Ancient health and disease

Anthropology 296

Spring, 2007

PROFESSOR:

Deborah E. Blom, Ph.D.

Department of Anthropology

Williams Hall 508

656-2932

dblom@uvm.edu

www.uvm.edu/~dblom/

TEACHING INTERN:

Debbie Stevens-Tuttle, Debbie.Stevens-Tuttle@uvm.edu, 656-5552

SCHEDULE:

Tuesday and Thursday, 3:30 – 4:45p.m.; Williams 511

OFFICE HOURS:

My office hours are Tuesday 10:30-11:30am and Thursday 10:30-11:30am and 4:45-5:45p.m. I encourage students with any problems, concerns, or additional interest to meet me during office hours, preferably with an appointment. At other times, I am generally fulfilling the research and service portions of a professor’s contract (only 40% involves teaching and advising!), so I am not always immediately available. However, you may be able to contact me by email and, if we plan in advance, we can arrange to meet or talk by phone outside of office hours if there is no alternative.

CLASS FORMAT/OBJECTIVES:

This class will explore human health and disease in ancient times by investigating how the study of human bone (paleopathological and bioarchaeological) and associated mortuary (archaeological) contexts can inform us about past lifeways and social organization. In doing so, we will also critically engage with categories and assumptions about medicine, sex/gender, childhood, burial norms, and race and ethnicity. The class will be largely a student-run seminar; however, the teaching staff will lecture occasionally on specific disease processes.

REQUIRED MATERIALS:

· Parker Pearson, Michael

2002 The Archaeology of Death and Burial. College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press.

· Roberts Charlotte and Keith Manchester

2005 The Archaeology of Disease. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

· Additional Readings (see below).

· Endnote X, available for free download from the UVM software archive (www.uvm.edu/software/).

GRADING:

The final grade will be based on:

· Quizzes. 10-15 “pop” quizzes on the readings will be given over the course of the semester. [20%]

· Class Participation. Because this class is a seminar, a major portion of your grade will be drawn from class participation. This includes attendance as well as contributing verbally in class. Additionally, approximately three students will serve as “discussion leaders” for each class (1/25-30 and 2/8-4/5). They will be responsible for summarizing the readings (15 minutes), fielding questions, and devising open-ended questions for classroom discussion. Each student will select two days in which they will be one of the discussion leaders for the class. [20%]

· Literature Review. Students will select one of the following topics on which to do research, with no more than four students per topic: Behavior and Bones, Violence, Origins of Agriculture, European Contact in the Americas, Disability and/or Social Exclusion, Death in Early America, Emerging Pathogens. As a group, students will convene and decide on how they would like to divide the topic for research. The group will turn in a 2-page “process paper” outlining how they chose to divide up the work and coordinate between members. Each student will be responsible for an Endnote bibliography with at least 20 references, 15 of which will be annotated with 1-2 sentences describing why the article is important for the (sub)topic. There should be little overlap between group members [20%, due 03/27]

· Research Presentation. At the end of the semester (4/10-5/1) students will present their topic in the form of a research presentation for the class. This presentation will consist of a cohesive argument/thesis (rather than a narrative of studies) illustrated with slides. On these days, the class as a whole will be responsible for doing readings, asking questions, and contributing discussion. [20%]

· Presentation Paper. The research presentation will be summarized in a five to seven-page, clear and concise paper using in-text citations and figures. Each student in the group will write his or her own paper [20%, due 05/04]

· Extra credit. Students will be allowed to write an extra annotated bibliography on one of the topics discussed over the course of the semester. This bibliography should incorporate 20+ solid references with full annotations (~10 sentences each) and will be worth up to 10% on the final grade if the work is of excellent quality [Due 4/15].

· No makeup quizzes will be given, except in severe, life-altering circumstances documented by appropriate officials (e.g., hospital admission form, a letter from the counseling center, notice of a loved-one’s death from your Dean of Students).

· University policy prohibits incompletes without approval of the Dean of Students.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:

Students are expected to adhere to the Academic Integrity Policy in this class. Plagiarism and copying will not be tolerated. For more information see the UVM web pages (http://www.uvm.edu/%7Euvmppg/ppg/student/acadintegrity.html). Although it is painful, I do turn students in for lack of academic integrity.

ACCOMMODATIONS FOR DISABILITIES, RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS, OR TRAVEL FOR SPORT TEAMS

· We are more than happy to make extra arrangements for students with documented disabilities, religious holidays and those requiring out-of-town travel to attend your games. We just need you to communicate your needs in a timely fashion.

· If you have a disability that will require accommodations or will be away for your team, you must notify me about it with written documentation within the first two weeks of class. If a new condition arises, bring this documentation in immediately.

· In the case of new conditions, if you do not let me know within a week before an exam, I will not be able to accommodate you, no matter how much I sympathize.

· Students should submit in writing their documented religious holiday schedule for the semester by the end of the second full week of classes.

ADDITIONAL READINGS

Baxter JE. 2005. Chapter 7: Socialization, Childhood and Mortuary Remains. In The Archaeology of Childhood: Children, Gender, and Material Culture, ed. JE Baxter, pp. 93-108. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press

Bennike R, Lewis ME, Schutkowski H, Valentin F. 2005. Comparison of Child Morbidity in Two Contrasting Medieval Cemeteries from Denmark. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128:734-46

Blakey ML. 2001. Bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora in the Americas: Its Origins and Scope. Annual Review of Anthropology 30:387-422

Blom DE. 2005. Embodying borders: human body modification and diversity in Tiwanaku society. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 24:1-24

Blom DE, Buikstra JE, Keng L, Tomczak PD, Shoreman E, Stevens-Tuttle D. 2005. Anemia and Childhood Mortality: Latitudinal Patterning along the Coast of Pre-Columbian Peru. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 127:152-69

Dickson JH, Oeggl K, Handley LL. 2003. The Iceman Reconsidered. Scientific American 288:70-9

Hodder I. 1999a. Section on sexing human remains. In The Archaeological Process: An Introduction, ed. I Hodder, pp. 114-6. Malden, MA: Blackwell

Hodder I. 1999b. Section on the Ice Man. In The Archaeological Process: An Introduction, ed. I Hodder, pp. 138-45. Malden, MA: Blackwell

Larsen CS. 1995. Biological Changes in Human Populations with Agriculture. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:185-213

Larsen CS. 2006. The agricultural revolution as environmental catastrophe: Implications for health and lifestyle in the Holocene. Quaternary International 150:12–20.

Langevin HM, Badger GJ, Povolny BK, Davis RT, Johnston AC, Sherman KJ, Kahn JR, and Kaptchuk TJ. 2004. Yin Scores and Yang Scores: A New Method for Quantitative Diagnostic Evaluation in Traditional Chinese Medicine Research. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 10(2):389–395.

Mackowiak PA, Tiesler Bios V, Aguilar M, Buikstra JE. 2005. On the Origin of American Tuberculosis. Clinical Infectious Diseases 41:515-8.

Pearson OM, Buikstra JE. 2006. Behavior and the Bones. In Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains, ed. J Buikstra, L Beck, pp. 207-26. London: Academic Press

Powell ML. 1992. In the Best of Health? Disease and Trauma among the Mississippian Elite. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 3:81-97

Price TD, Manzanilla L, Middleton WD. 2000. Immigration and the Ancient City of Teotihuacan in Mexico: a Study Using Strontium Isotope Ratios in Human Bone and Teeth. Journal of Archaeological Science 27:903-13

Price TD, Feinman G. 2005. Teotihuacan. In Images of the Past, Fourth Edition, ed. TD Price, G Feinman, pp. 342-7. Boston: McGraw-Hill

Roberts CA. 2000. Did they take sugar? The use of skeletal evidence in the study of disability in past populations. In Madness, Disability and Social Exclusion. The Archaeology and Anthropology of 'Difference', ed. J Hubert, pp. 46-59. New York: Routledge One World Archaeology

Šlaus M. 2000. Biocultural Analysis of Sex Differences in Mortality Profiles and Stress Levels in the Late Medieval Population from Nova Rača, Croatia. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 111:193

Smay D, Armelagos G. 2000. Galileo Wept: A Critical Assessment of the Use of Race in Forensic Anthropology. Transforming Anthropology 9:19-29

Walker PL. 2001. A Bioarchaeological Perspective on the History of Violence. Annual Review of Anthropology 30:573-96

Walker PL, Cook DC. 1998. Brief communication: Gender and sex: Vive la difference. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 106:255

White CD. 2005. Gendered food behaviour among the Maya Journal of Social Archaeology 5:356-82

Verano JW, Ubelaker DH. 1991. Health and Disease in the Pre-Columbian World. In Seeds of Change: A Quincentennial Commemoration, ed. HJ Viola, C Margolis, pp. 209-23. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press

ANTH 296 CLASS SCHEDULE AND READING ASSIGNMENTS*

Date(s)	Description	Readings
T 1/16	Class Begins
Th 1/18 T 1/23 Th 1/25 T 1/30	Skeletal Biology, Bioarchaeology, Paleopathology, and Mortuary Analysis	1/18: Parker Pearson Chapter 1; Hodder 1999b; Dickson et al. 2003 1/23: R&M pp. 1-11 1/25: R&M pp. 11-21 (discussion leaders start) 1/30: R&M pp. 22-29 (basics), pp. 39-42 (stature)
Th 2/1 T 2/6	Medical Perspectives (Guest Speakers – Jeanne Shea and Helene Langevin No discussion leaders)	2/1: Langevin et al. 2004 2/1 and 2/6: R&M pp. 168-182 (nonspecific infection) (for 2/20)
Th 2/8	Repatriation	Parker Pearson Chapter 8 and Appendix; Blakey 2001
T 2/13	Paleodemography	R&M: pp. 29-39
Th 2/15 T 2/20 Th 2/22 T 2/27	Childhood	2/15: Baxter 2005 2/20: R&M pp. 75-77 (LEH), pp. 240-242 (Harris lines); Blom et al. 2005 (anemia) 2/22: R&M pp. 234-240 (C&D Deficiency), pp. 77-78, pp. 193-206 (leprosy) 2/27: Bennike et al. 2005
T 3/1 [3/6 No Class] Th 3/8 [3/13-15 No Class] T 3/20	Sex and Gender	3/1: Walker and Cook 1998; Hodder 1999a; Parker Pearson pp. 95-110 3/8: R&M pp. 63-78 (dental disease), pp. 84-120 (trauma), pp. 132-154 (joint disease), 161-163 (from gout), pp. 242-247 (osteoporosis), pp. 206-215 (treponematoses), pp. 183-193 (TB) 3/20: Šlaus 2000
Th 3/22	Mortuary Theory	Parker Pearson Chapter 2
T 3/27 Th 3/29	Kinship, Ethnicity, and Residence Patterns (Annotations Due 3/27)	3/27: Parker Pearson pp. 110-123; Price et al. 2000; Price and Feinman 2003 3/29: Smay and Armelegos 2000; AAA Statement on Race; R&M: pp. 80-81 (ethnicity); Blom 2005
T 4/3 Th 4/5	Status, Rank and Power	4/3: Parker Pearson Chapter 4; R&M: 78-80 (diet) 4/5: Powell 1992; White 2005
T 4/10	Student Topic Presentations: Behavior and Bones	Pearson and Buikstra 2006
Th 4/12	Violence	Walker 2001
T 4/17	Origins of Agriculture	Larsen 1995, Larsen 2006
Th 4/19	European Contact in the Americas	Makowiak at al. 2005; Verano and Ubelaker 1991
4/24	Disability and/or Social Exclusion	Roberts 2000
4/26	Death in Early America	TBA
5/1	Emerging Pathogens	TBA
5/04	Papers Due

* Any changes to this syllabus will be announced in class