Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi, USA.
Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.
Biodemography Soc Biol. 2020 Jan-Mar;66(1):69-89. doi: 10.1080/19485565.2020.1833705.
In this study, we examine the impacts of individual ancestry and socioeconomic status (SES) on health in historic African Americans through bioarchaeological means. We estimate ancestry from dental morphology and SES from the costs of coffin hardware. We include 188 adult individuals from Freedman's Cemetery in Dallas, Texas, and 2,301 individuals of African and European descent for comparison. Freedman's Cemetery functioned as the only cemetery available to freed people and their descendants between 1869 and 1907. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) of dental morphological traits was used to estimate individual ancestry. LDA results were then used in Cox proportional hazards analysis to examine whether ancestry impacted mortality risk or SES. Ancestry was not found to impact SES. However, paralleling results from analysis of census mortality data, individuals with greater African ancestry on average have shorter lifespans and higher mortality hazards than individuals who have more European ancestry. This finding provides evidence for structural violence in this historic African American skeletal sample. The negative effects of social constructs are embodied and can be detected in skeletal samples through use of statistical methods combined with information about the cultural context in which people lived.
在这项研究中，我们通过生物考古学的方法来研究个体祖先和社会经济地位（SES）对历史上非裔美国人健康的影响。我们通过牙齿形态来估计祖先，通过棺材硬件的成本来估计 SES。我们包括来自德克萨斯州达拉斯的弗雷德曼公墓的 188 名成年人和 2301 名非洲和欧洲血统的人作为比较。弗雷德曼公墓在 1869 年至 1907 年期间是自由人和他们的后代唯一可用的公墓。牙齿形态特征的线性判别分析（LDA）用于估计个体祖先。然后，LDA 结果被用于 Cox 比例风险分析，以检查祖先是否影响死亡率风险或 SES。研究发现，祖先并没有影响 SES。然而，与人口普查死亡率数据分析的结果平行，具有更多非洲祖先的个体平均寿命较短，死亡率风险较高，而具有更多欧洲祖先的个体则寿命较长，死亡率风险较低。这一发现为这个历史上的非裔美国骨骼样本中的结构性暴力提供了证据。社会结构的负面影响体现在骨骼样本中，可以通过结合有关人们生活的文化背景的信息，使用统计方法来检测到。
