Archaeology ARC 130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Osteoarthritis, Hypoplasia, Ben Schwartz
Document Summary
Dr. austin began with a finding that free african americans in 1850 philadelphia had better health than rural, middle-class european americans. This is a surprising finding for pretty clear reasons. Dr. austin then went on to discuss what we can learn from human remains about the health of the human, and how enamel hypoplasia, adult stature, and osteoarthritis are good proxies for childhood, adolescent, and adult health, respectively. Dr. austin expected giza and amarna workers were likely to have the worst health, followed by people at deir el-medina, followed by tombos and giza elite. She ended up finding that amarna and giza workers had consistently the worst health, while deir el-medina health was better than expected. To find what was pushing deir el-medina to be healthier, she looked at the texts from the garbage pit at deir el-medina.
