Linearly Stressed To Death: Consideration Of Early Childhood Stress As A Main Contributor To The Regional Variability In Classic Maya Mortuary Profiles
The Late and Terminal Classic periods were times of great social, economic, and political change in Maya civilization. Scholars have suggested that increasing levels of dietary stress during this time may have been the result of ecological instability, drought, warfare, and significant levels of population movement across the Maya lowlands. All of these processes may have affected human health and left measurable markers of stress in human skeletal material. The burial population recovered from two sites on Ambergris Caye, located near the coast of Belize, have significantly more sub-adult individuals than sites in inland Belize, such as Actuncan, suggesting the populations were differentially affected or had different cultural mechanisms to buffer threats to health. Macroscopic examination of non-occlusal surfaces was conducted on 206 teeth from a total of 67 individuals from the three sites. Both the age of occurrence and the number of stress episodes were compared using Student’s t-Test to understand variability on a regional scale. Significant differences in the timing and frequency of early childhood stress episodes may account for the variance in mortuary profiles between the inland and island populations. The results show that more early childhood stress increases frailty within a population. However, early childhood stress cannot fully account for the differences in mortuary profiles.
Belize, Enamel Hypoplasia, Health, Maya, Archaeological Anthropology
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