ABSTRACT

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.

摘要

在这项研究中，我们通过生物考古学手段研究了个体血统和社会经济地位 (SES) 对历史悠久的非裔美国人健康的影响。我们根据牙齿形态和 SES 估计棺材硬件成本的血统。我们纳入了来自德克萨斯州达拉斯弗里德曼公墓的 188 名成年个体，以及 2,301 名非洲和欧洲血统的个体进行比较。弗里德曼公墓是 1869 年至 1907 年间唯一可供获释者及其后代使用的墓地。牙齿形态特征的线性判别分析 (LDA) 用于估计个体血统。LDA 结果随后用于 Cox 比例风险分析，以检查血统是否影响死亡风险或 SES。未发现祖先影响 SES。然而，与人口普查死亡率数据分析的平行结果，与拥有更多欧洲血统的人相比，拥有更多非洲血统的人平均寿命更短，死亡风险更高。这一发现为这个历史悠久的非裔美国人骨骼样本中的结构性暴力提供了证据。社会建构的负面影响体现在骨骼样本中，可以通过使用统计方法结合人们生活的文化背景信息来检测。