Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1993

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Anthropology

Major Professor

William M. Bass

Committee Members

Richard L. Jantz, Walter E. Klippel, Donald C. Chase, David A. Gerard

Abstract

Recently, skeletal biology has enhanced the interpretation of the historic African/African-American experience. The dentition, alone and in conjunction with the bones, offers unparalleled biocultural data sets for testing historically-derived hypotheses only theorized by traditional historiography. Furthermore, beyond their familiar macroscopic value, the microstructural nuances secured in tooth enamel provide a unique opportunity to assess age-specific periods of childhood viability unobtainable through remodeling adolescent and adult skeletal tissues. Two permanent teeth were removed from each adult from the rural Arkansas Cedar Grove historic (1890-1927) African-American cemetery population and the urban Philadelphia historic (1823-1841) First African Baptist Church cemetery population. Standard techniques produced 303 labio-lingual thin sections observed with light microscopy. Pathological incremental lines in the enamel, i.e., Wilson bands, signifying arrested growth were scored. The quality of African-American life before, during and after the Civil War has been debated considerably among historians employing a variety of differing perspectives. By calculating periods of childhood morbidity by one-half year age increments, the frequency of illness was ascertained and compared by group, tooth and gender. Though Cedar Grove and FABC are temporally, geographically, demographically and culturally distinct, the analysis of Wilson band frequencies provides missing data on childhood morbidity of these populations. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) using a repeated measures design were employed to statistically evaluate the effects of gender and site on Wilson band counts. Both canine and incisor revealed similar significant dissimilar band counts in half-year categories between gender and site. The intra- and inter-site differences in Wilson band frequency between males and females was insignificant. However, at both sites different peak stress frequencies emerged regardless of tooth examined. Females at both sites revealed a later peak period of morbidity between 3.0-4.0 years when compared to males that displayed a peak stress period between 2.0-3.0 years. This indicates that perhaps some cultural factors surrounding weaning practices among historic African Americans may, in part, be responsible for the gender-related differences in peak stress profile. Yet, there is a clear distinction between sites (with gender combined) disclosed with the mean number of Wilson bands per individual at Cedar Grove being twice as many as at FABC. Furthermore, all inhabitants of Cedar Grove exhibited Wilson bands, and many of them exhibited four or more bands. Subadults at both sites evidenced the greatest frequency of morbidity, with at least 40% of children having multiple defects. There was no significant differences between subadults at the two sites. This study indicates that African Americans of the post-Reconstruction, rural South were particularly poorly adapted relative to African Americans living in a northern, urban environment three quarters of a century earlier. This avenue of research is best interpreted in light of previous enamel histological results from other populations and of course, in conjunction with other paleopathological data sets from historic African Americans.

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