the ancient world.
Mitchell has traveled around Britain, the Middle East, ...
