Analysis of pathology and activity‐related changes to the patellae of individuals from Tell Abraq

Abstract

The examination of comingled ossuary collections creates unique analytical issues as bones are rarely articulated, requiring that the skeletal elements be examined on an individual basis. A result is that the estimation of crucial demographic information like age at death and sex becomes problematic and attempts to ascertain this information involve a high degree of error. Bearing these issues in mind, however, the focus of this project is to identify and interpret signs of osteoarthritis, osteochondritis dissecans, and osteochondral fracturing, as well as to score for the presence and degree of musculoskeletal markers, on patellae from the ossuary at Tell Abraq. A secondary goal of this project was to utilize the patellae to elicit both estimations of minimum number of individuals and the ratio of sex within the population. Preliminary results indicate a high prevalence of osteoarthritis, osteochondritis dissecans, and enchondral fracture that was not correlated to estimated sex. This lack of correlation may be due to several factors, including difficulty in sex estimation based on metric analysis of a single element, a skewed sex distribution, or an actual lack of correlation. Regardless of the difficulties of estimating sex in a comingled collection, it seems clear that both men and women were exposed to conditions that fostered the development of osteoarthritis and that trauma to the knee was a common occurrence for those ultimately interred in the ossuary.

Commingled crypts: Comparative health among Byzantine monastics in the Levant

“…There is limited research concerning the health, behavior and lifestyle experienced by these communities, who by nature of the funerary program preference, have been excluded from bioarchaeological and paleopathological research. Often, a specific disease process or specific element is investigated within the sociocultural context of the group, for example, dental disease (Da‐Gloria & Larsen, ; Palubeckaite et al, ), osteoarthritis (Austin, ), trauma (Boucherie, Jørkov, & Smith, ; Brødholt & Holck, ; Osterholtz, ) and recently, patellar pathology (Osterholtz, Harrod, & Miller, ). In more holistic paleopathological analyses, preservation is often not considered and only disease prevalence is reported, which underestimates disease presence (e.g., Ortner & Frohlich, ; Panakhyo & Jacobi, ; Pfeiffer, ).…”