Analyzing Stress, Discovering Cooperation: A case study of a Late Archaic sample from the Green River region of Kentucky

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While considerable portions of bioarchaeological work have been dedicated to examining evidence of violence and conflict, little research has been devoted to understanding collaboration in the past. Analysis of stress biomarkers, particularly that which utilizes an osteobiographical approach, provides one potential avenue for finding evidence of cooperation in prehistoric societies. The Late Archaic communities of the Green River region of Kentucky present an ideal population for a case study on collaboration in forager groups. By analyzing osteological stress markers, this examination seeks to realize the potential for using these stress biomarkers, contextualized through mortuary analysis, to better understand cooperation as a social process. By exploring experiences of stress throughout the life course of adults, researchers have the potential to see how cooperation manifests differentially even for individuals within non-ranked societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25985