Gendered Differences in Accidental Trauma to Upper and Lower Limb Bones at Aquincum, Roman Hungary

Abstract

Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractIt is hypothesized that men and women living in the border provinces of the Roman Empire may have encountered different physical dangers associated with variation in their occupations and activities. Limb bone trauma data were used to assess sex-based differences in physical hazards and evidence for fracture healing and treatment. Two hundred and ten skeletons were examined from a late 1 st to early 4 th century AD cemetery at Aquincum (Budapest, Hungary). Upper and lower limb bone fracture types, frequencies, distributions, and associated complications were recorded, and gendered patterns in injury risks were explored. Of the 23 fractures identified, both sexes had injuries indicative of falls; males exhibited the only injuries suggestive of higherenergy and more direct forces. Most fractures were well-healed with few complications. The extremity trauma at Aquincum suggests that people buried here experienced less hazardous physical activities than at other Roman provincial sites. The patterns of trauma indicate that "traditional" gender roles were in place, whereby male civilians participated in more physically dangerous activities than females. Additionally, treatment may have been equally accessible to men and women, but certain fracture types proved more challenging to reduce using the techniques available.

Trauma patterns and injury prevalence in early medieval Säben‐Sabiona, Italy

“…The present data illustrate that in comparison to other Late Antique commonly seen in accidents (Gilmour et al, 2015). Both collisions and falls can lead to such injuries (Lewis, 2012;Porta, 2005;Rowbotham & Blau, 2016).…”

“…Various authors argue that the predominance of observed bone damage relates to injuries obtained through accidents associated with daily activities with high trauma risk factors (Gerhards, 2007;. Bioarchaeological research by Gilmour et al (2015), Mant (2019) and Myszka et al (2012) show that a significant amount of bone trauma is attributable to labour-related accidents. However, as shown in the literature (e.g., Caffell & Holst, 2012;Šlaus et al, 2012;Smith, 2017), violence-related trauma seems to be common in past societies, especially during periods of political changes.…”

Domestication and large animal interactions: Skeletal trauma in northern Vietnam during the hunter-gatherer Da But period

“…Bone is a dynamic tissue with the ability to remodel and as such, in the case of healed trauma, it is most often impossible to estimate at what age an individual suffered an injury. In addition, when the skeleton of an individual exhibits multiple healed traumas it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain if the injuries were sustained in one traumatic event or over the person’s lifetime [44]. In human skeletal remains, the bones fractured, distribution of injuries, types of fracture lines, and associated cultural context can help to interpret the mechanism of injury in the past [34].…”

The changing shape of palaeopathology: The contribution of skeletal shape analyses to investigations of pathological conditions

“…Shape analyses have also been used to evaluate therapeutic interventions, their application, and (lack of) success in the past. Angulation, rotation, and overlap at healed fracture sites are investigated by Grauer and Roberts (1996), Judd and Roberts (1999), and Gilmour et al (2015) who recorded the amount of malunion (i.e., angulation, apposition, overlap, rotation) present between the segments of healed long‐bone fractures. This information is typically used to comment on the absence or unsuccessful nature of fracture treatment (interpretations based on data collected on modern humans by Roberts, 1988).…”