Center and Satellite

The Mississippi River Delta between A.D. 1400 and 1600 was a resource-rich area with a large variety of domestic and wild resources, allowing Mississippian people to be better nourished than many. Yet community-level hierarchies may have been a major factor structuring biological stress across the landscape. Ross-Stallings compares health status from human remains from the Hollywood site (a high-status mound center) and the Flowers #3 site (a low-ranked satellite of the Hollywood center). Greater prevalence of biological stress and poorer diets are found among the people of the satellite settlement, which reflected differential access to resources. This was further underscored by an extractive economic relationship, as the Hollywood chiefs likely siphoned off various forms of tribute in the form of food from their subaltern neighbors.

Status-Based Differences in Health in the Late Prehistoric East Tennessee

Late prehistoric eastern Tennessee polities provide a setting to examine relationships between biological stress and increasing emphasis on intensive maize agriculture, sedentism, population size, and differential access to protein-based dietary resources. This chapter compares bioarchaeological patterns between two Mississippian palisaded sites in Eastern Tennessee during the local Dallas Phase, A.D. 1300–1500. Toqua was a multi-mound center likely home to the main chief or chiefs of the region, while Citico was a smaller, palisaded locale with a single mound. Statistically significant patterns demonstrate that non-elites from Toqua possessed higher prevalence of all stress markers. Sex-based divisions are also noted in their mortuary program, with males typically interred in mounds and women in the village; Betsinger attributes this to simultaneous heterarchical expressions of different activity spheres. Further, there are few biological disparities between elite and non-elite females, which is considered the result of elite-sponsored, male-centered feasting that drove expressions of inequality during the twilight of the Mississippian era.

The Pigi Athinas Tumuli Cemetery of Macedonian Olympus

The Middle-Late Bronze Age (1620–1500 B.C.) was a period of emerging and intensifying social complexity involving small-scale settlement hierarchies, but the archaeological understanding of social organization at this time has remained limited. In a comparative case study of funerary treatment and skeletal biology, the authors consider the distribution of multiple skeletal pathological conditions between distinct tumuli-style burials at Pigi Athinas. Though social rank may have started to displace the centrality of kinship, subtle variations in both funerary and bioarchaeological data indicated the most important structuring factors were sex and age distinctions. Over time, the influence of differential diets, divisions of gender, and ritual feasting appear as the people participated in a widespread Mycenaean system that shaped both gender and health in ancient Greece.

Spytihněv I (CE 875–915), Duke of Bohemia

Becker applies a life history (or osteobiographic) approach in the study of the remains of individuals who have been identified as Prince Spytihn?v, Duke of Bohemia, and his wife. Specifically, Becker seeks to learn how the confluence of diet and royal social status in the 9th century A.D. early Czech state affected these two elite people’s growth process and physical activity. This contextually rich work tests the notion that terminal adult stature and skeletal robusticity may have embodied lives of privilege. The data reveal that while Spytihn?v and his wife were notably more robust than people of the lower social rank, their stature falls within the range of all other males and females from this population. Stature variation may not always hold a one-to-one correlation with social rank, especially considering individual variation and the biocultural vagaries of the early Czech state. The bioarchaeology of such “emergent elites” helps shed light on the early states of late first millennium Europe.

The Bioarchaeology of Early Social Complexity in Bronze Age Spain

From ca. 2200 to 1430 B.C., the people at Cerro de la Encina participated in the El Argar culture of Bronze Age Europe, which was an emergent state-level society defined by rather clear sociopolitical class divisions, settlement hierarchies, and gendered differentiation in mortuary treatments. The authors describe health variation and social status in a small sample of 30 individuals and aim to overcome this issue via cross-contextual comparisons of multiple lines of evidence including funerary treatment. The authors find that nearly all signs of elevated morbidity correlate to individuals in lower status funerary contexts. This chapter sheds new light on the potential biocultural consequences of emergent sociopolitical hierarchy in Spain and proposes new questions and research agendas for the bioarchaeology of Bronze Age Western Europe.

Health Status and Burial Status in Early China

This chapter quantifies and compares mortuary pattern grammars and skeletal health markers between the sites of Xipo (Yangshao culture, a Middle Neolithic chiefdom ca. 4000–3000 B.C.) and Xiyasi (a site participating in the state-level, stratified Eastern Zhou dynasty ca. 770–221 B.C.). At Xipo, health patterns display no statistically significant differences across the three archaeologically defined social strata, even when taking into consideration sex-based burial variation. In contrast, the Xiyasi sample from Bronze Age Zhou displays a mortuary program based on social status, age, and sex, dividing the population into four ranked groups. Elite burials (mostly men) evidently possessed worse oral health, likely owing to differential consumption of status-linked foods. Pechenkina and colleagues encounter yet stronger associations between sex and specific funerary contexts especially in the Eastern Zhou. Increasing social complexity appears to have been most directly associated with changes in sex (and by inference, gender)-associated social roles.

Skeletal Morphology and Social Structure in Ancient Egypt

The study of human skeletal remains from ancient Egypt helps understand effects of emergent and entrenched differences in social differentiation and hierarchy between 5500 and 1785 B.C. This work focuses on diachronic patterns of terminal adult stature and limb proportions in Egyptian samples from the relatively egalitarian Badarian peoples through the highly complex and stratified Middle Kingdom. This diachronic approach suggests a number of complex outcomes, including that adult mean statures increased from Badarian to Late Predynastic times but declined into the Middle Kingdom. Increasing degrees of sexual dimorphism and changing limb proportions also speak to the intertwined effects of social hierarchy, gendered social divisions, and the plasticity of human growth in ancient Egypt.

Stature at Tikal Revisited

Lori Wright and Mario Vásquez take a new look at William Haviland’s classic (1967) study to reexamine stature variation at the Maya center of Tikal, Guatemala, spanning the Preclassic through the Terminal Classic periods (1 B.C.–A.D. 950). They also include new samples and stable isotope data to develop an understanding of temporal and social variation in Maya growth processes. The results demonstrate that archaeological distinctions between elites and commoners are associated with weak overall correlations between hierarchy and stature. Still, significantly shorter women are found in mid- and low status domestic settings that correlate to isotopic indications of poorer nutrition and stunted growth. Tentatively, middle and lower status male stature may have declined slightly over the span of Tikal’s history, perhaps indicating subtly declining nutrition as Classic Maya society peaked and faded.

Hopewell Hierarchy or Heterarchy?

Chapter 11, part retrospective and part meta-analysis, takes a critical look at the bioarchaeological evidence of Hopewell social organization spanning much of Eastern North America from 200 B.C. to A.D. 500. Past archaeological work considered Hopewell as generally heterarchical and egalitarian. This synthesis of funerary pattern variation and a host of biological data discern patterns consistent with embodied social inequalities, with evidence of better health and diet associated with those of inferred high status. While acknowledging the substantial heterarchical dimensions of Hopewell social organization, Cook et al. suggest that the pendulum has swung too far from hierarchical models and any archaeological conception of the Hopewell tradition must engage the evidence of hierarchy visible in the remains of its people.

Bioarchaeology and Social Complexity

The closing section of the volume contains commentary and considerations on the bioarchaeology of social complexity. The authors identify several broad themes and issues crosscutting the chapters and offer constructive critiques for future bioarchaeological studies of hierarchy, heterarchy, and other expressions of social organization in antiquity. These include observations on sampling design, paleoepidemiological comparisons of ancient biological stress markers, greater bioarchaeology–mortuary archaeology integration, interpretation in bioarchaeology, and the potential shortcomings of typological expectations of ancient human health.