Differential visibility of treponemal disease in pre‐Columbian stratified societies: Does rank matter?

Abstract

Treponemal disease is known to be associated with the compromised community health of permanent village settlement. This association explains its high visibility in the village-based, arguably chiefdom level, agriculturalist societies of late prehistoric (AD 1300-1600) North America. Within chiefdom-level societies, health differences have often been demonstrated between mortuary-defined "elite" and "nonelite" individuals. This theoretically should predict status-based differences in treponemal disease visibility. The prediction is tested in a five-site osteological sample (N = 650) from the Dallas phase (AD 1300-1550), a simple mortuary-defined two-tiered presumptive chiefdom level maize agriculturalist socioeconomic context from lower east Tennessee. The Dallas phase results affirm a general pre-Colombian North American pattern of no sex differences and display comparable adult to subadult frequencies. The study also reveals that given a sufficient sample size, "elites" do indeed exhibit a significantly lower frequency of tertiary stage treponemal disease. This can be attributed to better baseline health, which has been previously demonstrated in this sample. It may also be affected by the mortuary inclusion of achieved status individuals whose good health may have facilitated sociopolitical advancement. Another pattern that emerged is an apparent young adult age bias in disease visibility. This suggests that tertiary treponemal disease morbidity may either directly or synergistically factor in early adult age at death. Future research will address the veracity of this association.

Possible cases of leprosy from the Late Copper Age (3780-3650 cal BC) in Hungary

“…Alterations in the skull (mainly in the cranial vault) are frequent and are produced by a combination of destruction and healing accompanied by osteosclerosis ( caries sicca ). Remodeling of the nasal aperture (including loss of the nasal spine) can occur [35,62,63]. The Abony individuals demonstrate no evidence of these treponemal diagnostic criteria such as: saber tibiae , gummatous lesions and a striated nodule on the tibial shaft, newly built spongiosa in the tibia, widespread periostitis in the axial and appendicular skeleton, irregular, thick long bones, cavitating lesions on the cranium or caries sicca in the cranial vault.…”

Subsistence and Settlement Correlates of Treponemal Disease: Temporal Patterns in Pre-Columbian East Tennessee

“…Figure (a) and (b)) diagnostic reliability and a maximum of 47 (6.5%) arguable cases (Levels I–III) (Table ). Of the 110 individuals interred in a flat‐topped mound, two (1.8%) displayed pathological changes, one pathognomonic and the other at the Level III diagnostic level (Smith et al ., ). In the collective village‐interred sample of 608 individuals, 37 were at diagnostic Levels I or II, with an additional eight individuals displaying healed nodes (Figure (c)).…”

“…However, recent re‐evaluation of some Dallas phase sites suggests that some sort of heterarchical (perhaps role‐based) rather than a hierarchical organisation is displayed (Sullivan, , ). The social organisation of Dallas culture is relevant to treponemal disease visibility because a statistically significant difference between the village interred and the mound interred has been observed (Smith et al ., ). The interment‐based difference may reflect a socially segregated elite who benefited from differential access to food or opportunities for convalescence (e.g.…”

“…yaws and treponarid) treponemal disease. For the pre‐Columbian southeastern United States in particular, several published examinations of treponemal disease suggest that it has the potential for lifeways‐informing bioarchaeological enquiry (Hutchinson, ; Hutchinson et al ., ; Hutchinson & Richman, ; Powell et al ., 2005; Smith, ; Smith et al ., ; Williamson, ; Wilson, ).…”

Paleopathology

“…A very large portion of the literature on paleopathology is for this reason devoted to just two groups of infectious diseases: the treponematoses and the mycobacterioses (Aufderheide and Rodrigues Martin, 1998;Ortner, 2011;Grauer, 2012). Among many recent discoveries are a few convincing cases of treponematosis from the Old World (Ortner, 2011), as well as evidence for social discrimination against people with severe lesions in the New (Smith et al, 2011). The first was a skin disease of the American tropics.…”