Ancient Health: Skeletal Indicators of Agricultural and Economic Intensification (Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives)

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. Table of Contents 6 List of Figures 10 List of Tables 14 Foreword 20 Preface 22 List of Abbreviations 24 Introduction 26 1 Maize and Mississippians in the American Midwest: Twenty Years Later 35 2 Health and Lifestyle in Georgia and Florida: Agricultural Origins and Intensification in Regional Perspective 45 3 A Brief Continental View from Windover 60 4 Outer Coast Foragers and Inner Coast Farmers in Late Prehistoric North Carolina 77 5 Health and the Transition to Horticulture in the South-Central United States 90 6 From Early Village to Regional Center in Mesoamerica: An Investigation of Lifestyles and Health 105 7 Skeletal Biology of the Central Peruvian Coast: Consequences of Changing Population Density and Progressive Dependence on Maize Agriculture 117 8 The Adoption of Agriculture among Northern Chile Populations in the Azapa Valley, 9000–1000 bp 138 9 Population Plasticity in Southern Scandinavia: From Oysters and Fish to Gruel and Meat 155 10 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 174 11 What Can Pathology Say about the Mesolithic and Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic Communities?: The Portuguese Case 189 12 The Political Ecology of Health in Bahrain 201 13 Skeletal and Dental Health and Subsistence Changein the United Arab Emirates 215 14 Ancestors and Inheritors: A Bioanthropological Perspective on the Transition to Agropastoralism in the Southern Levant 232 15 The Health of Foragers: People of the Later Stone Age, Southern Africa 248 16 Climate, Subsistence, and Health in Prehistoric India: The Biological Impact of a Short-Term Subsistence Shift 262 17 Iron-Deficiency Anemia in Early Mongolian Nomads 275 18 Diet and Health in the Neolithic of the Weiand Middle Yellow River Basins, Northern China 280 19 Prehistoric Dietary Transitionsin Tropical Southeast Asia: Stable Isotope and Dental Caries Evidence from Two Sites in Malaysia 298 20 Population Health from the Bronze to the Iron Agein the Mun River Valley, Northeastern Thailand 311 21 Biological Consequences of Sedentism: Agricultural Intensification in Northeastern Thailand 325 22 Editors’ Summation 345 Appendix 370 Bibliography 374 List of Contributors 436 Index 442 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.