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Quantifying Impairment and Disability in Bioarchaeological Assemblages

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Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability

Part of the book series: Bioarchaeology and Social Theory ((BST))

Abstract

Global epidemiology metrics provide some useful tools for characterizing health in past populations. Among these are the disability weights developed by the Global Burden of Disease studies. Disability weights are assigned to health states —conditions and sequelae rather than to specific diseases or skeletal lesion types—and encompass a wide range of nonfatal conditions, many of which are recorded in skeletal assemblages. Examples presented here illustrate the application of this approach in quantifying the disability burden represented by skeletal pathology in two Ancestral Puebloan skeletal assemblages. The issues attendant to the evolution of disability weights and the challenges in assigning universal weights to different health states globally are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

My thanks to the editors for the invitation to participate in the AAPA symposium and to contribute to this volume, and to the editors and the reviewers for their insights and diligence. My study of the San Cristobal people was supported by the American Museum of Natural History Lounsbery Fellowship and continued access facilitated by Ian Tattersall and Nell Murphy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Office of Archaeological Studies, The Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, USA

    Ann L.W. Stodder

  2. Department of Anthropology, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA

    Ann L.W. Stodder

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  1. Ann L.W. Stodder
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Correspondence to Ann L.W. Stodder .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Social Sciences, University of Hawai‘i–West O‘ahu, Kapolei, Hawaii, USA

    Jennifer F. Byrnes

  2. Department of Anthropology, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Jennifer L. Muller

Appendix

Appendix

Tables 10.4 and 10.5

Table 10.4 Prevalence YLDs, San Cristobal adults
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Table 10.5 Prevalence YLDs, Ridges basin adults
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Stodder, A.L. (2017). Quantifying Impairment and Disability in Bioarchaeological Assemblages. In: Byrnes, J., Muller, J. (eds) Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56949-9_10

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