Archaeology and Palaeopathology

Reconstructing the Past: How Did People Live?

• Key topics include human remains and past diets, past environments and settlement patterns, and social systems and cultural change.

Provenience

• Archaeologists are deeply concerned with provenience, which refers to the location of artifacts or remains.

The Archaeological Record's Incompleteness

• The archaeological record is incomplete due to factors like preservation bias, floods, natural disasters, and the limited number of sites left to excavate.

Palaeopathology

• Palaeopathology is the study of diseases and disorders in past populations.
• Examples include trauma (fractures), infectious diseases (leprosy), degenerative diseases (osteoarthritis), metabolic diseases (rickets), and dental pathology (caries).

Approaches to Pathology Interpretation

• Macroscopic analysis (visual examination);
• Microscopic analysis (thin section bone);
• Radiographic analysis (X-rays);
• Chemical analysis (e.g., isotopes)

Sword Wound Trauma

• A sword wound, without signs of healing, suggests a possible cause of death.

Trephination Trauma

• Evidence of healing suggests trephination was done with a goal of treatment, rather than death.

Metabolic Disease: Rickets

• Rickets is a disturbance in bone formation in growing children that shows a characteristic bowing in the long bones, due to inadequate calcium and phosphorus deposition.

• Causes: Vitamin D deficiency resulting from inadequate calcium absorption in the intestine.

• Vitamin D is produced when skin is exposed to UV rays.

• Another source is within certain fatty fish.

• Increased risk during the Industrial Revolution due to poor diets, lack of sunlight, and industrial smog.

• Another risk is environmental factor of low UV exposure in northern latitudes and social customs.

Bone Qualities

• Bone is living tissue reacting to environmental factors like stressors over a lifetime.
• Bone changes are usually associated with chronic conditions compared to acute ones.

Bone Use Limitations

• Diagnosis cannot be made based solely on symptoms.
• Not every disease affects the bones.
• Manifestations of the same disease can vary between different people.
• Modern knowledge is helpful but some diseases and evolution can alter the way they manifest themselves in skeletal remains.

The Case of: Harris Lines

• Harris lines are visible as increased density in radiographs of long bones, especially the distal tibia.
• They indicate a resumption of growth after a period of growth arrest.
• They can be non-specific stress indicators that reflect nutritional problems, illness or emotional factors during childhood.

Another Complication: "Pseudopathology"

•  Pseudopathology is the appearance of bone pathology due to mechanical forces (e.g., weight of earth), chemical erosion, or living/animal agents (like plants or gnawing).
• Excavation hazards also cause such complications in the skeletal record.

"Palaeodemography"

•  Palaeodemography is the study of population dynamics through examining population age and sex structure, population growth, fertility and mortality.
• "Cause-specific mortality" can be aided by understanding palaeopathology.

"Palaeonutrition"

• Palaeonutrition reconstructs past diets.

Evidence: Ancient Subsistence

• Evidence comes from environmental data, like flora and fauna, artifacts (tools, weapons, cooking vessels, killing materials and plow blades), plant remains, faunal remains, and coprolites (fossilized faeces).

Stable Isotopes & Trace Elements

• Stable isotope and trace element analysis directly analyze human bone to ascertain past diet due to the principle that "You are what you eat."

Stable Isotope Analysis

• Bone and hair samples provide an isotopic profile to track isotopes, including carbon-12, carbon-13 and nitrogen-15, offering insight into diet variability.

Carbon Isotopes

• Photosynthetic pathways of plants are crucial.
• C4 plants (tropical/subtropical) have a higher carbon-13 ratio and C3 plants have a higher carbon-12 ratio.
• Ratios provide information on the relative quantities of C3 and C4 plants in the diet.

Nitrogen Isotopes

• Ratios of nitrogen isotopes reveal the relative position of individuals on the food chain (herbivore, omnivore, carnivore).
• Higher nitrogen-15 levels suggest a higher position in the food chain.
• The presence of higher nitrogen-15 levels in babies' tissues indicates breast milk consumption.

Trace Elements: Strontium

• Evidence of different trace elements in bone can provide further detail on diet and subsistence patterns.
• Examples include strontium, showing relative levels of herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores.

History of Evolutionary Theory

• Pre-Darwinian views considered a static world, design, and typological thinking.
• Darwinian thinking emphasized population evolution and variation as fundamental concepts.

Evolution

• Evolution is a systematic change through time.
• Organisms evolve biologically and socially/culturally.
• Modern species are a consequence of prior forms.

Essentialism

• Essentialism is a concept in pre-Darwinian views where all living organisms were perceived as fixed forms, and individual variation wasn't considered significant.

Great Chain of Being

• The Great Chain of Being is a pre-Darwinian conceptual framework ranking organisms based on a strict hierarchy, with humans viewed towards the divine.