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6. Reconstructing Health at Nevasa, Daimabad, and Inamgaon
- University Press of Florida
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6 Reconstructing Health at Nevasa, Daimabad, and Inamgaon Auxology is an extraordinarily good tool for gauging health both in individuals and in populations. It is a fine-scale gauge, because growth accumulates the effects of the successive small-scale shocks, nutritional deprivations, infections, and emotional and metabolic disturbances to which so many children are subject . It is, of course, non-specific, and it monitors chronic repeated disturbance better than it does a single acute stress, from the effects of which catch-up growth may restore the situation entirely. But it is sufficiently powerful to distinguish, on aggregate, the children of the unemployed or to indicate, in a part of West Africa, the particular season of the year that places a proportion of pregnant mothers at risk of undernutrition. Tanner (1986:95) In this chapter, I examine stature and body mass in the skeletal series from Inamgaon to infer biocultural stress levels through time. In the succeeding chapter, I will integrate insights from the demographic profiles and these skeletal growth profiles to examine how subsistence transition and environmental and culture changes impacted infant and child health toward the end of the Deccan Chalcolithic period. Bioarchaeologists are primarily interested in the health and adaptations of past populations. We estimate health and nutritional adequacy using biocultural stress markers—measurements of growth disruption and indicators of disease in the human skeleton and dentition (Goodman and Martin 2002). In this context, stress is defined as conditions that disrupt normal biological function or homeostasis (Huss-Ashmore 2000). Stressors include extrinsic and intrinsic forces limiting access to the resources necessary to perform basic adaptive tasks (Cohen, Malpass, and Klein 1980; Larsen 1995; Goodman and Martin 2002). Extrinsic stressors in paleopopulations include insufficient food resources, poor sanitation, high parasite load or 90 · Bioarchaeology and Climate Change disease burden, overcrowding, and intra- or intergroup competition for space, privacy, and social resources. Intrinsic stressors include individuals ’ physiological, metabolic, immunological, hormonal, nutritional, and psychological status. Manifestations of stress in the skeleton have biocultural causes because human biology and culture are inextricably intertwined. Humans are an adaptable species, and environmental challenges are met with behavioral, social, and biological responses that are unique to each population and vary in their effectiveness (Huss-Ashmore 2000). Sociocultural systems, technology, and cultural traditions can serve to buffer populations against stress, but human behavior and social systems are not always adaptive and they do not necessarily develop with a principle goal of buffering all individuals against all stressors all of the time (Goodman and Leatherman 1999). Thus biocultural stress markers in the human skeleton represent complex interactions among stresses, susceptibilities unique to each individual , and behavioral and sociocultural factors. Many biocultural stress markers are nonspecific, and different stressors can produce similar manifestations in the skeleton. For example, there are over two hundred identified causes for a commonly used biocultural stress marker known as linear enamel hypoplasia, a disruption of dental enamel formation (Goodman, Armelagos, and Rose 1980). Many stressors are never expressed in the human skeleton because some conditions do not affect bones and teeth and because these tissues are buffered from the effects of stress (Goodman et al. 1988; Ortner 1991b). It is often the chronic and/or severe stressors that are most likely to leave marks on the bones and teeth and skeletons that do have stress markers are also more likely to have co-morbidity issues. Thus it is rare to have certainty about the cause of death for specific individuals in an archaeological context, but the pattern of growth disruption for multiple markers in a population can indicate general stress levels. The frequencies of such stress markers can then be compared to estimate the relative success of different strategies employed by human communities to cope with environmental challenges over time. Stunting (short stature for age) and wasting (low body mass for stature ) are nonspecific indicators of short-term economic and environmental stress in contemporary populations (Cameron 1979; Bogin and Macvean 1983; Huss-Ashmore and Johnston 1985; Fogel 1986; Tanner 1986; Evelyth and Tanner 1990; Cameron 1991; Steckel 1995; Bogin and Loucky 1997; [54.152.5.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:01 GMT) Reconstructing Health at Nevasa, Daimabad, and Inamgaon · 91 Saunders 2000; Floyd 2002; Martin and Goodman 2002; Cameron 2004). Reduced stature and body mass index are associated with nutritional deprivation, parasites, and chronic gastrointestinal issues, particularly diarrhea. Stature is also commonly used in bioarchaeology to infer biocultural stress levels, and it is clear from these studies that in general, mean...