Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
new theoretical perspective for archaeology premised a biocultural approach in skeletal anal-
ysis (i.e., the ideas that mortuary context and skeletal biology also reflect culture and environ-
ment) (
Buikstra and Cook, 1980; Armelagos et al., 1982, and Van Gerven, 2003; Cook and
Powell, 2006
).
In the decades following Washburn's call to change, there was an explosive increase in the
number of studies using a more functional or analytic approach addressing issues of trauma,
growth patterns, and differential mortality (see Smith [Chapter 7], this volume). Further
paradigm shifts in archaeology (i.e., post-processualism, agency theory, gender studies)
have introduced broader interpretive frameworks for data from skeletal analysis, which
has resulted in a more robust discipline. Although there are certainly investigative limita-
tions imposed by skeletonized and mummified human remains, there is much that remains
to be addressed, quantified, and hypothesized.
The Osteological Paradox
Wood and colleagues (1992) proposed “the osteological paradox,” perhaps one of the
most important interpretive issues in bioarchaeology (defined below). The paradox addresses
fundamental problems relative to interpreting health and disease prevalence in the past.
Wood and colleagues (1992) discussed three major issues that influence conclusions when
analyzing historic and prehistoric skeletal series: (1) demographic nonstationarity, (2) selec-
tive mortality, and (3) differential frailty (see also Smith [Chapter 7], this volume).
The first issue addressed by the paradox, demographic nonstationarity, means that
populations cannot be argued to maintain a constant size over time, therefore the age-
at-death distribution in a cemetery sample is more indicative of fertility, rather than mortality.
That is, the differential representation of individuals by age has more to do with the number
of people entering the population (intrapopulation growth) than the factors that cause their
deaths (disease, malnutrition, accidents, etc.).
The second point is of selective mortality, meaning that the presence of lesions on bone does
not necessarily tell us about the prevalence of a given disease (because not all individuals will
develop lesions) and individuals differ in their own life history in terms of other pathogens
to which they have been exposed or other environmental or sociocultural factors that influ-
ence when they actually do die. The quandary then is whether skeletons without lesions
represent (1) healthy individuals, or (2) those who were weak and died of a pathogen that
could have affected the skeleton but they died before reaching that point (
Wright and Yoder,
2003
). In essence, the skeleton with the least pathology may actually represent the person who
was the least healthy, and therefore died quickly before lesions could affect the skeleton. In
contrast, those skeletons demonstrating the greatest pathology may reflect individuals
who were able to survive longer, as the skeleton is typically the last tissue in the body to
remodel as a response to disease.
The final point is of differential frailty. This means that individuals differ in their response to
disease, so some will die from a given disease while others with the same disease will not die.
This is perhaps the most difficult part of the paradox to handle when analyzing skeletal
series, as the factors that led one person to be more susceptible to disease versus another
(i.e., nutrition, access to resources, etc.) are multiple and intertwined. Wood and colleagues
(1992) suggested that research on the causes of differential frailty in modern populations
