Crossing the Threshold of Modern Life: Comparing Disease Patterns Between Two Documented Urban Cemetery Series from the City of Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico

Tiesler, Vera; Chi-Keb, Julio Roberto; Ortega-Muñoz, Allan

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-27001-8_13

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…A recent example from Mexico illustrates the potential contribution bioarchaeology can make on this point. Tiesler et al (2020) examined two documented skeletal series from the Yucatán to evaluate changes in health and age-at-death demographics over the 20th century and found that, although the more recent skeletal series had a higher age-at-death, degenerative and metabolic diseases and trauma predominated, reflecting the simultaneous effects of improved healthcare/health interventions (e.g., amputations performed due to the effects of diabetes), globalized food system sedentism and automobile reliance, and violent crime.…”

Section: Bioarchaeology and Social Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Twenty‐first century bioarchaeology: Taking stock and moving forward

Buikstra

DeWitte

Baker

et al. 2022

American Journal of Biological Anthropology

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This article presents outcomes from a Workshop entitled “Bioarchaeology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward,” which was held at Arizona State University (ASU) on March 6–8, 2020. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (ASU), and the Center for Bioarchaeological Research (CBR, ASU), the Workshop's overall goal was to explore reasons why research proposals submitted by bioarchaeologists, both graduate students and established scholars, fared disproportionately poorly within recent NSF Anthropology Program competitions and to offer advice for increasing success. Therefore, this Workshop comprised 43 international scholars and four advanced graduate students with a history of successful grant acquisition, primarily from the United States. Ultimately, we focused on two related aims: (1) best practices for improving research designs and training and (2) evaluating topics of contemporary significance that reverberate through history and beyond as promising trajectories for bioarchaeological research. Among the former were contextual grounding, research question/hypothesis generation, statistical procedures appropriate for small samples and mixed qualitative/quantitative data, the salience of Bayesian methods, and training program content. Topical foci included ethics, social inequality, identity (including intersectionality), climate change, migration, violence, epidemic disease, adaptability/plasticity, the osteological paradox, and the developmental origins of health and disease. Given the profound changes required globally to address decolonization in the 21st century, this concern also entered many formal and informal discussions.

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Section: Bioarchaeology and Social Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Twenty‐first century bioarchaeology: Taking stock and moving forward

Buikstra

DeWitte

Baker

et al. 2022

American Journal of Biological Anthropology

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“…Studies of living populations in Latin America have found that enamel defect formation was associated with malnutrition (Chaves et al, 2007;Sweeney et al, 1971) and that nutritional supplementation may reduce the risk of LEH (Goodman et al, 1991;May et al, 1993). More recent studies of LEH and porotic cranial lesions in the Yucatán also consider the effects of globalization, including nutrition transitions, on dietary quality and nutritional status (Gurri, 2020;Tiesler et al, 2020). Childhood diets in Mexico and Central America have for decades been increasingly characterized by inexpensive, highly processed foods of low nutritional quality (Bogin et al, 2014;Leatherman & Goodman, 2005).…”

Section: Contextualizing Lesion Prevalence In Mexican and Central American Migrantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Skeletal evidence of structural violence among undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America

Beatrice

Soler

Reineke

et al. 2021

American J Phys Anthropol

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Objectives: We examine the prevalence and sociodemographic risk factors of skeletal indicators of stress in forensic samples of undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America.Materials and methods: Cranial and dental remains of 319 migrants recovered in the Arizona and Texas borderlands were assessed for porotic hyperostosis (PH), cribra orbitalia (CO), and linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH). Logistic regression models for each condition were estimated to test for associations with biological sex, age, recovery location, and whether individuals were identified. Additional models estimated for a subsample of identified migrants included region of origin, residential context, and community indigeneity. Results:The full sample shows moderate crude prevalence of CO (9.6%) and LEH (34.1%), and a high prevalence of PH (49.6%). Significantly higher odds of PH are associated with being male (2.16 times higher), unidentified (1.89 times higher), and recovered in Arizona (3.76 times higher). Among identified migrants, we fail to find associations significant at the p < 0.05 level between skeletal stress and all sociodemographic variables except age.Discussion: The factors associated with PH may be related to influences on decisions to migrate and diversity among migrant sending regions. The skeletal evidence for early life stress is generally consistent with common public health concerns among impoverished communities in the region. The lesions themselves are viewed as embodied risk of physiological disturbance when resource access is structured by higher-level social, economic, and political forces. Forensic anthropologists would benefit from increased sensitivity to embodied structural violence among the vulnerable individuals and communities they serve.

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“…In the past 20 years, the analyses of skeletal materials have diversified, set forth by multidisciplinary or actor-based agendas, which benefit the integration of populational and cultural datasets. Despite their limitations-specifically the uncertainty that surrounds the identification of rural settlements and inferring residence from an individual's burial location-such research schemes have evolved to enable direct measurements of health burdens among hinterland populations towards an ever-more integrated understanding of regional dynamics and scaled settlement interactions (Cucina and Tiesler 2003;Novotny 2012Novotny , 2015Reed 1999;Scherer 2015;Somerville et al 2013;Tiesler 1997;Tiesler et al 2020;Whittington 1988Whittington , 1999Whittington and Reed 1997;Wright 2006;Wrobel 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health Among Classic-Period Urban and Rural Maya: A Regional Perspective

Tiesler

Pérez

2022

Ancient Mesoam

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Health benefits among the members of state-level societies may vary depending on sex, social privilege, and whether the individual resides in an urban or rural setting. Human skeletal remains are prone to express individual life experiences and, ultimately, well-being. This research elaborates on these correlates by contextualizing the physiological stresses among Classic Maya hinterland populations in comparison to their urban peers. Comparisons are made using the frequencies and expression of enamel hypoplasia, caries, porotic hyperostosis, infectious osteomyelitis/subperiosteal reaction and osteoporosis in 842 adult skeletons of both sexes from 63 peripheral and centric, inland, lowland settlements. The results suggest problematic inland weaning diets and higher infectious load among rural populations. While comparisons between urban and rural lifeways show inconsistent load differences, our results indicate repeated distinctions between the sexes. We cautiously interpret this pattern as an indication of a physically demanding regime of rural life compared to a more sedentary routine among urban peers and gendered lifestyles in general. We conclude that apart from these distinctions (and potential sample biases), the health costs versus benefits impacted rural lifestyles in a complex and non-uniform fashion during the first millennium a.d., rejecting clear-cut hierarchical conceptualizations while inviting more nuanced causal explorations.

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Crossing the Threshold of Modern Life: Comparing Disease Patterns Between Two Documented Urban Cemetery Series from the City of Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

Twenty‐first century bioarchaeology: Taking stock and moving forward

Twenty‐first century bioarchaeology: Taking stock and moving forward

Skeletal evidence of structural violence among undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America

Health Among Classic-Period Urban and Rural Maya: A Regional Perspective

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