Bone mineral‐osteon analysis of Yupik‐inupiaq skeletons

Abstract

Living adult Eskimos from St. Lawrence Island, North Alaska, and Canada undergo an earlier and more rapid rate of age-related bone mineral loss compared to U.S. whites. Further, it has been shown that Eskimos and Indians differ in patterns of osteon remodeling at the Haversian envelope. Femoral bone cores from adult Eskimos skeletons from St. Lawrence Island (n = 53), Kodiak Island (n = 92), Baffin Island (n = 44), and Southampton Island (n = 69) were analyzed and the results compared with those obtained from cores from U.S. whites (n = 144). Cortical thickness, bone mineral content of cores, cortical bone density, secondary osteon and Haversian canal number and area were quantified for each core. Ages at death were estimated by histological methods and compared with the ages at death estimated by morphological methods for the Eskimo skeletons. Known ages at death were compared with histologically estimated ages at death for the U.S. white series. St. Lawrence Island and Kodiak Island (Yupik speakers) Eskimo cortical thickness values were significantly (P less than .05) greater than Baffin Island and Southampton Island (Inupiaq speakers) Eskimos cortical thickness values but less than the cortical thickness values for U.S. whites. The bone mineral content of the Southampton Eskimos femoral cores was the lowest found in this study. Histological analysis of the femoral bone sections showed that Eskimos contain more osteons per unit area than U.S. whites. No differences in osteon size were noted between the two populations. Differences in patterns of osteon remodeling between Eskimos and whites were inferred. Age at death estimation by histological methods in Eskimos using U.S. white regression equations yielded age estimates in poor agreement with those obtained by morphological methods.

Cortical bone maintenance in an historic Afro‐American Cemetery sample from Cedar Grove, Arkansas

“…A comparison with published femoral cortical thickness measures of prehistoric (Carlson et al, 1976;Martin and Armelagos, 1979;Thompson and Gunness-Hey, 1981) and contemporary groups (Garn, 1970;Thompson, 1980) suggests that the majority of the Cedar Grove males and females match or exceed normal standards for cortical bone thickness. When cortical thickness is standardized by using femoral length (in order to control for variability induced by stature differences), the normalized values (not shown here) are consistent with values reported by Dewey and co-workers (1969) and Ericksen (1976).…”

Estimating age at death from an archaeological bone sample – a preliminary study based on comparison of histomorphometric methods

“…However, later publications disagree, providing evidence for considerable differences in estimated age at death using the same method among different populations (Reichs 1998). Other studies indicate that Inuit populations display higher osteon density than European and North American populations (Thompson andGuiness-Hey 1981 cited in Reichs 1998). As of today, it seems that determining regression equations for particular geographical areas is necessary (Cho et al 2002;Kim et al 2007;Bednarek et al 2009).…”

Osteon remodeling dynamics in the Cayo Santiago Macaca mulatta: The effect of matriline

“…A genetic effect on osteon remodeling dynamics has been suggested (Laughlin et al, 1979;Mazess, 1966;Thompson and Gunness-Hey, 1981), but not tested. Frost (1987a) provided a list of factors known to influence osteonal remodeling.…”