Daily risks: A biocultural approach to acute trauma in pre‐colonial coastal populations from Brazil

Abstract

Brazilian coastal pre-colonial skeletal series were examined for accidental fractures, which were grouped according to biomechanical interpretation of the causative events, and results were interpreted based on cultural and environmental aspects. More than 19% of the shell mound builders and 27% of the fisher-huntergatherers presented healed fractures. Both series presented balanced values between male and female (18.7 and 20%, respectively, for shell mound builders; 28.1 and 25.6%, respectively, for fisher-hunter-gatherers), and more than the double that proportion of the individuals (69.6% for shell mound builder and 88.5% for fisher-hunter-gatherers) had localised lesions, associated with only one traumatic event. The most common type of fractures were those caused by falls blocked by lower limbs (47.8% for shell mound builders and 46.1% for fisher-hunter-gatherers), interpreted as a result of moving along the rocky coastal cliffs. Despite these similarities, both series presented particular aspects which were related mainly to differences in subsistence strategies.

Artigos

“…os marcadores eleitos foram a osteoartrose ou comprometimento articular (CA) (figuras 1 e 2) (rodrigues Carvalho, 2004), as espondilólises (figura 3) e nódulos de schmorl (figura 4) (Lessa; Coelho 2010), os traumas acidentais (figura 5 e 6) (Lessa, 2011) e as exostoses auriculares (todas as séries analisadas pelas autoras para o presente trabalho, e okumura; Boyadjian; Eggers., 2007 para as séries Beirada e Zé Espinho). localização da fratura; amplitude da lesão, se parcial ou completa; ocorrência unilateral ou bilateral; registro do elemento vertebral acometido; sinais de neoformação óssea.…”

Remains of the Dead: Exploring a Human Anatomical Collection from Brazilian Amazon

“…This paper will be the first in describing cases such as these from the Brazilian Amazon region. In the last decades, there have been an increasing number of past populations studies in Brazil, many of which accentuating violence and traumatic injuries (Lessa & Mendonça de Souza, ; Rodrigues‐Carvalho et al ., ; Lessa, , amongst others). In 2010, Sheila Mendonça de Souza addressed in her article, O Silêncio Bioarqueológico da Amazônia (The Bioarchaeological Silence of Amazonia), the overall lack of data on human remains from the Brazilian Amazon.…”

Below the Callus Surface: Applying Paleohistological Techniques to Understand the Biology of Bone Healing in Skeletonized Human Remains

“…As nowadays, injury has also played a significant role in past human societies, a role that can be accessed through a careful analysis of the skeletal remains [2]. Bone injury, resulting from interpersonal violence or associated with the hazards of daily life, is frequently reported in the paleopathological literature as a useful tool to decipher past behaviors and health conditions [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14]. The prevalence and distribution of fractures constitute the marker most commonly investigated [15,16,17,18,19,20].…”