Title: Disease and demography in the Americas /
Authors: Verano, John W.; Ubelaker, Douglas H.; National Museum of Natural History (U.S.)
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press,
Year: 1992
Subjects: Paleopathology; Indians, South American; Indians, North American; Indians, Central American; Disease Outbreaks; Anthropometry; Indians Anthropometry Congresses; Indians Diseases Congresses.; Indians Population Congresses.; Paleopathology America Congresses.; Epidemics America History Congresses.; Americas; America Antiquities Congresses.
Abstract: "This landmark book brings together diverse viewpoints of leading international anthropologists and demographers on the patterns of populations and disease in the Americas both before and after 1492." "Recent demographic literature has depicted America before European contact as a disease-free paradise, but the literature in physical anthropology and paleopathology regularly documents a variety of disease conditions in ancient America. At the same time, demographic reconstructions from ancient samples seem at odds with, standard interpretations from ethnohistory and demography. Clarifying what is fact and what is theory, these essays attest to the complexity of the issues and show that much can be learned through interdisciplinary research." "The twenty-five essays from leading scholars in this area range in topic from the interpretive possibilities of skeletal paleopathology and the effects of European contact on the Chumash Indians to the impact of disease on the sixteenth-century Andean world and the 1832 inoculation program on the Missouri River."--Jacket.
Contents: Skeletal paleopathology : probabilities, possibilities, and impossibilities / Donald J. Ortner -- Prehistoric disease and demography in the Andes / John W. Verano -- Population decline and extinction in La Florida / Clark Spencer Larsen ... [et al.] -- Health and disease in the late prehistoric Southeast / Mary Lucas Powell -- Health and disease in the Southwest before and after Spanish contact / Ann L.W. Stodder and Debra L. Martin -- Demography of prehistoric and early historic Northern Plains populations / Douglas W. Owsley -- Diet and disease in late prehistory / Jane E. Buikstra -- Disease and sociopolitical systems in late prehistoric Illinois / George R. Milner -- Transformation and disease : precontact Ontario Iroquoians / Shelley R. Saunders, Peter G. Ramsden, and D. Ann Herring.