Biological anthropology

About: Biological anthropology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1126 publications have been published within this topic receiving 12757 citations. The topic is also known as: biological anthropology & somatology.

Integrative Anthropology: A Focus on Iron‐Deficiency Anemia

Abstract: Susan Kent was an archaeologist with a mission; at a time when increasing specialization was “in vogue,” she was a generalist who had a holistic, synthetic view of anthropology. As can be seen by the breadth and scope of this volume she had many and varied interests including an interest in my own field of biological anthropology. We connected because we discovered that at around the same time we both independently developed similar ideas on a paleopathology of the skull known as porotic hyperostosis. The prevailing view of the time was that porotic hyperostosis was due to iron-deficiency anemia primarily caused by an iron-poor diet. We both questioned this—we felt that, for a number of reasons, it did not make sense that an iron-poor diet would be the main factor in the development of iron-deficiency anemia in ancient peoples. We strongly believed in examining issues from multidisciplinary, biocultural, and temporal perspectives, so both independently and together we explored iron and iron-deficiency anemia within prehistoric, historic, modern, medical, anthropological, biological, political, and cultural contexts. This chapter is a summary of our collaborative work and my own work on iron-deficiency anemia over a period of 20 years.

Racial Hybridity, Physical Anthropology, and Human Biology in the Colonial Laboratories of the United States

Abstract: In the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. physical anthropologists imagined Hawai‘i as a racial laboratory, a controllable site for the study of race mixing and the effects of migration on bodily form. Gradually a more dynamic and historical understanding of human populations came to substitute for older classificatory and typological approaches in the colonial laboratory, leading to the creation of the field of human biology and challenges to scientific racism. Elite U.S. institutions and philanthropic foundations competed for the authority to define Pacific bodies and mentalities during this period. The emergent scientific validation of liberal Hawaiian attitudes toward human difference and race amalgamation or formation exerted considerable influence on biological anthropology after World War II, but ultimately it would fail in Hawai‘i to resist the incoming tide of continental U.S. racial thought and practice.

Oral Health and its Implications in Late Pleistocene Western Eurasian Humans

Abstract: ................................................................................................................................................ xvi Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 The oral health and overall health connection ..................................................................................... 6 Research Questions and Hypotheses ........................................................................................................ 7 Structure of the Thesis .................................................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 2: Background .................................................................................................................... 11 Introduction: .................................................................................................................................................. 11 The Study of Teeth and their Pathology: .............................................................................................. 11 Dentistry: ........................................................................................................................................................ 13 Pathologies: ..................................................................................................................................................................... 13 Oral Health and Overall Health: ............................................................................................................................. 26 Comparative Samples: ................................................................................................................................................ 28 Late Pleistocene Sample: ........................................................................................................................................... 30 Current Late Pleistocene Research: ....................................................................................................... 31 Paleopathology Studies: ............................................................................................................................................ 31 Dental Fossil Pathology Studies: ............................................................................................................................ 32 Demography Issues: .................................................................................................................................................... 34 Subsistence Issues: ...................................................................................................................................................... 35 Evolutionary Medicine: .............................................................................................................................................. 36 What the Field of Pleistocene Paleopathology is Missing: ............................................................. 38 iii Chapter 3: Materials & Methods .................................................................................................... 41 Materials: ........................................................................................................................................................ 41 Fossils Materials: .......................................................................................................................................................... 41 Research materials: ..................................................................................................................................................... 43 Methods: .......................................................................................................................................................... 43 Laboratory Methods: .................................................................................................................................................. 43 Statistical Methods: ..................................................................................................................................................... 51 Chapter 4: Caries & Periapical Lesions ....................................................................................... 55 Introduction: .................................................................................................................................................. 55 Results: ............................................................................................................................................................ 55 Age distribution: ........................................................................................................................................................... 60 Tooth type: ...................................................................................................................................................................... 63 Tooth Surface: ................................................................................................................................................................ 67 Time Period: ................................................................................................................................................................... 68 Results by Region: ........................................................................................................................................................ 71 Age Category: ................................................................................................................................................................. 75 Caries Severity: .............................................................................................................................................................. 76 Results of Comparative Samples: .......................................................................................................................... 79 Discussion: ...................................................................................................................................................... 83 Taxonomy: ....................................................................................................................................................................... 84 Time Period: ................................................................................................................................................................... 85 Region: .............................................................................................................................................................................. 86 Age: ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 88 Diet: .................................................................................................................................................................................... 89 Pleistocene versus Holocene: .................................................................................................................................. 93 iv Conclusion: ...................................................................................................................................................................... 95 Chapter 5: Periodontal Disease ..................................................................................................... 96 Introduction: .................................................................................................................................................. 96 Results: ............................................................................................................................................................ 97 Age distribution: ........................................................................................................................................................... 97 Maxillary vs. Mandibular: ...................................................................................................................................... 100 Time Period: ................................................................................................................................................................ 101 Region: ........................................................................................................................................................................... 107 Age Category: .............................................................................................................................................................. 110 Comparative Samples: ............................................................................................................................................. 113 Discussion: .................................................................................................................................................... 115 Previous research: ...............................................................................................................

On Seeking Common Ground between Medical Ecology and Critical Medical Anthropology

Abstract: he power of a political-economic perspective is clear at a time when the penetration of world capitalism has led to widespread environmental degradation, disruption of the fabric of social life, and manifold constraints on biobehavioral responses. Yet, to dismiss the importance of biobehavioral responses and the reciprocal effects that such responses have with social relations and the environment, seriously diminishes the scope of anthropological interpretation. Ideological and epistemological barriers doubtlessly divide human ecological and adaptability and critical and political-economic perspectives,' making a complementary approach impossible for some to envision. At the extremes, critiques of a functionalist, positivist, reductionist, and ultimately alienating human biological science are juxtaposed with a disdain for a nonscientific, ideologically driven advocacy approach to information generation. Witnessing the debate in the Anthropology Newsletter over the salience of the "four field approach" gives one pause that anthropology is close to so fundamental a crisis of disagreement that the sides (mainly biological anthropologists on one side and cultural anthropologists on the other) are at risk of no longer communicating with each other (Brown and Yoffee 1992). The struggle to hold the field together and maintain a firm biocultural perspective is particularly acute in bridging subfields such as medical anthropology. Thus, in our assessment, quite a bit is at stake in the debate within medical anthropology. This comment is directed from a biological anthropology perspective toward articulating the need for integrated approaches in medical anthropology and possible directions this might take. The potential for more integrative approaches remains strong, as long as scholars such as Andrea Wiley and Merrill Singer continue to communicate across the divide within medical anthropology. Wiley and Singer, together, have made substantial contributions in identifying tensions and points of paradigmatic conflict between medical ecology and adaptability and critical medical anthropology. In her response to Singer's (1989) critique, Wiley (1992) has provided the most comprehensive, current defense of the adaptation and 202