Understanding Historic Health: How 19th Century San Francisco Death Records Supplement Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Life and Death in the San Francisco Bay: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Historic Lifeways", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Historic records and archaeological data provide important sources of data for testing hypotheses and understanding human health in 19th century populations. Nineteenth century San Francisco coroners kept detailed death records for all people, including infants and children, who passed through medical examiner offices. Records provide cause of death and demographic data (i.e. age, place of birth, sex) that can be used to supplement archaeological studies. Age at death data show incredibly high rates of childhood mortality, with nearly 50% of all recorded deaths in children under the age of five. Infectious diseases, primarily tuberculosis, were constant fact of life, alongside seasonal outbreaks of diseases such as small pox and cholera. Sex specific causes of death point to the dangers of birth for females and the workplace hazards for males. Historic records provide hypotheses that can be tested using archaeological data, and create a better understanding of health across a population.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Life and Death in the San Francisco Bay: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Historic Lifeways

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow