High altitude agriculture in the Titicaca basin (800 BCE-200 CE): Impacts on nutrition and disease load.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigates the biological impacts of sedentism and agriculture on humans living in the high altitude landscape of the Titicaca Basin between 800 BCE and CE 200. The transition to agriculture in other global areas resulted in increases in disease and malnutrition; the high altitude of the Titicaca Basin could have exacerbated this. Our objective is to test whether the high altitude of the Titicaca Basin created a marginal environment for early agriculturalists living there, reflected through elevated rates of malnutrition and/or disease. METHODS: To test this, we analyzed human remains excavated from seven archaeological sites on the Copacabana Peninsula for markers of diet and disease. These markers included dental caries, dental abscesses, cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, periosteal reactions, osteomyelitis, and linear enamel hypoplasia. RESULTS: Results showed that markers of diet did not support malnutrition or micronutrient deficiencies but instead, indicated a relatively diverse diet for all individuals. Markers of disease also did not vary significantly but were common, indicating circulation of pathogens or chronic bodily stress. CONCLUSIONS: We interpret these results as an indication that while diets remained nutritious, investment in the landscape exposed populations to issues of sanitation and disease. The high-altitude of the Titicaca Basin did not exacerbate the biological impacts of agriculture in terms of increased malnutrition. Additionally, disease load was likely related to problems faced by many sedentary groups as opposed to unique challenges posed by high altitude. In sum, despite the high elevation, the Titicaca Basin is not truly a marginal environment for humans.

Regional, social, and evolutionary perspectives on treponemal infection in the Southeastern United States.

The origin and geographic distribution of syphilis, a form of treponemal infection, have long been regarded as among the most important medical riddles of prehistoric and historic disease evolution. In this study, we expand on previous discussions of the origin, evolution, and relationship of treponemal infections as they occur in the prehistoric southeastern United States. Individuals from 25 skeletal series (n = 2,410 individuals) were examined for cranial and dental lesions characteristic of treponemal infection. They lived between the Archaic period (8000-1000 BC) and protohistoric period (AD 1500-1600), and in physiographic zones from the coast to the mountains of Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Radial cranial scars were found for 47 individuals, but none of the four cases of dental lesions could be attributed to congenital syphilis. Differences in frequency of cranial lesions by region were minimal, with the least number of cases found for the mountains, but the frequency of positive cases tended to increase through time. It is suggested that increasing population density and changing behaviors, rather than novel strains of the treponemal pathogen, are responsible for the chronological increase in the frequency of positive cases.

Nutrition and health at contact in late prehistoric central Gulf Coast Florida.

This paper presents an analysis of human remains from Tatham Mound, a dual-component mortuary site from central Gulf Coast Florida. The human remains from Tatham are significant because they come from a limited time period during the initial contact with Europeans at AD 1525-1550. Dietary reconstruction demonstrates that at the time of European contact, maize was not a predominant dietary item. Low frequencies for several dental and skeletal pathological indicators are consistent with relatively good health as compared to other Southeastern late prehistoric and protohistoric populations. Despite the limited time period represented by the mound population, critical interactions occurred between Native Americans and Spaniards, as indicated by skeletal elements severed by metal weapons. The Tatham population is significant because it is one of the earliest studied populations contacted by Europeans in North America, and the only one with well-documented sharp-force trauma that represents intergroup hostility.

Prevalence and the duration of linear enamel hypoplasia: a comparative study of Neandertals and Inuit foragers.

As a dental indicator of generalized physiological stress, enamel hypoplasia has been the subject of several Neandertal studies. While previous studies generally have found high frequencies of enamel hypoplasia in Neandertals, the significance of this finding varies with frequencies of enamel hypoplasia in comparative samples. The present investigation was undertaken to ascertain if the enamel hypoplasia evidence in Neandertals suggests a high level of physiological stress relative to a modern human foraging group, represented here by an archaeological sample of Inuit from Point Hope, Alaska. Unlike previous studies, this study focused specifically on linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH), emphasizing systemic over localized causes of this defect by considering LEH to be present in an individual only if LEH defects occur on two anterior teeth with overlapping crown formation periods. Moreover, this study is the first to evaluate the average growth disruption duration represented by these defects in Neandertals and a comparative foraging group. In the prevalence analysis, 7/18 Neandertal individuals (from Krapina and southern France) and 21/56 Neandertal anterior teeth were affected by LEH, or 38.9% and 37.5% respectively. These values do not differ significantly from those of the Inuit sample in which 8/21, or 38.1% of individuals, and 32/111, or 28.8% of anterior teeth were affected. For the growth disruption duration analysis, 22 defects representing separate episodes of growth disruption in Neandertals were compared with 22 defects in the Inuit group using three indicators of duration: the number of perikymata (growth increments) in the occlusal walls of LEH defects, the total number of perikymata within them, and defect width. Only one indicator, the total number of perikymata within defects, differed significantly between the Inuit and Neandertal groups (an average of 13.4 vs. 7.3 perikymata), suggesting that if there is any difference between them, the Inuit defects may actually represent longer growth disruptions than the Neandertal defects. Thus, while stress indicators other than linear enamel hypoplasia may eventually show that Neandertal populations were more stressed than those of modern foragers, the evidence from linear enamel hypoplasia does not lend support to this idea.