Sex and Gender in Paleopathological Perspective

by Edited by Anne L. Grauer , Patricia Stuart-Macadam

• ISBN13: 9780521620901
• ISBN10: 0521620902
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-01-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A growing body of literature indicates that diseases can affect women and men differently. As sex differences extend far beyond biology, it is crucial to adopt a bicultural approach towards understanding human disease patterns and processes. This book synthesizes modern medical research with paleopathological investigations. Conditions such as osteoporosis and osteopenia, iron deficiency anaemia, infection and immune reactivity and trauma are explored. Recognizing the relationship between these conditions and aspects of sex and gender in past populations assists in the formulation of models from which modern disease processes can be better understood. Exploring the differences will provide provocative ideas for all those in physical anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, history of medicine and women's studies interested in how sex and gender impacts on disease.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	ix	(2)
Acknowledgments	xi
1 Introduction: sex, gender and health status in prehistoric and contemporary populations	1	(10)
George J. Armelagos
2 Sex-related patterns of trauma in humans and African apes	11	(16)
Robert Jurmain
Lynn Kilgore
3 Osteoporosis in the bioarchaeology of women	27	(18)
David S. Weaver
4 Iron deficiency anemia: exploring the difference	45	(19)
Patricia Stuart-Macadam
5 Sex differences in trace elements: status or self-selection?	64	(15)
Della Collins Cook
Kevin D. Hunt
6 Male-female immune reactivity and its implications for interpreting evidence in human skeletal paleopathology	79	(14)
Donald J. Ortner
7 Infectious disease, sex, and gender: the complexity of it all	93	(21)
Charlotte A. Roberts
Mary E. Lewis
Philip Boocock
8 Gender differences in health and illness among rural populations in Latin America	114	(19)
Thomas L. Leatherman
9 The mothers and daughters of a patrilineal civilization: the health of females among the Late Classic Maya of Copan, Honduras	133	(16)
Rebecca Storey
10 A history of their own: patterns of death in a nineteenth-century poorhouse	149	(16)
Anne L. Grauer
Elizabeth M. McNamara
Diane V. Houdek
11 Gender, health, and activity in foragers and farmers in the American southeast: implications for social organization in the Georgia Bight	165	(24)
Clark Spencer Larsen
Index	189