Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER
7
Paleopathology
Maria Ostendorf Smith
INTRODUCTION
The study of disease, nutritional deprivation, and mechanical stress in human remains
recovered from archaeological contexts is called paleopathology.
1
It includes the examination
of mummified remains as well as skeletonized material. Paleopathology has a long history of
scholarly interest, but not a very long history as an investigative tool. This use is a phenomenon
of the late twentieth century. It developed very quickly out of a constellation of paradigm
shifts that occurred after 1950 that reflected a maturing of anthropology as a discipline
(
Washburn, 1951; Armelagos, 1997, 2011; Buikstra, 1977a; Buikstra and Cook, 1980; Angel,
1981; Armelagos et al., 1982; Armelagos and Van Gerven, 2003; Cook and Powell, 2006; Marks,
2010; Relethford, 2010
). These shifts included the abandonment of racial typology as
a primary, if not exclusive, tool of skeletal analysis (
Armelagos and Van Gerven, 2003; Cook
and Powell, 2006
; also see DiGangi and Moore [Chapter 1] and DiGangi and Hefner [Chapter
5], this volume). This abandonment of the physical ”type” or discrete “race” logically redir-
ected physical anthropological research of human biological diversity in the direction of the
role of plasticity (e.g., growth, maturation, and malnutrition) in determining apparent phys-
iological differences between ethnic groups (
Hulse, 1981; Marks, 2000; Roberts, 1995
). This
information provided support for the causative role of physiological stressors such as nutri-
tional deprivation, culture (e.g., weaning practices, sex roles, slavery), chronic disease, and the
various kinds of reactive bone that had long been observed on human skeletal material
(known collectively as the biocultural approach)(
Goodman et al., 1988
; DiGangi and Moore
[Chapter 1], this volume). Determining the causal or synergistic connection of bone pathology
to stressors has been an active part of skeletal analysis since the late 1960s (e.g.,
Carlson et al.,
1974; Mensforth et al., 1978; Stuart-Macadam, 1992; Wapler et al., 2004; Walker et al., 2009
).
The co-association of pathological conditions with life stressors acquired an interpretive
context in the late 1960s with the development of processual archaeology (
Binford and
Binford, 1968; Willey and Phillips, 1958
). This paradigm shift directed archaeological analysis
away from cataloging and creating cultural chronologies (timelines) toward reconstructing
human societies using the material archaeological record to engage in hypothesis testing.
1
All bolded terms are defined in the glossary at the end of this volume.
