The medieval period of Denmark (11th-16th centuries) witnessed two of the worst demographic, health, and dietary catastrophes in history: the Late Medieval Agrarian Crisis (LMAC) and the Black Death plague epidemic. Historians have argued that these events resulted in a change in subsistence from a cereal grain to a more pastorallyfocused diet, and that the population decimation resulted in improved living conditions. This dissertation bioarchaeologically examines the impact of these historically described events on the diet and health of the population from Jutland, Denmark. I examine the stable isotopic ratios of carbon and nitrogen, dental caries, cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, periosteal reactions, and femur length to examine the samples for dietary and health differences due to sex, time period, site and social status. The results suggest that there are few chronological differences in diet or health in these samples. There are greater disparities among the sites, as peasants from the rural site had a more terrestrially-based diet and poorer health than the urban sites. While there is little difference in diet by sex, there is a disparity in health between the sexes. However, the direction of difference varies by site, suggesting that the relative treatment of the sexes was not universal in Denmark. While the results indicate there is little difference in health by status, there are dietary differences, as elites had a more marinebased diet than peasants. This research indicates the importance of bioarchaeological analysis in the interpretation of historical events. The recording of history is dependent on the viewpoint of the recorder and may not accurately reflect the importance of events on the the population itself. Bioarchaeological techniques examine skeletal material from the individuals in question and may provide a better understanding of the consequences of historic events on the population, such as the effects of the LMAC and Black Death on the population of Denmark. This research reveals that, contrary to historical expectation, these events did not have a measurable impact on Danish diet or health. Thus, the use of historical documentation and bioarchaeological analyses provides a richer understanding of these historical events.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 220-247). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 220-247). Also available on the Internet.

Health in archaeological populations needs to be investigated using a holistic approach. Molecular techniques, particularly multiplex PCR, can be used with paleopathology and dietary analysis to understand aspects of population health. This thesis demonstrates how spina bifida, a multi-factorial disease, can be investigated using this paleoepidemiological approach. Based on skeletal evidence, spina bifida was present in a pre-Columbian Cuban population from the archaeological site of Canimar Abajo. Molecular techniques were employed to examine disease potential, examining individuals for five single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with spina bifida. It is postulated that the combined effect of these polymorphisms, as well as dietary factors, determines the risk of the population for spina bifida, and that these factors came together to create the observed high disease prevalence. Therefore, this thesis demonstrates how the methods of molecular paleopathology, corroborated by dietary analyses, can be used within a paleoepidemiological framework to understand population health and disease.

Health in archaeological populations needs to be investigated using a holistic approach. Molecular techniques, particularly multiplex PCR, can be used with paleopathology and dietary analysis to understand aspects of population health. This thesis demonstrates how spina bifida, a multi-factorial disease, can be investigated using this paleoepidemiological approach. Based on skeletal evidence, spina bifida was present in a pre-Columbian Cuban population from the archaeological site of Canimar Abajo. Molecular techniques were employed to examine disease potential, examining individuals for five single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with spina bifida. It is postulated that the combined effect of these polymorphisms, as well as dietary factors, determines the risk of the population for spina bifida, and that these factors came together to create the observed high disease prevalence. Therefore, this thesis demonstrates how the methods of molecular paleopathology, corroborated by dietary analyses, can be used within a paleoepidemiological framework to understand population health and disease.

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2007.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Univ., 2004. / Härtill 7 uppsatser.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Transverse radiopaque lines, often referred to as transverse lines (TL's), are a type of hard-tissue pathology which develop in subadult long bones after episodes of nonspecific stress such as nutritional or metabolic insult. This pathology is well documented in archaeological contexts and is used as a tool for making paleo demographical inferences about the general health of populations. Stable isotope studies have suggested that early modern humans were exploiting a wide range of dietary resources by the mid-Upper Paleolithic, while Neandertals appear to have utilized a narrower spectrum of resources, expending more energy on large game. This may have been a significant factor in differential survival success, frequency of transverse line formation, and age of initial transverse line formation. Because archaic humans may have been more susceptible to seasonal resource fluctuations, they may have suffered increased nutritional and metabolic stress compared to early modern humans. This study evaluates differences in the frequency and timing of initial transverse line formation among archaic, early modern human, and recent human (Holocene) subadult populations. Radiographs of the tibial distal shafts of 200 archaic, early modern humans, and recent modern humans were scored as displaying or not displaying TL's. TL's were counted, and age-at-formation was calculated. Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric tests were used to compare the frequency of occurrence of TL's and age-at-formation among the three groups. Results indicate that both archaic and early modern humans exhibited less transverse lines than the recent human group. This may be related to sampling bias in the recent human dataset. There is no difference in the number of transverse lines among the recent human samples, and it seems possible that all three of the recent human populations sampled for this study were experiencing high levels of stress. Thus, it seems that for the archaic and early modern human groups, transverse line formation may have been more closely related to differences in subsistence strategies, while transverse line formation in the recent human group may have been more closely related to high frequencies of metabolic diseases and poor diet. Further analysis revealed that archaic humans developed their first transverse lines earlier in life than both early modern and recent modern humans. The age at first line formation is frequently related to weaning age in studies of archaeological population, and this (and other possible explanations) are evaluated relative to Late Pleistocene Neanderthals and early modern humans.

This work identifies and describes pathological skeletal changes associated with and attributable to acquired syphilis and which potentially caused functional impairment within eleven skeletal individuals recovered from five industrial-era London cemeteries. In eight (72.73%), functional impairment was likely or very likely, based on type and distribution of lesions across their skeleton. These impairments likely impacted the individuals’ ability to engage in various forms of physical activity, potentially limiting their economic potential. These results expand our still highly limited understanding of syphilis’s functional impacts within past populations, especially within industrial-era societies, querying longstanding characterizations of tertiary gummatous involvement as benign, while encouraging paleopathological investigations of the functional impacts of syphilis in past populations in which the disease was endemic, such as industrial-era England. Further, with syphilis rates on the rise globally, this information may be informative prognostically for present-day clinical cases of primary to tertiary stage undiagnosed and/or untreated syphilis.