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Contemporary literature pertaining to “race” reveals that it is an arbitrary socio-political construct. Contemporary population surveillance continues to use racial and ethnic variables when describing population parameters in the United States. Through an analysis tracing the historical process of shifting racial/ethnic categories and identities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century United States, this dissertation investigates why vital statistics researchers continue to use these variables when describing patterns of health and disease. I define, trace, and investigate race as socio-historical process and hypothesize that it is invalid to assume that a racial classificatory standard exists. As a socio-historical process, racial categorizations and identifications vary over time and evidence of misclassification bias contribute to their invalidity. However, I do not assume that low misclassification bias equates validity. This assumption is potentially flawed and may lead to misguided research attempting to improve validity through reliability. Rather, low misclassification bias in reality masks the unstable and shifting nature of racial and ethnic categories and identifications. The data used in this investigation is representative of individuals dying from tubercular infections in Manhattan Borough between 1890–1930. Similar to the present, the four-decade period, 1890–1930 was a time of rapid population growth of New York City and a period of international/national ethnic migration. International immigrant populations consisted of those individuals originating from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and the Caribbean; National migrants included African Americans and other marginalized “Native born” groups. All these populations shared a common experience of material hardship, resulting in their being at a higher risk for a number of communicable infectious and contagious diseases. However, the conflation of assigned race with socio-economic status adds a further dimension to be explored. The study demonstrates that the United States possesses a racial culture where individuals both racially self-identify and impose racial identifications on others. Health and vital statisticians actively assist in the perpetuation and re-invention of racial culture when they collect, report and interpret data using racial variables. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The Baltic region was a vibrant center of power and economic prosperity in medieval Europe; Lithuania in particular. Until now, little stable isotopic analysis has been utilized to assess diet in this region during this time period. The aim of this study was to undertake a preliminary assessment of the composition of diet at late medieval Alytus (late 14th to early 18th centuries) from bone (N=35) and dentin (N=38) collagen samples. The stable carbon isotopic data suggest a diet primarily comprised of C3 plants such as barley, rye, wheat, and flax, and animals consuming C3 plants. The stable nitrogen isotopic data indicate the use of aquatic resources, and reflects the protein portion of the diet as including mainly terrestrial non-legumes. There are no significant differences in the pattern of resource consumption between juvenile males and females. There is a significant difference between adult males and adult females; the more depleted bone collagen ?15N values indicates that adult females were consuming less protein resources, or protein resources of a lower trophic level, compared to their male counterparts. This difference could also be affected by physiological factors such as pregnancy or disease. A difference between juvenile and adult stable nitrogen isotope values might indicate latter weaning of juvenile males, the incorporation of more terrestrial or aquatic protein into juvenile male diet, the incorporation of less terrestrial or aquatic protein into adult female diet, or a combination of the three.

In paleopathology, few other diseases have received more attention than leprosy and studies of skeletal remains from medieval Denmark have primarily focused on urban and leprosarium cemeteries in order to construct diagnostic criteria and disease frequencies of past communities. This project presents data from the rural monastic site of Øm Kloster in the Central Jutland region of Denmark in order to establish disease frequencies between demographic subgroups and general disease prevalence in a regionally representative site. With a sample of 311 adult individuals, cranial and postcranial diagnostic criteria were utilized in order to determine the presence or absence of leprosy on individual skeletons. Each individual was analyzed and categorized by sex, age group, and social status based on burial location and this data was used to yield results on the demographic makeup of the sample and disease frequencies. Lastly, chi-square tests of independence were conducted to determine if there were statistically significant relationships between sex, age, social status, and leprosy. The results indicated that there were no statically strong relationships between these variables; however, it was evident that disease prevalence did increase with age and that there were significantly more males and lay people with leprotic lesions than females and high status individuals. The results suggested that each individual had most likely carried the bacterium, but that there were no significant numbers of individuals affected at any one time. Lastly, the results from the Øm Kloster analysis were compared to those of the rural village cemetery at Tirup and were found to be compatible. Ultimately, this study reflects that disease may have been much more prevalent than was osteologically visible and that this rural community illustrated comparable data with other regional sites. This study shows that lesion frequencies do present evidence to determine general disease prevalence in past populations and to gain data on the overall health of a regionally representative, non-leprosarium cemetery site.

Understanding why animals make the foraging choices they do has been an interdisciplinary research goal for decades. This question is especially salient in biological anthropology, as we seek to understand how the human diet evolved by looking to non-human primate models. Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT), and more recently the Geometric Framework for Nutrition (GF) and Movement Ecology paradigms provide models and heuristics that aid in our understanding of what drives the foraging decisions of animals. Yet until recently, most research examining the foraging decisions of frugivorous herbivores has focused on the OFT based strategy of maximizing and obtaining fruit foods. My research examines alternative nutrient priorities in a frugivorous primate, the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii), to determine whether fruit-seeking and energy maximization form a sufficient explanation of foraging behavior. Using behavioral and geospatial data from full-day focal animal follows collected in 2015-2016 in Gunung Palung National Park, I first demonstrate that orangutans leave available fruit resources to eat non-fruit foods, suggesting that orangutans are intentionally seeking out non-fruit foods, and clearing the way for a foraging model beyond strict energy maximization via fruit seeking. Further, I find that orangutans do consume non-fruit food when fruit is in visual proximity. I next test whether the Marginal Value Theorem (MVT) of OFT can account for these fruit patch departures by testing one critical assumption of MVT – that feeding rates in a patch decrease over time. Feeding rates did not decrease over patch residence, thus MVT does not explain orangutan fruit patch departures. Instead, I find that orangutans maintain an average 10:1 ratio of non-protein energy to protein, and prioritize protein intake. These findings could explain fruit departure. Geospatial data suggest that fruit is not the only goal of orangutan foraging and that these apes navigate to other food types, in particular, leaves. Taken together, these findings suggest that GF provides a good explanation of orangutan foraging in tandem with OFT energy maximization. I discuss the similarities in nutrient goals between orangutans, modern humans, and extinct hominins, and the conservation implications of my research. / 2021-06-19T00:00:00Z

In social primates, the acquisition and maintenance of social dominance may augment reproductive success while incurring immunological costs. This trade-off is hypothetically facilitated by hormones that modulate both status-enhancing behavior and immune function. In the three studies comprising this dissertation, I investigated hormonal mechanisms by which social dominance may reflect immune health, testing relationships between behavioral correlates of dominance rank, steroid hormone secretion, and immune activity in wild adult male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii). Between January 2016 and July 2017, I collected behavioral observations and urine samples from adult males at Ngogo in Kibale National Park, Uganda, home to the largest community of habituated wild chimpanzees yet described. In the first study, I assessed behavioral and anatomical mechanisms that may link dominance rank to the secretion of testosterone, the primary male sex hormone. Testosterone was positively correlated with dominance rank and creatinine, a product of muscle catabolism and noninvasive proxy for lean muscle mass. Contrary to expectations, testosterone was negatively correlated with overall rates of aggression, indicating that aggressiveness does not itself account for positive linear correlations between dominance and testosterone in this species. In the second study, I analyzed reproductively salient correlates of cortisol, a glucocorticoid hormone secreted in response to psychosocial and metabolic demands. Urinary measures of reproductive effort and immune challenge were positively correlated with cortisol, indicating adaptive energy allocation. Furthermore, dominance rank was positively correlated with urinary cortisol when c-peptide of insulin, as a measure of energy intake, was low. This indicates that high ranking males deprioritize energy intake in certain social contexts, including competition for sexually receptive mates. In the third study, I found that although urinary testosterone seemingly diminished immune function, high ranking males were less likely to die from severe acute immune challenge than low ranking conspecifics. My results provide evidence that mating effort increases immune challenge both by increasing testosterone secretion and reallocating energy away from immune function. However, despite the increased mating effort exhibited by high ranking males, social dominance does not incur notable immunological costs. On the contrary, social dominance likely reflects immunocompetence and male quality in nonhuman primates. / 2021-12-06T00:00:00Z

Sex estimation of unknown individuals is one of the primary goals of biological anthropologists. The adult skull is often used in sex estimation, due to its marked traits of sexual dimorphism. However, estimating skeletal sex from juvenile remains is controversial due to the uncertainty surrounding the presence of sexual dimorphism prior to sexual maturity. The aim of this study was to apply geometric morphometric shape analysis to non-adult skulls to explore patterns of sexual dimorphism during ontogeny and to identify the most dimorphic region(s) of the skull. Computed tomographic (CT) scans were acquired from the New Mexico Decedent Image Database comprising 101 male and 99 female skulls ranging in age between birth and 21 years. Three-dimensional coordinates (42 landmarks and 290 curve semilandmarks) were placed on surface models generated from the CT scan and four landmark configurations were evaluated: the anterior cranium, mandible, supraorbital margin and glabella, and mastoids. Generalized Procrustes superimposition, principal component analysis, and discriminant function analysis were applied to all four configurations independently. In line with previous studies, results demonstrated a low degree of sexual dimorphism and poor cross-validated classification accuracy in individuals less than 13 years of age, with the highest accuracy in the mandible and the anterior cranium. The shape similarities found between the sexes prior to 13 years of age prevent consideration of the craniofacial bones as a sex indicator in the early stages of development but support its use in adolescent individuals, especially when using multiple regions of the face.

Evidence of dental manipulation dates back several centuries and is identifiable through modification of human skeletal remains and the remnants of ancient tools. The act of caring for dental patients, on the other hand, is much more abstract and not as explicitly documented throughout history. Through the analysis of skeletal dentition of individuals from Pre-Hispanic Peru, this research aims to understand possible early forms of dental care practices. Specifically, by calculating the frequency of common dental pathology, I evaluated the possible presence of dental care in Túcume, Peru, during the Late Intermediate Period (1000 to 1500 AD) and what this could mean for those who once lived there. For this investigation, I used observations of the presence of antemortem tooth loss and caries to score the dentition of 57 skeletonized adult individuals. Descriptive and analytical statistics were performed based on the scores to determine the frequency of pathology and the patterns associated with age, sex, and burial context variables. Research on dental paleopathology has been done before; however, it is rarely interpreted using the bioarchaeology of care model. This research could elicit conversation and further investigation into how past civilizations may have cared for individuals in the form of tooth ablation. Additionally, it could demonstrate how current dental care has changed over time and how care is still an important aspect of humanity.