Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-2005

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Anthropology

Major Professor

Murray K Marks

Committee Members

Andrew Kramer, George White

Abstract

For my master’s thesis project titled, “Patterns of Traumatic Injury in Historic African and African American Populations,” I examined trauma incidence in American slave and free populations. The objectives of this study were (1) to present frequency and distribution analysis of injuries in each sample, (2) to create cross tabulations to show similarities and differences in each site and compare these results to between, (3) interpret the frequency and distribution of injuries from a cultural aspect, to better understand the violence and physical demands endured by American slaves and freeborn African American. Most of the skeletal samples used in this research have been reinterred. Therefore, this research is based off the observations and interpretations of researchers and data found in published papers.

Unfortunately, during the time when most of these remains were examined there existed no universal research method when analyzing skeletal material. Each researcher used his or her own method for analyzing remains; some being more detailed then others. Because of this, this study contains basic information about each site including: site name, total number of individuals examined in each site, total number of individuals observed with fractures, total number of fractures observed in each site, sex of the individuals, which bone(s) were injured, if the injury occurred ante or peri mortem, which are slave communities and which are free populations. Whenever possible a mechanism such as accident, violent encounter or occupational-related injury, was assigned to each injury.

For this study trauma was defined as dislocations, fractures, muscle pulls, blunt force trauma and puncture wounds. All bones were examined.

There has been a lot of research attempting to reconstruct historic African American lifeways in anthropology. Most of this research consists of analyzing overall health of the populations studied. This study is important because there is not a lot of research specifically on trauma analysis of slave and free populations that discuss the physical demands of slavery as well as slave mistreatment. Due in large part to small sample sizes and fragmentary conditions of slave and African American skeletal series available for study, there is no effective means to measure the biological brutality of slavery. This study is intended to evoke interest in trauma studies in historic African and African American populations. As more studies of trauma in African American populations emerge, more comparisons can be made resulting in important questions being answered about the past. Studies of trauma distribution and frequency patterning in African American populations are essential for addressing questions about human adaptation to physical, environmental, and social constraints.

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