A skeletal sample of 296 individuals from a 19th century American poorhouse cemetery is examined for the frequency and chronological distribution of linear enamel hypoplasias on the mandibular canines and maxillary central incisors. Dental enamel hypoplasias may be considered to be indicators of increased exposure to health risk at the time of weaning. The purpose of this study is to examine childhood stress and provide a relative measure of that stress, as evidenced by hypoplasias, in a historic sample that represents an industrializing population. The frequency of enamel hypoplasias per individual by tooth ranged from 70 to 73%, with a peak age at stress of 2.5 to 3 years for the maxillary central incisor and 3.5 to 4 years for the mandibular canine. There were no significant differences in the presence of hypoplasias between males and females. The peak age at stress between 2.5 and 4 years in this 19th century sample transects the ranges reported for prehistoric populations (2-6 years) and for modern groups (0-3 years). These results indicate that the stress associated with weaning probably occurred earlier in incipient industrial societies than in prehistoric hunter/gatherers and agriculturalists, yet not as early as in modern industrial groups. The high level of childhood stress in this skeletal sample compared with that of other samples may indicate a change in health, at least among the lowest class, associated with the cultural transition from an agricultural to an industrial society.
In this study of an Anglo-American cemetery used between the 1830s and 1907, contemporary mortuary trends and cultural attitudes toward death provide the historical context necessary to interpret variation in mortuary display. Analysis of skeletal remains provides information on dental caries, dental care, and enamel hypoplasia and allows comparison of the relatively high-status Weir family"s health with that of other population samples. Analysis of artifacts reveals four styles of grave decoration attributed not to intrasite status variability but to the appearance, peak, and decline of Victorian era cultural expressions of the "beautification" of death. Within this wider cultural trend, intersite comparisons may be made of status display. The rise and decline of the nineteenth-century ideal of the beautification of death adds vital cultural content for understanding the material expression of an observed process that is a cycle of display.
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