Chronic Care in the Archaic Midwest: A Bioarchaeological Analysis of Healthcare Provisioning and Chronic Illness at Carrier Mills, IL (6000–3000 BC)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bioarchaeology has provided useful data on the relationship between subsistence patterns and human health. Yet few studies have considered healthcare provisioning in their models. The Bioarcheology of Care (BoC) is a four-stage method for empirically testing the possibility of healthcare provisioning in the past. Using the BoC, this study examines the relationship between chronic illness, subsistence patterns, and healthcare among the Middle Archaic (6000–3000 BC) hunter-gatherers of Carrier Mills, IL. The site was a seasonal base-camp that was used predominantly during the fall and winter with a small subset of the population living at the site year-round. Sixteen cases of chronic illness (5 tuberculosis, 10 treponemal infection, 1 blastomycosis) were observed in the Carrier Mills skeletal collection. However, 47% of individuals who contracted these diseases survived to old age. In each case, individuals had impairments that affected mobility and would have required healthcare for survival. Midwestern hunter-gatherers’ usage of seasonal base-camps during the Middle Archaic period may have enabled increased access to healthcare provisioning which allowed sick individuals to survive into old age. This study provides insights into the daily experiences of managing chronic illness for the Archaic hunter-gatherers of Carrier Mills, IL.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32810