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SKELETA L STRESS MARKERS OF BIOARCHAEOLOGICA L VALUE
An effective pathological condition for directed sample-based analytical problem solving
is one that is relatively common in skeletal material. Therefore, pathologies that occur as iso-
lated cases (e.g., cancer, Paget's disease, ankylosing spondylitis), however critical they may
be for establishing temporal and spatial distribution of the disease in question or as useful
bases for particular osteobiographies, are generally not effective directed-research tools.
The pathological conditions should certainly have behavioral or health corollaries that can
be used to reconstruct some aspect of community life.
The presence of these relatively common pathological conditions indicates a chronic,
perhaps long-standing, process. Therefore, the bioarchaeological value is not just the raw
frequency of cases, but the age-at-death of the affected individuals. There is a suite of path-
ological conditions utilized in the first generation of bioarchaeological inquiry that have
behavioral or health status corollaries that are still routinely and effectively utilized. These
conditions, often simply referred to as stress markers, can be investigated separately or
collectively depending on the research question or the scope of the research project.
Porotic Hyperostosis and Cribra Orbitalia
There are two places on the cortical surface of the cranium that often exhibit discrete areas of
small, penpoint diameter (circa 1 mm) pitting. Porotic hyperostosis (also referred to as cribra
cranii) is the pitting on the cortex of both upper parietal bones ( Figure 7.1 a). It is accompanied
by cancellous (diploic) bone expansion (i.e., hyperostosis)( Figure 7.1 b). A similar but inde-
pendent phenomenon is cribra orbitalia, a usually bilaterally expressed sieve-like pitting in
FIGURE 7.1 (a) Porotic hyperostosis as illustrated by surface pitting on the left and right parietals. (b) Porotic
hyperostosis as illustrated by expansion of the cancellous (i.e., diploic) bone. Normal adult mid-parietal thickness
ranges from 0.4 to 0.8 mm. (c) A remodeled example of cribra orbitalia.
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