Health Consequences of European Contact in the Great Plains: A Comparison of Systemic Stress Levels in Pre‐ and Post‐Contact Arikara Populations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The biocultural effects of European contact varied considerably throughout the Americas. Some populations were decimated by colonialism, while others benefited from trade relationships and access to new technologies. It has been suggested that initial contact with European fur traders and explorers was economically favourable for Plains village populations, thereby facilitating a period of cultural florescence. In this study, we evaluate the hypothesis that Plains groups were better off than their predecessors during the initial contact period by comparing frequencies of enamel hypoplasia, cribra orbitalia, and porotic hyperostosis in pre‐ and post‐contact Arikara skeletal assemblages. We included both juveniles and adults in our sample to capture variation in the stress experience of different segments of the population. Our analysis revealed similarly low frequencies of cribra orbitalia in the pre‐ and post‐contact groups and no observed cases of porotic hyperostosis. Enamel hypoplasia, however, was significantly more prevalent among post‐contact Arikara villagers when compared to their pre‐contact counterparts, which suggests that stress levels were higher after European contact. Additionally, enamel hypoplasia was most common among post‐contact juveniles. The elevated frequency of enamel hypoplasia in the post‐contact sample combined with the low frequencies of cribra orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis suggests that disease stress, rather than nutritional deficiencies, was likely responsible for the decline in overall health following European contact. These results also suggest that juveniles are sensitive indicators of systemic stress within a population and should be included in bioarchaeological analyses of prehistoric health when available. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".