Ancient Health: Skeletal Indicators of Agricultural and Economic Intensification

by Mark N. Cohen (Editor), Gillian M. M. Crane-Kramer (Editor)

Overview

"Pulls together a global sampling of excellent research on a topic of great interest to scholars of prehistory that otherwise would be difficult to assemble or in some cases to even access."—Patricia M. Lambert, Utah State University

Twenty years ago Mark Nathan Cohen coedited a collection of essays that set a new standard in using paleopathology to identify trends in health associated with changes in prehistoric technology, economy, demography, and political centralization. Ancient Health expands and celebrates that work.

Confirming earlier conclusions that human health declined after the adoption of farming and the rise of civilization, this book greatly enlarges the geographical range of paleopathological studies by including new work from both established and up-and-coming scholars. Moving beyond the western hemisphere and western Eurasia, this collection involves studies from Chile, Peru, Mexico, the United States, Denmark, Britain, Portugal, South Africa, Israel, India, Vietnam, Thailand, China, and Mongolia.

Adding great significance to this volume, the author discusses and successfully rebuts the arguments of the "osteological paradox" that long have challenged work in the area of quantitative paleopathology, demonstrating that the "paradox" has far less meaning than its proponents argue.

Mark Nathan Cohen is University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh. Gillian M. M. Crane-Kramer is visiting assistant professor of anthropology at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813044033
Publisher:	University Press of Florida
Publication date:	04/15/2012
Series:	Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Mark Nathan Cohen is University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh. Gillian M. M. Crane-Kramer is visiting assistant professor of anthropology at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh.

Table of Contents

List of Figures     ix
List of Tables     xiii
Foreword     xix
Preface     xxi
List of Abbreviations     xxiii
Introduction   Mark Nathan Cohen     1
Maize and Mississippians in the American Midwest: Twenty Years Later   Della Collins Cook     10
Health and Lifestyle in Georgia and Florida: Agricultural Origins and Intensification in Regional Perspective   Clark Spencer Larsen   Dale L. Hutchinson   Christopher M. Stojanowski   Matthew A. Williamson   Mark C. Griffin   Scott W. Simpson   Christopher B. Ruff   Margaret J. Schoeninger   Lynette Norr   Mark F. Teaford   Elizabeth Monahan Driscoll   Christopher W. Schmidt   Tiffiny A. Tung     20
A Brief Continental View from Windover   Glen H. Doran     35
Outer Coast Foragers and Inner Coast Farmers in Late Prehistoric North Carolina   Dale L. Hutchinson   Lynette Norr   Mark F. Teaford     52
Health and the Transition to Horticulture in the South-Central United States   Marie Elaine Danforth   Keith P. Jacobi   Gabriel D. Wrobel   Sara Glassman     65
From Early Village to Regional Center inMesoamerica: An Investigation of Lifestyles and Health   Lourdes Marquez Morfin   Rebecca Storey     80
Skeletal Biology of the Central Peruvian Coast: Consequences of Changing Population Density and Progressive Dependence on Maize Agriculture   Ekaterina A. Pechenkina   Joseph A. Vradenburg   Robert A. Benfer Jr.   Julie F. Farnum     92
The Adoption of Agriculture among Northern Chile Populations in the Azapa Valley, 9000-1000 BP   Marta P. Alfonso   Vivien G. Standen   M. Victoria Castro     113
Population Plasticity in Southern Scandinavia: From Oysters and Fish to Gruel and Meat   Pia Bennike   Verner Alexandersen     130
The Impact of Economic Intensification and Social Complexity on Human Health in Britain from 6000 BP (Neolithic) and the Introduction of Farming to the Mid-Nineteenth Century AD   Charlotte Roberts   Margaret Cox     149
What Can Pathology Say about the Mesolithic and Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic Communities? The Portuguese Case   Eugenia Cunha   Claudia Umbelino   Ana Maria Silva   Francisca Cardoso     164
The Political Ecology of Health in Bahrain   Judith Littleton     176
Skeletal and Dental Health and Subsistence Change in the United Arab Emirates   Soren Blau      190
Ancestors and Inheritors: A Bioanthropological Perspective on the Transition to Agropastoralism in the Southern Levant   Patricia Smith   Liora Kolska Horwitz     207
The Health of Foragers: People of the Later Stone Age, Southern Africa   Susan Pfeiffer     223
Climate, Subsistence, and Health in Prehistoric India: The Biological Impact of a Short-Term Subsistence Shift   John R. Lukacs     237
Iron-Deficiency Anemia in Early Mongolian Nomads   Naran Bazarsad     250
Diet and Health in the Neolithic of the Wei and Middle Yellow River Basins, Northern China   Ekaterina A. Pechenkina   Robert A. Benfer Jr.   Xiaolin Ma     255
Prehistoric Dietary Transitions in Tropical Southeast Asia: Stable Isotope and Dental Caries Evidence from Two Sites in Malaysia   John Krigbaum     273
Population Health from the Bronze to the Iron Age in the Mun River Valley, Northeastern Thailand   Kate Domett   Nancy Tayles     286
Biological Consequences of Sedentism: Agricultural Intensification in Northeastern Thailand   Michele Toomay Douglas   Michael Pietrusewsky     300
Editors' Summation   Mark Nathan Cohen   Gillian M. M. Crane-Kramer     320
Appendix     345
References     349
List of Contributors     411
Index     417