Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
B.C. to 1000
e
500 B.C.) and an Early Woodland (~500 B.C. to 0 A.D.) period in west-central
Tennessee (
Smith, 2006
)(
Figure 7.5
c).
Endemic treponemal disease is epidemiologically associated with poor community
hygiene and archaeologically co-associates with sedentism and aggregate (village) settlement
pattern (Aufderheide and Rodr
´
guez-Mart
´
n, 1998;
Ortner, 2003; Cook and Powell, 2005
). It is
present in low case frequencies (circa 2
e
4%) in the hunter
e
gatherer Archaic period of the
Eastern United States (Kelly, 1980;
Cook and Powell, 2005; Powell et al., 2005
). The disease,
not surprisingly, dramatically increased to circa 10% after 1000 A.D. (Mississippian period)
as maize cultivation and village settlement patterning intensified (Aufderheide and Rodr
´
-
guez-Mart
´
n, 1998;
Ortner, 2003; Hutchinson et al., 2005; Cook and Powell, 2005; Powell
et al., 2005
). The question generated from this observation is whether treponemal disease
ALSO dramatically increased to a higher frequency in emergent horticulturists of the Early
Woodland period.
The Woodland period (1000 B.C. to 1000 A.D.) in the Eastern United States is characterized
by several subsistence-settlement changes: sedentism, widespread adoption of pottery, and
horticulture (Anderson and Mainfort, 2002). A convenient marker for the emergence of the
Woodland period (1000 B.C.) is the presence of pottery (Farnsworth and Emerson, 1986;
Sas-
saman, 2004
) as some degree of settlement (i.e., kilns) is presumed (
Brown, 1986, 1989
).
However, the earliest potters in the Southeastern United States are archaeologically charac-
terized as hunter
e
gatherers (Farnsworth and Emerson, 1986; Anderson and Mainfort,
2002). In the Tennessee sample, the only material culture difference between the Archaic
and the Early Woodland horizons is the presence of fishhooks and pottery (
Bowen, 1975,
1977
). Therefore, there is little to argue that there is a change in subsistence-settlement
pattern. But if a sedentism-sensitive health parameter is demonstrably different between
the temporal horizons, then you have effectively utilized bioarchaeology as an archaeological
problem-solving tool.
The results from the Tennessee meta-analysis (barring sampling error) were nothing less
than striking: 0.5
e
1% (n
88) in the Early Woodland
(
Smith, 2006
). These results corroborate earlier studies suggesting that ecology and site
density matter in the visibility of treponemal disease (
Cook and Powell, 2005; Hutchinson
et al., 2005
). Clearly knowing the archaeological context and the unanswered sociopolitical,
subsistence, and settlement questions enables the bioarchaeologist to address issues that the
material culture remains cannot.
378) in the Late Archaic to 9.1% (n
¼
¼
CONCLUS
ION: PALEOPATHOLOGY AS AN INVESTIGAT
IVE TOOL
In the decades since the adoption of the biocultural approach, the problem-solving abili-
ties of paleopathological data have certainly not been fully exploited or exhausted. The
appeal of bioarchaeology is that for every question answered, several new ones are formu-
lated. Unexpected results are particularly exciting. Arguably, as long as there are questions
to be posed and data that can be marshaled to address them, analytical paleopathology
will continue to be a vibrant research tool. It should be noted that it cannot be said that
analysis of a skeletal sample is “finished” or that all the data are collected. To argue so is
to equate termination with completion.
