EditorialStressed Out: Reconsidering stress in the study of archaeological human remains
Introduction
The study of archaeological skeletal human remains has co-opted the term “stress”, but it has remained poorly defined. The term is often misused, and, as noted by Hillson (2014, 204) “the word has ceased to have any clear meaning in bioarchaeology”. The purpose of this special issue is to reconsider the use of this term in human remains research, and to define what we actually mean when we say “stress” in archaeology. To this aim, we looked at this topic from two broad perspectives: a) study of tooth malformations, defects, and pathology in dental anthropology; and b) non-specific indicators of disease in paleopathology.
Structure and function of teeth have been widely used in the inquiry of either ancient or modern human populations to address numerous research questions. As long as the complexity of tooth formation processes are accounted for, the study of developmental defects of teeth can provide a general snapshot of life history parameters in a population or an individual observed. When it comes to study of (micro)structures of teeth with special emphasis on specific life-history parameters reconstruction (cf. Edinborough et al., 2020) and the interpretation of developmental defects such as enamel hypoplasia (cf. Antoine et al., 1999; Antoine et al., 2009), “stress” cannot be routinely assigned as their ultimate cause. In this special issue there are several studies tackling the problematic aetiology of enamel hypoplastic defects. These studies suggest more appropriate strategies in recording and interpreting results in studies on primates, including old world monkeys, extant great ape species, fossil hominin species and humans (O'Hara and Guatelli-Steinberg, 2020; Towle and Irish, 2020). One of the contributions in this special issue is opening a new direction for conceptualizing and identifying mental well-being of people in the past, using bruxism as a clinically related response to physiological stress (Foley, 2020).
The examination of disease (and disease-load) in past populations is important, as it can provide answers to large scale questions about human activity and behaviour. One way in which palaeopathologists in the past have tried to explore this is by looking at so-called “indicators of stress” – especially in the remains of children. These indicators could include nutritional deficiencies, “non-specific infection”, and retarded bone development. This umbrella usage of “stress” means that no effort has been made to unpick the true causative agents for these observed bony changes. We are now confronting this problem, focusing on diagnostic issues within the sub-field of palaeopathology. This special issue's contribution to this area of research is the re-evaluation of traditional markers of stress (periosteal reactions, porotic hyperostosis, and cribra orbitalia) when interpreting health through “non-specific stress indicators” in skeletal remains (Pilloud and Pilloud, 2020).
Section snippets
Defining the concept of stress
The word “stress” is now quite a common part of modern vernacular, but the true or correct meaning of the concept can be difficult to tease out. Despite nearly a century of research on various aspects of stress, investigators still find it difficult to achieve consensus on a satisfactory definition of this concept. Even less of a consensus has been reached on precisely defining the concept of stress in the study of human bones – the term stress has arguably been abused as it has been used to
Contribution of this issue
One of the topics tackled in this special issue is the use of dental defects as indicators of “non-specific stress” during dental development in studies of paleoanthropological and archaeological samples. The defect that is most commonly associated with “stress” in childhood is enamel hypoplasia for various reasons. One of the reasons is certainly the fact that enamel hypoplasia is a defect which can be easily observed macroscopically. As there exist standardized and straightforward ways for
Conclusion
In sum, we suggest avoiding the use of the term “stress” in the study of archaeological human remains, unless it is precisely qualified, e.g., “mechanical stress”. As there are limits on the interpretations of causal relations between various disruptors and their traces in skeletal material, more cautious clinical studies involving humans with documented life histories are needed. In our opinion, instead of trying to reconstruct health and well-being of the people in the past, we need to focus
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the UCL Institute of Archaeology for hosting the important “Stressed Out” conference in 2017, where these papers were first presented and our advisory group: Simon Hillson, Tony Waldron, Daniel Antoine, Albert Zink, and Kevan Edinborough.
References (64)
- et al.
A method of calculating human deciduous crown formation times and estimating the chronological ages of stressful events occurring during deciduous enamel formation
J. Forensic Leg. Med.
(2014) Differential survival among individuals with active and healed periosteal new bone formation
Int. J. Paleopathol.
(2014)The daily grind: assessing bruxism as a potential indicator of stress in archaeological human remains
J. Archaeol. Sci.
(2020)- et al.
The role of stress-induced cortisol in the relationship between depression and decreased bone mineral density
Biol. Psychiatr.
(2005) - et al.
Did the lateral enamel of Neandertal anterior teeth grow differently from that of modern humans?
J. Hum. Evol.
(2007) Evaluating sources of variation in the identification of linear hypoplastic defects of enamel: a new quantified method
J. Archaeol. Sci.
(2012)- et al.
Nutritional inference from paleopathology
Adv. Archaeol. Method Theor.
(1982) - et al.
Use of dental microstructure to investigate the role of prenatal and early life physiological stress in age at death
J. Archaeol. Sci.
(2019) - et al.
Differences in enamel defect expression and enamel growth variables in Macaca fascicularis and Trachypithecus cristatus from Sabah, Borneo
J. Archaeol. Sci.
(2020) - et al.
Re-evaluating traditional markers of stress in an archaeological sample from central California
J. Archaeol. Sci.
(2020)
Recording and interpreting enamel hypoplasia in samples from archaeological and palaeoanthropological contexts
J. Archaeol. Sci.
Major depression is a risk factor for low bone mineral density: a meta-analysis
Biol. Psychiatr.
Association between sleep bruxism and stress sensitivity in an experimental psychological stress task
Biomed. Res.
The periodicity of incremental structures in dental enamel based on the developing dentition of post-Medieval known-age children
The developmental clock of dental enamel: a test for the periodicity of prism cross-striations in modern humans and an evaluation of the most likely sources of error in histological studies of this kind
J. Anat.
Neuro-behavioral pattern of sleep bruxism in wakefulness
Res. Biomed. Eng.
Oral Anatomy, Histology and Embryology
Distinct dental development patterns in early fossil hominids
Nature
Technical note: a new three-dimensional technique for high resolution quantitative recording of perikymata
Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.
Re-evaluation of the age at death of immature fossil hominids
Nature
Perikymata spacing and distribution on hominid anterior teeth
Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.
Growth processes in teeth distinguish modern humans from Homo erectus and earlier hominins
Nature
Mineralisation within human tooth cementum identified by secondary ion mass spectrometry
J. Anal. At. Spectrom.
Stress and Human Health
Biocultural perspectives on stress in prehistoric, historical, and contemporary population research
Yrbk. Phys. Anthropol.
Assessment of systematic physiological perturbations from dental enamel hypoplasias and associated histological structures
Yrbk. Phys. Anthropol.
Dental enamel hypoplasias as indicators of nutritional stress
Analysis and significance of linear enamel hypoplasia in Plio-Pleistocene hominins
Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.
Using perikymata to estimate the duration of growth disruptions in fossil hominin teeth: issues of methodology and interpretation
Linear enamel hypoplasia and the shift from irregular to regular provisioning in Cayo Santiago rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)
Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.
Missing defects? A comparison of microscopic and macroscopic approaches to identifying linear enamel hypoplasia
Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.
Tooth Development in Human Evolution and Bioarchaeology
Cited by (8)
Beyond dirty teeth: Integrating dental calculus studies with osteoarchaeological parameters
2023, Quaternary InternationalCitation Excerpt :This has been routinely conducted on starchy foods, such as legumes and cereals (Barton and Torrence, 2015), but has not been applied systematically to other lines of evidence and to parts of plants that are not starch or phytoliths. In addition, the above listed osteoarchaeological markers of potential social status (skeletal occupational markers, markers of physiological stress etc.) suffer from inherent limitations mostly linked to the fact that their expression is multifactorial (Domett et al., 2017; Edinborough and Rando, 2020; Michopoulou et al., 2015); hence, they should be used critically and in combination when assessing status. Ideally, such skeletal markers should also be used in conjunction with material cultural evidence of social status as a complementary line of evidence (though with its own inherent biases) (Robb et al., 2001).
Tooth cementum annulation: Confounding difficulties remain when inferring life history parameters from archeological tooth samples
2021, Journal of Archaeological SciencePopulation pressure and prehistoric violence in the Yayoi period of Japan
2021, Journal of Archaeological ScienceCitation Excerpt :We found only two of 159 cases. Although the precise nature of stress markers including enamel hypoplasia is debated (e.g., Edinborough and Rando 2020), both results are not consistent with the possibility that nutritional and environmental factors were major driving forces in the frequency of warfare and consistent with the claim that the cases of enamel hypoplasia are relatively few in the northern Kyushu area of the middle Yayoi period compared to other areas (Koga 2003). The frequency of violence might be influenced by the development of social hierarchy or political organization (e.g., Oka et al., 2018), presumed to be reflected in highly stratified burial systems in which certain members of the ruling elite, conventionally referred to as ‘kings’ in Japanese archaeology, have tombs with large quantities of prestige goods such as bronzes (weapons and mirrors), followed by a class of ‘warriors’ interred with lesser amounts of bronze or iron weapons, while ‘commoners’ were buried in communal cemeteries with few grave goods.
Skeletal manifestations of disease experience: Length of illness and porous cranial lesion formation in a contemporary juvenile mortality sample
2023, American Journal of Human BiologyA community in transition: Analysis of health and well-being in people living during and following aridification
2022, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology