Ann L. W. Stodder

Subadult stress, morbidity, and longevity in Latte Period populations on Guam, Mariana Islands

The frequency and age distribution of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) in the dentition of 293 individuals from Latte Period sites (AD 800-1521) on Guam, Mariana Islands, are examined in this study. Individuals dying as subadults (before age 16) and as young adults (ages 16-21) have more frequent LEHs than those who survived to middle or late adulthood, documenting a relationship between LEH-causing stress events and reduced life expectancy. The age distributions of cribra orbitalia and skeletal infection in children who died by age 10 exhibit striking similarities to the etiological age patterns of LEH in children, and those with skeletal infection have more frequent hypoplasias than children without infection. The comorbidity of systemic stress and infection in children, and their impact on life expectancy, are interpreted in the biocultural context of high population density in the large coastal villages of the late prehistoric period in the Marianas.

Quantifying Impairment and Disability in Bioarchaeological Assemblages

Global epidemiology metrics provide some useful tools for characterizing health in past populations. Among these are the disability weights developed by the Global Burden of Disease studies. Disability weights are assigned to health states —conditions and sequelae rather than to specific diseases or skeletal lesion types—and encompass a wide range of nonfatal conditions, many of which are recorded in skeletal assemblages. Examples presented here illustrate the application of this approach in quantifying the disability burden represented by skeletal pathology in two Ancestral Puebloan skeletal assemblages. The issues attendant to the evolution of disability weights and the challenges in assigning universal weights to different health states globally are discussed.

Diet, Demography, and Disease: Changing Perspectives on Anemia.

This volume serves to challenge the conventional views of the relationship between health, disease, and iron; of the symptomatic role of low iron levels; of cultural imperatives related to diet, such as daily meat intake; and of prescribed iron fortification. The contributors are leading researchers in ethnography, archaeology, physical anthropology, microbiology, and medicine.