Reconciling “stress” and “health” in physical anthropology: What can bioarchaeologists learn from the other subdisciplines?

Abstract

The concepts of "stress" and "health" are foundational in physical anthropology as guidelines for interpreting human behavior and biocultural adaptation in the past and present. Though related, stress and health are not coterminous, and while the term "health" encompasses some aspects of "stress," health refers to a more holistic condition beyond just physiological disruption, and is of considerable significance in contributing to anthropologists' understanding of humanity's lived experiences. Bioarchaeological interpretations of human health generally are made from datasets consisting of skeletal markers of stress, markers that result from (chronic) physiological disruption (e.g., porotic hyperostosis; linear enamel hypoplasia). Non-specific indicators of stress may measure episodes of stress and indicate that infection, disease, or nutritional deficiencies were present in a population, but in assessing these markers, bioarchaeologists are not measuring "health" in the same way as are human biologists, medical anthropologists, or primatologists. Rather than continue to diverge on separate (albeit parallel) trajectories, bioarchaeologists are advised to pursue interlinkages with other subfields within physical anthropology toward bridging "stress" and "health." The papers in this special symposium set include bioarchaeologists, human biologists, molecular anthropologists, and primatologists whose research develops this link between the concepts of "stress" and "health," encouraging new avenues for bioarchaeologists to consider and reconsider health in past human populations.

Childhood “stress” and stable isotope life histories in Transylvania

“…When an individual is experiencing physiological stress (metabolic disorders, malnutrition, starvation, and fasting), the body consumes stored protein (negative nitrogen balance), which presents as a trophic level increase (Hatch et al, 2006;Little et al, 2007;Mekota et al, 2006). The body begins to break down stored biomolecules for energy, causing the remaining tissues to be enriched in 15 N, (2015) and King et al (2018) resulting in increased δ 15 N values (D'Ortenzio et al, 2015;Fuller et al, 2005;Reitsema & McIlvaine, 2014).…”

The Osteological Paradox 20 Years Later: Past Perspectives, Future Directions

“…Given that so few of these domains can be observed in skeletal samples, perhaps the only unambiguous assessment of health that we can make for skeletons is that they are all, at the time of observation, in very poor health, as death is the ultimate state of poor health. A recent special issue of American Journal of Physical Anthropology includes several articles that grapple with the problems of defining health in the past (e.g., Reitsema and McIlvaine 2014;Temple and Goodman 2014;Wilson 2014), highlighting the persistence of these issues and potential avenues for incorporating findings and perspectives from other fields (e.g., DeWitte 2014; Kinnally 2014;Piperata et al 2014;Tanner and Team 2014;Vercellotti et al 2014). The fundamental fact that we use samples of the dead to reconstruct characteristics of once-living people is both obvious and perplexing and anchors what is known as the Osteological Paradox.…”

In sickness and in death: Assessing frailty in human skeletal remains

“…Among humans, stress and physiological health are intrinsically linked (Goodman & Leatherman, ; Reitsema & McIlvaine, ; Temple & Goodman, ). Exposures to chronic and acute stressors lead to predictable and measurable hormonal and physiological responses that evolved to protect organisms from immediate damage (McEwen, ; Sterling & Eyer, ).…”