From the Mouths of Babes: Weaning, Diet, and Stress in Neolithic Northern Vietnam

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Health and Welfare of Children in the Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Neolithic agricultural transition has been found to have a negative effect on human health in many parts of the world. However, numerous bioarchaeological studies in Southeast Asia have shown a different pattern of health changes. Changing weaning practices have been argued to have major effects on population health and fertility around this transition. However, the relationship between weaning and stress has been unable to be compared directly. The Neolithic site of Man Bac in Northern Vietnam is ideal to assess the relationship between weaning and stress at the agricultural transition, due to its large sample of excellently preserved infants and children, and previous research that has shown high levels of systemic stress. To see if there is a relationship between weaning, diet and stress, this research compares the timing of systemic linear enamel hypoplasias, identified through new microscopic topographic methods, and incremental isotopic weaning profiles of dentine, determining differences observed within the demographics of the site. Preliminary results investigating systemic stress during development of permanent and deciduous teeth are presented, arguing for inclusion of deciduous teeth as potential representations of gestational stress, and how the timing and prevalence of LEH correlates with age at death in the population.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Health and Welfare of Children in the Past   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23634