Documenting Early Exposure to Violence and Physical Stress among Juveniles in the Late Prehispanic Andes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Growing up during periods of chronic warfare can have long-term impacts on health and well-being across the lifecourse. Public health research has demonstrated how early exposure to violence or other physical stressors contributes to increased morbidity and mortality among children and adolescents. Within bioarchaeology, investigating the lived experience of juveniles has broadened our knowledge of these issues in the distant past; yet, they remain understudied in some geographic regions, especially in the north-central highlands of Peru. This work presents evidence for physical violence, porotic hyperostosis, and cribra orbitalia among a sample of 54 juvenile individuals who lived during the 12th to 15th centuries AD, an era known as the Late Intermediate Period. Trauma results reveal nearly a quarter of juveniles in the sample sustained perimortem injuries to the cranium, with many wounds located on the posterior or inferior cranial areas. Certain cohorts of juveniles, such as those aged between 9-12 years at death, show higher prevalence of perimortem trauma, compared to other age ranges. The number of individuals with evidence of porotic hyperostosis or cribra orbitalia was relatively low, corresponding to other studies in the highland Andes. Finally, this presentation contains images of human remains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37579.0