School of Human Evolution and Social Change Colloquium

Fri Feb 10

Human Evolution and Social Change
SHESC 340
Campus: Tempe
Cost: Free

The School of Human Evolution and Social Change presents bioarchaeologist James T. Watson, assistant curator of bioarchaeology at the Arizona State Museum, and assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona.

Watson will discuss "Reconstructing an Ancient Human Biocultural Ecology: How Environment, Human Biology, Technology and Social Complexity Impact Oral Health in Past Populations."

Applying the theoretical approach that reproductive physiology among women negatively affects patterns in oral health, caries and antemortem tooth loss were compared between sexes by age in 200 Formative period (1500 B.C-A.D. 500) skeletons from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile and 142 Early Agricultural period (1600 B.C-A.D. 150) skeletons from the Sonoran Desert in northwest Mexico to compare how differences in local ecology and subsistence practices interacted with sex-based differences in oral pathology. The archaeological periods represent the transition to agricultural dependence in both areas, but rich local ecologies facilitated a mixed subsistence strategy—based on marine resources along the Atacama coast and a diversity of edible succulents in the Sonoran inland. Results identify a marked distinction between the severity and progression of tooth decay compared to tooth loss between males and females. Caries rates were higher and more variable in the Chilean sample and therefore subject to differences in subsistence practices. Tooth loss however, which is further influenced by alveolar bone density, oscillates in severity by subsistence practices but maintain an age-progressive pattern that affects women differentially as a result of the connection between lifelong hormonal fluctuations and bone loss. These findings highlight the complicated etiology of oral disease, particularly in past populations, and imply that the interplay between oral bacteria, reproductive physiology, and biocultural ecology shape differential patterns in oral pathology.

Watson's research examines health and disease in prehistoric populations through their skeletal remains. He is specifically interested in understanding prehistoric human adaptations in desert ecosystems and the role local resources play in the adoption of agriculture and their impact on health. Current projects involve the excavation and analysis of the earliest farmers in the Sonoran Desert and of incipient agriculturalists in the Atacama Desert, along the northern coast of Chile.