‘Collapse’ and Population Health in Oaxaca: How the Classic-Postclassic transition influenced health and disease at Río Viejo in the lower Río Verde Valley.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Classic-Postclassic Transition in Oaxaca" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Classic-Postclassic transition is hypothesized to have affected health outcomes in the lower Río Verde Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Set within a multiscalar approach, this research examined the relationships between health, diseases, culture, climatic changes, and the physical manifestations left behind on the skeleton from a biocultural perspective. Biomarkers of disease and physiological stress were analyzed to determine if population health at Río Viejo correlated to larger socio-political factors occurring at the time throughout Oaxaca. Here, frailty indexes were used to measure overall health in skeletal assemblages modeled after recent advancements in human biology and bioarchaeology on phenotypic versus skeletal frailty. To better capture potential site-specific health influences these frailty indexes were further tailored to the biocultural, archaeological, and population data at Río Viejo during the Classic-Postclassic transition. The results demonstrated very little variation of skeletal and dental disease markers indicative of disease burdens alongside the Classic-Postclassic transition in the lower Verde. Although overall disease burdens remained fairly stable at Río Viejo, individual’s childhood health and frailty scores did improve in the Early Postclassic possibly as a result of resilience and alternative strategies at the community level.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• The Classic-Postclassic Transition in Oaxaca

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50915