On the Study of Health in Prehistory

Abstract

This thesis examines the approaches used in the study of health in prehistory, focusing in particular on the potential of archaeology to contribute to this field. Archaeological data have been under-used in studies of prehistoric health; obstacles to their utilization include the popular conception of archaeological information as less direct than osteological data, the idea that scientific research must produce testable hypotheses to be valid, and the challenge of integrating large quantities of information of different temporal scales into synthetic interpretations. Alternative conceptions of scientific research, and the use of the Braudelian model of historical time as an organizing structure,circumvent these obstacles and permit a fuller use of archaeological data in reconstructing patterns of past health. In particular, archaeological information about social behaviour as well as subsistence and factors pertinent to disease ecology, can form a basis of inferences about health in prehistoric communities. A demonstration of this approach, using recent archaeological data and interpretations for the Mississippian site of Cahokia, suggests that prevailing negative opinions of the health of Mississippian groups and early agriculturalists may not be supportable with regard to the people of Cahokia.