Subadult Mortality at McLemore: An Unexpected Culprit

Summary

This study focuses on the subadult skeletal remains excavated in 1960 from the Late Prehistoric-age McLemore site (34WA5) in southwest Oklahoma. Past analyses of this skeletal collection primarily focused on the adults, and what they could contribute to the overall understanding of the health and lifestyle of the individuals who inhabited McLemore. The goal of this study was to reexamine the skeletal collection in light of new methodologies in diagnosing pathology, focusing on the subadult remains, as little to no information was obtained regarding this age class in past analyses, aside from basic demography. The application of regression equations to determine the developmental age of newborns identified near-term, term, and infant age classes, indicating a varied group of subadults present in the cemetery. The results of this project provide a better understanding of the McLemore site, as well as new information concerning the presence of scurvy and its possible affect on infant mortality on the Southern Plains. In addition, this project clearly exposes the necessity of studying every age class of an archaeological population with diligence, as the subadult population truly contributed a wealth of knowledge to the overall understanding of the health and lifestyle of this population.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage