Emerging Resilience and Patterns of Stress: Microscopic Evaluations of LEH Defects Among Individuals from Colonial Mórrope and Eten

Analyses of instances of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) using dental enamel microstructures are an underutilized but valuable tool for understanding patterns of stress in the distant and even more recent past. This thesis uses minimally-destructive methods of measuring perikymata, the external manifestations of striae of Retzius, to compare frequencies and timing of LEH at sites on the north coast of Peru. Specifically, this thesis compares individuals from the Early/Middle Colonial (ca. A.D. 1535-1620) Chapel of the Niño Serranito (CNS) and Middle/Late Colonial (ca. A.D. 1620-1750) Church of Santa Maria de Magdalena de Eten (CSMME) at Eten alongside the site of Mórrope, which is contemporaneous with both. Previous studies of Mórrope have found evidence for elevation in the prevalence of nearly every pathological skeletal marker of stress and disease, while the people of Eten have been shown to possess some degree of protection from negative impacts of stress (Klaus and Tam 2009; Thomas, Temple, and Klaus 2018; Klaus and Alvarez-Calderón 2017; Garland, Turner, and Klaus 2016). Results of this work identified more instances of LEH defects than previous macroscopic studies at these sites, particularly those at earlier ages. CNS and Mórrope were found to have the most similar patterns in the distribution of age-at-defect, predicted risk of defect by developmental stage, and generally had more defects at younger ages than CSMME. There was a significant difference in the mean age-at-defect between CNS and CSMME. Taken together, these findings suggest that the systems of buffering against the systemic oppression of colonialism took time to develop and were sometimes unique to specific communities. This thesis provides new data on how mechanisms of resilience emerge in response to large-scale disruption and argues for the continued use of minimally-destructive microscopic methods of examining LEH in future studies.

Author

• Sellers, Maria

• stress
• teeth
• Peru
• colonialism
• bioarchaeology

Identifier

hdl:1920/13643

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:MARS:1920/13643