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The Greek skeletos, meaning withered or dried up, is the source of the modern word skeleton. The skeletal remains of a once-dynamic living organism would appear to be shriveled or withered if that is all that remains of what was once a vital body and soul. The ancients would have been hard-pressed to use the bones to provide insights into the being of what was once that person. The early history of skeletal biology primarily consisted of descriptive inventories of the sex and age of skeletal remains found in archaeological excavations. The inventories were dry and lifeless, and their publications were forever buried as appendixes in archaeological reports. The analysis and insight in this early era of skeletal biology could easily be described as withered or dried up. Modern researchers now know that the bones of individuals long dead can provide information about the people themselves their physical activities, their diet, and the diseases that afflicted them. The skeletons provide valuable clues as to how people lived and died. Even after an influential article by S. L. Washburn (1953) heralding the era of the “new physical anthropology” nearly a half century ago, little changed. The new physical anthropology forecasted the replacement of typology and description with the study of process and hypothesis testing. Notwithstanding the promise of the new era of research with an emphasis on process, most skeletal biology remained typological and descriptive. The development of physical anthropology was hampered by the role it played as the “handmaiden” to history, particularly versions of history that fit common cultural stereotypes (Lasker 1970). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This book began by extolling the benefits of studying very long-term trends in health using evidence from skeletal remains. To this end, we coordinated the preparation of the largest comparable database ever assembled in the field of bioarchaeology, which consists of observations on 12,520 individuals who lived over the past several millennia at 65 composite sites in the Western Hemisphere. The database is available to the public and includes seven commonly measured, basic indicators of health: stature inferred from long bone lengths; evidence of anemia from porotic hyperostosis or cribra orbitalia; linear enamel hypoplasias; trauma; infectious lesions on bones; dental health; and degenerative joint disease. The first three indicators reflect the health quality of life in childhood, while the last two are connected with the degenerative processes of aging and hard work. Trauma and infectious lesions can occur at any age but are more common among older children and adults. Our conclusions first highlight methodological contributions, beginning with a technique for measuring health based on two essential ingredients: health quality of life while living and length of life. The Mark I version of the health index, which roughly gauges chronic conditions of the first component, is based on the prevalence and severity of the basic health indicators. We tabulated separate indexes for each attribute and weighted them equally in calculating the overall index. Attributes for individual observations were scored from 0 (worst outcome) to 100 (no evidence of pathology), and the results at each site were converted to age-specific rates, which were weighted by the distribution of person-years lived by age in a reference population (Model West, level 4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT A wealth of data exists for the American Southwest on diet, health, settlement, and other aspects of life in the precolonial and colonial periods. TheWestern Hemisphere project provided a way to begin to synthesize these data on a regional and comparative scale. The health index, as the average of the quality-adjusted life-years lived by a group (that is, the combined effects of morbidity and mortality), demonstrates that individuals in the Southwest carried a morbidity burden higher than most of the other areas discussed in this volume. Mortality is high and morbidity is ubiquitous. The combination of these two related processes resulted in a health index score of 16.5/26.4 or 62.5%. The mean age at death of approximately 24 years suggests that Southwest groups were on the lower end of the mortality spectrum. Comparison of comparable data sets provides a dimension of analysis in the Southwest not previously possible, and as such, presents important additional information for the interpretation of health in the American Southwest. INTRODUCTION In pre–Columbian times, the Greater Southwest was a biogeographically, culturally, and politically complex area incorporating Arizona, New Mexico, and southern Utah and Colorado in the United States, as well as all the states of northern Mexico, including Chihuahua, Sonora, and Durango. It was then, and continues to be, a cultural, political, and economically diverse area where contact, trade, and boundary maintenance and dispute define local and regional interactions. The Southwest is also a place where semiarid desert landscapes abound. Water is at a premium, and arable land is a limited resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This chapter tracks temporal and regional trends in health in the midregion of the Georgia Bight, a large embayment extending from northern coastal Atlantic Florida to North Carolina. The study explores changes in health in precontact and contact-era native populations that in historic times were known as Guale. Comparison of prehistoric foragers (1100 BC–AD 1150) and prehistoric farmers (ad 1150–1550) and early mission (AD 1550–1680) and late mission (AD 1686–1702) intensive agriculturalists reveals a clear reduction in health and an increase in workload and physical activity in this subtropical coastal setting. In comparison with other regions of the Western Hemisphere, the health index of the Georgia Bight populations was relatively high, with the exception of the late mission group. The latter's position relative to other regions reflects a decline in health with long-term interaction with and exploitation by Spaniards. The trends identified in this study are generally consistent with other patterns identified elsewhere in North and South America, especially regarding health decline with the shift to an agricultural economy and increased population sedentism and aggregation. INTRODUCTION Human remains from the Georgia Bight offer a rich record for tracking and interpreting the biohistory of human populations in North America (Figure 14.1). This chapter recounts this record, especially with regard to how bioarchaeological study informs our understanding of two major events and their impact on health and behavior/activity in this setting: (1) the adoption and intensification of maize agriculture, and (2) the arrival of Europeans and the establishment of Roman Catholic missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This chapter provides a selective review of nine skeletal and dental lesions that have been used to construct the skeletal database employed in the development of the health index. These lesions are described within a biosocial framework. Change in length of subadult long bones can identify differences in nutrition and health. Linear enamel hypoplasias provide information on the severity and temporal pattern of stress during infancy and childhood. Porotic hyperostosis is a lesion of the skull associated with iron deficiency. Bony responses to bacterial infections are associated with differences in contact with bacteria and the levels of resistance. Patterns of healed fractures indicate activities that include livingon difficult terrain, hazardous occupations, and the extent of warfare and interpersonal violence. Osteoarthritis indicates the degree of regular strenuous activity and quality of life. Dental decay and tooth loss have functional significance for nutritional status. INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE Analyses of skeletal remains are providing a unique window onto patterns of health in past human populations. Until very recently the surviving human tissues, most often bones and teeth (and less often skin, hair, and fluids, such as blood), have usually been ignored in historical and prehistoric research, or at best, their analysis was relegated to appendixes of archaeological site reports (Buikstra, 1991). However, archaeologists and historians have begun to realize that human remains are the most direct means for assessment of past biologies and how these biologies interacted with social, political, and economic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This chapter describes the data used for the Western Hemisphere project, discusses the format in which the information was coded, and explains the health index, which is a method for measuring and comparing health status using skeletal remains. Skeletal lesions measure primarily chronic health conditions, but they can reflect acute infections to the extent that they affect physical growth, the formation of linear enamel hypoplasias, and other conditions that register on bones. The database contains measurements of seven basic health indicators from12,520 skeletons of people who lived in North, Central, or South America over the past 7 millennia. For purposes of analysis, many of the 218 sites where people lived were combined into 65 sites based on ecological and chronological similarity. The health index adjusts for the age distribution of the population and incorporates the severity of lesions indicating biological stress. The current (Mark I) version of the index gives equal weight to the health indicators, but this assumption and others explained in the chapter could be modified based on additional research. The Mark I health index could also be readily adapted to incorporate length of life. The index rankings reveal considerable diversity in health status, with Native Americans being among the most but also among the least healthy groups who lived in the Western Hemisphere prior to the end of the nineteenth century. Social scientists have devised many approaches to measuring the standard of living. Economists use national income accounts and related measures, such as gross national product per capita, to depict material aspects of the quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]