The Backbone of History Introducción

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The Backbone of History

Health and Nutrition in theWestern Hemisphere

Edited by

RICHARD H. STECKELOhio State University

JEROME C. ROSEUniversity of Arkansas

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published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridgeThe Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

cambridge university pressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

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C© Cambridge University Press 2002

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2002

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Minion 10.25/12 pt. System LATEX 2ε [TB]

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Steckel, Richard H. (Richard Hall), 1944–

The backbone of history : health and nutrition in the Western Hemisphere / Richard H.Steckel, Jerome C. Rose.

p. cm.

Revised papers from a second conference sponsored by the National ScienceFoundation (SBR-9423435) and held March 7–10, 1996 at Ohio State University, Columbus.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-521-80167-2 (hardback)

1. Indians – Food – History – Congresses. 2. Indians – Health andhygiene – History – Congresses. 3. European Americans – Health and hygiene –

History – Congresses. 4. African Americans – Health and hygiene – History – Congresses.5. Human remains (Archaeology) – America – Congresses.

6. America – Antiquities – Congresses. I. Rose, Jerome Carl. II. Title.

E59.F63 S74 2002614.4′27 – dc21

2001037965

ISBN 0 521 80167 2 hardback

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Contents

Preface page xi

List of Contributors xv

part i1 Introduction 3

Richard H. Steckel and Jerome C. Rose

part ii methodology2 Reconstructing Health Profiles from Skeletal Remains 11

Alan H. Goodman and Debra L. Martin

3 A Health Index from Skeletal Remains 61Richard H. Steckel, Paul W. Sciulli, and Jerome C. Rose

4 Paleodemography of the Americas: From Ancient Times toColonialism and Beyond 94Robert McCaa

part iii euro-americans and african-americansin north america

Introduction 127

5 The Health of the Middle Class: The St. Thomas’ Anglican ChurchCemetery Project 130Shelley R. Saunders, Ann Herring, Larry Sawchuk, Gerry Boyce,Rob Hoppa, and Susan Klepp

6 The Poor in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Northeastern UnitedStates: Evidence from the Monroe County Almshouse, Rochester,New York 162Rosanne L. Higgins, Michael R. Haines, Lorena Walsh, andJoyce E. Sirianni

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viii Contents

7 The Effects of Nineteenth-Century Military Service on Health 185Paul S. Sledzik and Lars G. Sandberg

8 The Health of Slaves and Free Blacks in the East 208Ted A. Rathbun and Richard H. Steckel

9 The Quality of African-American Life in the Old Southwest nearthe Turn of the Twentieth Century 226James M. Davidson, Jerome C. Rose, Myron P. Gutmann,Michael R. Haines, Keith Condon, and Cindy Condon

part iv native americans in central americaIntroduction 281

10 Social Disruption and the Maya Civilization of Mesoamerica:A Study of Health and Economy of the Last Thousand Years 283Rebecca Storey, Lourdes Marquez Morfin, and Vernon Smith

11 Health and Nutrition in Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica 307Lourdes Marquez Morfin, Robert McCaa, Rebecca Storey, andAndres Del Angel

part v native americans and euro-americansin south america

Introduction 341

12 Patterns of Health and Nutrition in Prehistoric andHistoric Ecuador 343Douglas H. Ubelaker and Linda A. Newson

13 Economy, Nutrition, and Disease in Prehistoric Coastal Brazil:A Case Study from the State of Santa Catarina 376Walter Alves Neves and Veronica Wesolowski

part vi native americans in north americaIntroduction 403

14 A Biohistory of Health and Behavior in the Georgia Bight: TheAgricultural Transition and the Impact of European Contact 406C. S. Larsen, A. W. Crosby, et al.

15 Native Americans in Eastern North America: The Southern GreatLakes and Upper Ohio Valley 440Paul W. Sciulli and James Oberly

16 Cultural Longevity and Biological Stress in the American Southwest 481Ann L. W. Stodder, Debra L. Martin, Alan H. Goodman, andDaniel T. Reff

17 Health, Nutrition, and Demographic Change in Native California 506Phillip L. Walker and Russell Thornton

18 Welfare History on the Great Plains: Mortality and Skeletal Health,1650 to 1900 524S. Ryan Johansson and Douglas Owsley

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Contents ix

part vii19 Patterns of Health in the Western Hemisphere 563


part viii20 Conclusions 583


part ix epilogue21 The Body as Evidence; The Body of Evidence 593

George J. Armelagos and Peter J. Brown

22 Overspecialization and Remedies 603Philip D. Curtin

Index 609

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Contributors

George J. ArmelagosAnthropology Department

Emory UniversityDecatur, GA 30322

Gerry Boyce173 Bridge StreetBelleville, OntarioCanada K8N 1N3

Peter J. BrownAnthropology Department

Emory UniversityDecatur, GA 30322

Cindy Condon12264 SW 105th Lane

Miami, FL 33186

Keith Condon12264 SW 105th Lane

Miami, FL 33186

Alfred W. Crosby67 North Centre Street

Nantucket Island, MA 02554

Philip D. Curtin42 Windermere Way

Kennett Square, PA 10348

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xvi Contributors

James M. DavidsonDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of Texas at Austin

Austin, TX 78712

Andres Del AngelInstituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas

UniversidadNacional Autonoma de Mexico, Circuito Interior

Mexico, D. F., Mexico

Alan H. GoodmanSocial Sciences

Hamsphire CollegeAmherst, MA 01002

Mark C. GriffinAnthropology Department

San Francisco State UniversitySan Francisco, CA 94132

Myron P. GutmannICPSR

Institute for Social ResearchUniversity of MichiganAnn Arbor, MI 48106

Michael R. HainesEconomics Department

Colgate UniversityHamilton, NY 13346

Ann HerringDepartment of Anthropology

McMaster UniversityHamilton, Ontario

Canada L8S 4L9

Rosanne L. HigginsHealth Sciences DepartmentCleveland State University

Cleveland, OH 44115

Rob HoppaDepartment of Anthropology

University of ManitobaWinnipeg, Manitoba

Canada R3T 2N

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Contributors xvii

Dale L. HutchinsonAnthropology Department

East Carolina UniversityGreenville, NC 27858

S. Ryan JohanssonCambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure

27 Trumpington StreetCambridge CB2 1QA

United Kingdom

Susan KleppHistory DepartmentTemple University

Philadelphia, PA 19122

Clark Spencer LarsenAnthropology Department

Ohio State UniversityColumbus, OH 43210

Lourdes Marquez MorfinEscuela Nacional de Antropologıa e Historıa, Mexico

Periferico Sur y Zapote s/n. Col. Isidro Fabela14030 Mexico, D. F., Mexico

Debra L. MartinSocial Sciences

Hampshire CollegeAmherst, MA 01002

Robert McCaaHistory Department

University of MinnesotaMinneapolis, MN 55455

Walter Alves NevesLaboratorio de Estudos Evolutivos Humanos

Departamento de BiologiaInstituto de Biociencias

Universidade de Sao PauloSao Paulo, Brazil

Linda A. NewsonGeography DepartmentKing’s College London

StrandLondon WC2R 2LS

United Kingdom

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xviii Contributors

James OberlyHistory Department

University of WisconsinEau Claire, WI 54701

Douglas OwsleyAnthropology Department

National Museum of Natural HistorySmithsonian InstitutionWashington, DC 20560

Ted A. RathbunAnthropology Department

University of South CarolinaColumbia, SC 29208

Daniel T. ReffDivision of Comparative Studies


Jerome C. RoseAnthropology Department

University of ArkansasFayetteville, AK 72701

Christopher B. RuffDepartment of Cell Biology and AnatomyJohns Hopkins University Medical School

725 North Wolfe StreetBaltimore, MD 21205

Katherine F. RussellDepartment of Biology

University of Massachusetts, DartmouthDartmouth, MA 24740

Lars G. SandbergEconomics Department


Shelley R. SaundersAnthropology Department

McMaster UniversityHamilton, Ontario

Canada L8S 4L9

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Contributors xix

Larry SawchukDepartment of Anthropology

Scarborough CollegeUniversity of TorontoScarborough, Ontario

Canada M1C 1A4

Margaret J. SchoeningerAnthropology Department

University of CaliforniaSan Diego, CA 92093

Paul W. SciulliAnthropology Department


Leslie E. SeringMuseum of Anthropology

University of MichiganAnn Arbor, MI 48109

Scott W. SimpsonDepartment of Anatomy

Case Western Reserve UniversityCleveland, OH 44106

Joyce E. SirianniAnthropology Department

University of BuffaloBuffalo, NY 14261

Paul S. SledzikNational Museum of Health and Medicine

Armed Forces Institute of PathologyWashington, DC 20306

Vernon SmithInterdisciplinary Center for Economic Science

George Mason UniversityFairfax, VA 22030

Richard H. SteckelEconomics & Anthropology Departments


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xx Contributors

Ann L. W. StodderDepartment of Anthropology

The Field Museum1400 S. Lake Shore Drive

Chicago, IL 60605

Rebecca StoreyAnthropology Department

University of HoustonHouston, TX 77204

Jeffry L. TakacsAnthropology Department

University of North CarolinaChapel Hill, NC 27599

Mark F. TeafordDepartment of Cell Biology and AnatomyJohns Hopkins University Medical School

Baltimore, MD 21205

Russell ThorntonAnthropology Department

University of California, Los AngelesLos Angeles CA 90095

Douglas H. UbelakerAnthropology Department

National Museum of Natural HistorySmithsonian InstitutionWashington, DC 20560

Phillip L. WalkerAnthropology Department

University of California, Santa BarbaraSanta Barbara, CA 93106

Lorena WalshColonial Williamsburg Foundation

Williamsburg, VA 23187

Veronica WesolowskiLaboratorio de Estudos Evolutivos Humanos

Departamento de BiologiaInstituto de Biociencias

Universidade de Sao PauloSao Paulo, Brazil

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chapter one

Introduction


Human biologists, historians, and other social scientists have expressed enduringinterest in the evolution of human health over the past several millennia. The searchfor knowledge is propelled in part by intellectual curiosity. For the same reasonsthat explorers of the early twentieth century strove to reach the poles and the highestpeaks, and their modern counterparts journey to outer space or deep into the oceans,most humans are inquisitive about their past. They want to understand how theyevolved and how they shaped and adapted to their environments. They want tovisualize or imagine the contours of the human experience – the peaks of adaptivesuccess that led to human growth, expansion, and flowering of civilization, and thevalleys of despair in which human presence ebbed and retreated.

But more practical considerations also lead the quest for knowledge. Not onlya basic ingredient in the quality of life, health is intertwined with demographic,social, economic, and political change and with the outcomes of wars and otherconflicts. Length of life and other aspects of health affect work capacity and theincentives to invest in skills that contribute to economic growth. Basic indicatorsof the standard of living, such as the human development index proposed by theUnited Nations, have a substantial health component (UNDP, 1990). Historians andpolitical scientists have identified inequality, not only in income or wealth, but also inthe form of disparities in health and nutrition, as a driving force in social, political,and economic change. Thus, health has played a central role in human history,both as an agent of change and as an outcome measure indicating the quality of life.Skeletal measures of health, which are the central focus of this book, furnish the bestand, in many cases, the only picture available of human health over the millennia.

Study of skeletal remains for insights into health in the past creates valuablelong-term perspective on several modern social problems. Virtually all researchersare aware, at some level, of the significant processes of evolution that gave rise tomodern societies over the past several millennia. They understand that many mod-ern problems have roots reaching very deep into the human past, and that currentconditions were often created by complex interdependent processes that unfolded

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4 Richard H. Steckel and Jerome C. Rose

over very long periods of time. In evaluating the results of their research, most socialand medical scientists would like to have access to very long-term historical studiesthat would, for example, place in perspective the prevalence of trauma and violence,urbanization and health, child health, aging and health, and biological inequality.

Research on prehistoric and historic skeletons will also contribute to under-standing the evolution of modern medical problems. Numerous modern diseasesevolved with humans adapting to humans living in proximity to one another andto animals in a wide variety of ecological environments. Recent advances in theextraction of DNA from pathogens found on skeletons now make it possible tostudy the coevolution of humans with many diseases. Important first steps in theresearch agenda are to describe the evolution of human health and to understandits change in response to varying ecological environments.

Despite widespread interest and the general importance of health to humanchange over the past several thousand years, relatively little is known about thesubject. Raw data on population size by age and on deaths by age are virtually un-available prior to the nineteenth century, and thus, investigators cannot tabulatetraditional measures of health, such as life expectancy at birth. Average height, ameasure of health long known to human biologists and now familiar to some socialscientists, is available in quantity from military muster rolls and other sources asfar back as the eighteenth century, but height data are very sparse for earlier eras(Steckel, 1995). Thus, the story of very long-term trends in health cannot be toldwith traditional evidence, or even with newly developed sources of information,such as average height.

In the 1980s, the fields of history, economics, and physical anthropology beganto develop some common interests and methodologies. Since the mid-1970s, eco-nomic historians have been applying average human stature, which measures apopulation’s history of net nutrition, to issues in slavery, mortality, inequality, andhealth during industrialization (Steckel, 1998). They have used a measure famil-iar to physical anthropologists, but applied it to a broad range of well-establishedhistorical problems.

Similarly, by the early 1980s, physical anthropologists were mounting substantialefforts to study long-term trends (in health), the traditional domain of historians.Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture, edited by Mark Cohen and GeorgeArmelagos, was the first significant publication of this type. Contributors to thebook assembled skeletal evidence of disease patterns that compared the health ofhunter-gatherer societies with that of settled agriculturalists. This transition hasbeen long celebrated by social scientists as a major advance in civilization, but tothe surprise of those outside physical anthropology, the book reported that healthdeteriorated during the changeover.

This book brings together 18 essays that study long-term trends in health in theWestern Hemisphere using evidence of chronic disease or biological stress measur-able from skeletal remains. Basic information on the geographic, ethnic, and tempo-ral distribution of the database for the project is listed in Table 1.1. Nearly 80 percentof the 12,520 individuals were Native Americans, with the remainder almost evenlysplit between Euro-Americans and African-Americans. About two-thirds of the



Introduction 5

Table 1.1: Distribution of Skeletons in the Database

Native American

North Middle SouthPeriod America America America Euro-American African-American

1750+ 627 0 0 1201 13801500–1749 2580 0 39 113 01000–1499 888 236 1095 0 01 ad–999 1642 594 382 0 01000 bc–ad 0 250 0 247 0 0Before 1000 bc 485 343 418 0 0

total 6472 1173 2181 1314 1380

Grand total = 12,520.

Native Americans resided in what is now the United States (noted as North Americain the table and in parts of the text), as opposed to Middle America (11.9 percent)or South America (22.2 percent). Slightly more than one-half (52.6 percent) livedin the Western Hemisphere prior to the arrival of Columbus, and nearly 14 percentlived prior to the birth of Christ (ages of individual sites are reported in years bp,that is, before present, taken as 1950).

Developed in recent decades by physical anthropologists, these data are unfamil-iar to most social scientists, but they are likely to be the best single source availableto scholars for measuring and analyzing very long-term trends in health. Therefore,the first section of the book formulates the methodology, and remaining sectionsexamine applications to Native Americans, Euro-Americans, and African-Americanpopulations in North America, Mesoamerica, and South America.

The essays are the culmination of over a decade of intense interdisciplinary ac-tivity inspired by these two movements – the acceptance and use by economistsand historians of measures traditional in human biology and physical anthropology(especially average height), and the study of long-term trends in health by physicalanthropologists. Our efforts depart from and contribute to these movements, anddraw attention to the advantages of collaboration. Historians, economists, and othersocial scientists gain by acquiring measures of health available to study long-termtrends and differences in health. Similarly, physical anthropologists acquire a freshreservoir of research questions and methodologies that are found beyond their tra-ditional, localized spheres of interest. It is our hope that all groups go forward inthis collaboration with renewed energy and purpose.

The essays take Cohen and Armelagos as their starting point, but go beyond theirbook in several important respects. First, the data assembled in Paleopathology atthe Origins of Agriculture were not truly comparable because contributors utilizedvarying coding schemes for individual records. Researchers included the frequencyof common variables, such as degenerative joint disease, skeletal infections, andlinear enamel hypoplasias, but the specific measures were not reported using thesame scale, which complicated comparisons. The essays herein utilize a common




data-reporting format. Second, the size and diversity in our data resources by region,time period, and ethnic group exceed that studied in Cohen and Armelagos. Weassemble over 12,500 observations on individuals who lived in the Western Hemi-sphere from over 4000 bc to the early 1900s, which is by far the largest comparabledata set of this type ever created. Third, this project explicitly and extensively incor-porates interdisciplinary perspectives. We do not claim this is necessarily desirablein itself, but the book is innovative in its collaborative strategy of using physical an-thropologists, historians, and economists, who jointly headed most research teamsproducing essays. This approach broadens the range of questions typically askedof skeletal data to include widespread comparative study and brings new method-ologies to their analysis. Prominent among the latter are the concept of a healthindex and measures of assessing inequality in health. Fourth, the range of ques-tions asked of the data exceeds that in Cohen and Armelagos. Paleopathology at theOrigins of Agriculture focused mainly on health during the transition, whereas thisproject considers issues over a broader time span, including the dynamics of pre-Columbian health, the consequences of contact, and the fates of Euro-Americansand African-Americans up to the early twentieth century.

The first chapter in the methodology section discusses something fundamentalto the remaining chapters – indicators of skeletal disease. Bones are living tissue thatrespond or adapt to biological stress, which may be caused by numerous persistentconditions, such as a deficient diet, various infections that penetrate soft tissue, andarduous work or physical effort. With the help of a few necessary photographs, AlanGoodman and Debra Martin articulate these indicators of stress and disease andexplain what they mean and show how they may be interpreted.

The chapter on the health index by Richard Steckel, Paul Sciulli, and JeromeRose brings several innovations to the measurement of health using skeletal data.First, attributes of health, such as stature, infections, and degenerative joint disease,are scored by severity on a scale of 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest, indicating no visibleimpairment). Second, the scores of each attribute are pooled by site, converted toage-specific rates, and adjusted by the distribution of person-years lived by age in areference population. Third, the resulting indexes for each attribute are averaged tocreate an overall health index that is comparable across sites. Sites are then ranked,and their placement within the rankings, by the index and its components, becomean object of comparative study.

Robert McCaa’s chapter tackles the difficult and thorny question of estimatinglife tables from skeletal data on deaths by age. Demographers learned long agothat the age distribution of deaths is more sensitive to variations in fertility ratesthan variations in mortality rates. Yet, useful information about life expectancy isrecoverable from the age distribution of deaths if proper allowance is made forpossible fluctuations or differences in fertility rates and for possible biases causedby selective migration, that is, if the age distribution of deaths is studied in context.

The remaining chapters are organized by sections of ethnic and regional group-ings. Each section is introduced by a brief discussion of results on the health indexthat raise questions for readers to consider in perusing individual essays. The healthof Euro-Americans and of African-Americans in North America is considered



Introduction 7

first because many readers are familiar with issues in their health and authors canreadily attach more familiar measures of health to the discussion, all of which helpsnewcomers to this work to calibrate the meaning of skeletal data. The groups understudy are diverse with respect to socioeconomic conditions, ranging at the top fromthe middle and upper class in Belleville, Ontario, to southern plantation slaves. Inbetween lie the free blacks in the urban East and in the frontier West, soldiers, andthose who died in Rochester’s poorhouse. The health rankings that emerge confirmseveral findings based on other approaches and sources, but they also challenge ourmethodology and preconceptions of health in relation to social status.

The remaining chapters, which comprise about one-half of this volume, considerthe health of Native Americans in Central America, South America, and NorthAmerica. The chapters on Central America examine the biological stresses enduredby the declining Maya and the pre-Hispanic populations of central Mexico. Theolder prehistoric populations examined in Ecuador and Brazil lived in ecologicalenvironments that led to better health. The North American groups under studywere extraordinarily diverse, living under hunter-gatherer or agricultural conditionsand in the pre- and postcontact periods. Thus, some of both the healthiest and leasthealthy populations in our database were found among natives in North America.

Considerable scholarly energy has been devoted to formulating models or ex-planations of long-term changes in health. Although a comprehensive explanationhas been beyond anyone’s reach, various factors thought to have been important, atleast in some contexts, have been identified. Subsistence shifts, climate, populationgrowth, technological change, and political evolution have all been suggested as ac-tive ingredients contributing to changes in health. Although it would be interestingto investigate all such hypotheses with the data at our command, our ambitionsare more limited. We have acquired evidence and developed new methodologiesthat help elucidate a series of microstories, which are enhanced by our compar-ative perspective using comparable data and the health index. Despite our largedatabase, we feel that considerably more diverse evidence would be required foradequate evaluation of broad explanations. Eventually, we hope to acquire consid-erably more data and a global perspective for this purpose. Nevertheless, the chapteron “Patterns of Health in the Western Hemisphere” and the “Conclusions” appraisesome hypotheses and draw attention to various patterns in the skeletal evidence.

In the “Epilogue,” prominent physical anthropologists and an historian who arefamiliar with the project comment on our methods and results from the perspectiveof their disciplines. Although these short essays might be considered the first reviewsof the book, our objective is to initiate a dialogue from which all scholars interestedin very long-term health trends may advance this fascinating and important researchagenda.

For decades, bioarchaeologists have intensively studied skeletons in their mi-croenvironments as learned from burial artifacts and various features of burialsites. While this type of work is essential for the objectives of this volume, we antic-ipate this book will also stimulate greater comparative study of skeletal remains intheir historical, economic, ecological, and cultural contexts. In short, we hope ourcollective efforts lead to the flowering of macrobioarchaeology.




references

Cohen, Mark N., and George J. Armelagos, eds. Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture.New York: Academic Press, 1984.

Steckel, Richard H. “Stature and the Standard of Living.” Journal of Economic Literature33 (1995): 1903–1940.

“Strategic Ideas in the Rise of the New Anthropometric History and Their Implicationsfor Interdisciplinary Research.” Journal of Economic History 58 (1998): 803–821.

UNDP. Human Development Report. New York: United Nations Development Programme,1990.

Documents

The Backbone of History Introducción