Living on the Edge
Harvey, Cohen, and Danforth examine health among the Tipu Maya of Colonial Belize in “Living on the Edge” through the prism of Naum’s (2011) concept of frontiers created under colonialism. The authors embrace a multi-method approach where diverse lines of independent but complementary data are assembled to characterize the health of the 588 Tipu Maya during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harvey and colleagues’ analysis integrates data from ethnohistory, mortuary patterns, paleodemography, multiple expressions of subadult health (i.e., macro- and micro enamel defects, anemia, Harris Lines), adult health (i.e., specific and non-specific skeletal infection), traumatic injury, and cortical bone maintenance. Hypothesizing that the Tipu population living in the tumultuous Yucatán would demonstrate particularly high rates of skeletal pathological conditions (particularly violent trauma). Harvey and colleagues observed quite the opposite. They argue that the frontier nature of Tipu was itself a contested hybrid space—a kind of borderland, or “Third Space.” Living in this liminal zone between the different political spheres likely allowed for Tipuans to create a distinct identity and social experience that compared to other Colonial Maya communities, shielded them from greater degrees of biological stress and morbidity.