Files
Abstract
The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) framework proposes that early childhood stress reduces fertility and increases adult mortality risk, particularly from metabolic disorders. Much research focuses on the correlation between early childhood stress and adulthood metabolic disorders, but the link between early childhood stress and infectious disease mortality is understudied. This dissertation uses human skeletal remains to study the impact of early childhood stress on infectious disease mortality by comparing 18th-19th-century Italian catastrophic and attritional populations. Two cholera populations, Alia and Benabbio, are compared with two attritional populations from Badia Pozzeveri and Pieve dei Monti di Villa. This dissertation employs multiple methods to reconstruct early childhood stress events, specifically paleopathological and stature analysis, dental histology, and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratio analysis. Cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, and linear enamel hypoplasia prevalence are used as indicators of early childhood stress. Periostitis prevalence is used as an indicator of heterogeneity in adult environmental stress. Dental histology is used to reconstruct the timing of stress events in early childhood. Weaning is a stressful period in early childhood where infants are first exposed to food-borne environmental pathogens. Age-at-weaning completion is reconstructed using stable nitrogen isotope analysis.
Sicilians exhibit a significantly lower prevalence of cribra orbitalia and significantly shorter stature compared to the Tuscans. Significantly lower rates of cribra orbitalia among Sicilians is either a result of the 1832 pandemic being less selective than later pandemics or consumption of more terrestrial protein among Sicilians. Shorter stature among Sicilians is consistent with secular trends in stature. Age-at-first defect did not differ significantly between the sites. All sites are found to exhibit an age-at-weaning completion around 3 - 4 years of age. No differences in age-at-weaning completion are found among the populations.
This research finds no relationship between early childhood stress markers and mortality from infectious disease. Instead, this research demonstrates the centrality of cultural context and methodological approach in the interpretation of skeletal remains using the DOHaD framework.