Culture and Disease: Modeling the Spread of Tuberculosis in Wyoming

Summary

Until recently, the development and spread of tuberculosis in humans has been associated with the advent of Old World animal domestication and agriculture. However, recent evidence for the presence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis raises the possibility of a Pleistocene era dispersal. Poor bone preservation and small populations make finding Pleistocene-era bioarchaeological evidence of the disease difficult. Coupled with this, epidemiological studies suggest that population numbers were too low for an epidemic to take hold. Reconciling the epidemiological theory with the limited bioarchaeological evidence for the disease requires a closer examination of how behavior would influence transmission. I examine this possibility and report on several agent-based models I created in R to ascertain how tuberculosis may have arisen and dispersed. I incorporate archaeological, ethnographic, and biological data in order to understand how different human cultural behaviors, such as communal hunting, and other factors may have affected the spread of tuberculosis among hunters, gatherers, and foragers. I believe these models can also be modified and adapted to understand the spread and dispersal of other epidemic diseases during other periods in human history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22660