McVicar Matilda, Floyd Bruce, Littleton Judith
Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Am J Biol Anthropol. 2025 Sep;188(1):e70122. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.70122.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is described as an inevitable part of aging. Palaeopathological studies can challenge such ideas of universal biology. OA from the Australian Aboriginal site of Roonka is analyzed to test whether expectations from contemporary, ethnohistorical, and archeological data are held or whether OA at this place was distinctly different.
Human remains from Roonka, South Australia, date to the Holocene and are divisible into early and late periods. A total of 83 adults was analyzed. OA was defined using the criteria of Waldron and Rogers (1995). Analysis used both univariate and quasi-Poisson regression analysis.
Very few joints had evidence of OA except for the TMJ (28.8%). OA was concentrated on the upper body. Lower body OA was observed only in individuals with prior injury or disease. Comparison with human remains from along the Murray River indicates a similar pattern of joints affected but spatial diversity between the upper and lower Murray River.
The pattern of OA observed at Roonka corresponds with contemporary records of age development. However, epidemiological patterns were distinctly different. Except for people with prior injury or disease, OA was not prevalent. The comparison of Roonka with archeological samples demonstrates diversity during the Holocene and does not correspond to expectations of increasingly heavier workloads over time. The lack of concordance between the pattern of OA among people at Roonka and expectations based on other data reflects how embodied experiences of the condition are contingent on local entanglements of biology and culture.
骨关节炎（OA）被认为是衰老不可避免的一部分。古病理学研究可能会挑战这种普遍生物学观点。对来自澳大利亚原住民鲁恩卡遗址的骨关节炎进行分析，以检验当代、民族历史和考古数据的预期是否成立，或者该遗址的骨关节炎是否明显不同。
来自南澳大利亚鲁恩卡的人类遗骸可追溯到全新世，分为早期和晚期。共分析了83名成年人。骨关节炎采用沃尔德伦和罗杰斯（1995年）的标准进行定义。分析使用了单变量和拟泊松回归分析。
除颞下颌关节（28.8%）外，很少有关节有骨关节炎的证据。骨关节炎集中在上半身。下半身骨关节炎仅在有既往损伤或疾病的个体中观察到。与墨累河沿岸人类遗骸的比较表明，受影响关节的模式相似，但墨累河上下游存在空间差异。
在鲁恩卡观察到的骨关节炎模式与当代年龄发展记录相符。然而，流行病学模式明显不同。除有既往损伤或疾病的人外，骨关节炎并不普遍。鲁恩卡与考古样本的比较表明，全新世期间存在多样性，与随着时间推移工作量越来越大的预期不符。鲁恩卡人群中骨关节炎模式与基于其他数据的预期之间缺乏一致性，反映了这种疾病的具体体验如何取决于生物学和文化的当地纠葛。
