Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Injuries, Impairment, and Intersecting Identities: The Poor in Buffalo, NY 1851–1913

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability

Part of the book series: Bioarchaeology and Social Theory ((BST))

Abstract

According to intersectionality theory , the intersection of age, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and physical impairment can create dynamic social identities. This theoretical stance is supported by historical and osteological evidence about the former residents of the Erie County Poorhouse . Historical records suggest that, in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, poorhouse “inmates” were generally considered “undeserving poor.” Identities were constructed through the complex interaction of multiple facets of their individual identities. Although the path to the poorhouse varied, one commonality was an inability to work and support oneself. Erie County Hospital annual reports indicated that males were ten times more likely to be treated for traumatic injuries than females. Similar demographic trends were observed in the skeletal sample recovered during salvage excavations at the former Erie County Poorhouse cemetery. Skeletal analyses of 207 adult skeletons indicated that adult males were more than four times as likely to acquire observable appendicular traumatic injuries as adult female. When clinical literature was used as a guide to assess physical impairment, traumatic injuries tended to be more severe in males versus females. These findings suggest that the constituent elements of their social identities predisposed individuals to differential risk of sustaining traumatic injuries and associated physical impairments. Physical impairments may have variously reinforced or altered perceived social identities via the intersection of disabled identities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    Geller (2009) uses the concept “hegemonic bodyscape” to describe the normal or heteronormative contemporary view of the male and female bodies.

References

  • Agarwal, S. C., & Glencross, B. A. (2011). Social bioarchaeology. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Berger, T. D., & Trinkaus, E. (1995). Patterns of trauma among the Neandertals. Journal of Archaeological Science, 22, 841–852.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Board of Supervisors of Erie County, N. Y. (1852–1913). Proceedings of the Board of Supervisors of Erie County, N.Y. Buffalo, N.Y.: Multiple Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bontje, P., Josephsson, S., Kinebanian, A., & Tamura, Y. (2004). Occupational adaptation: The experiences of older persons with physical disabilities. AJOT: American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 58(2), 140–149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boutin, A. T. (2016). Exploring the social construction of disability: An application of the bioarchaeology of personhood model to a pathological skeleton from ancient Bahrain. International Journal of Paleopathology, 12, 17–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buckberry, J. L., & Chamberlain, A. T. (2002). Age estimation from the auricular surface of the ilium: A revised method. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 119(3), 231–239.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buikstra, J. E., & Ubelaker, D. H. (1994). Standards for data collection from human skeletal remains. In Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series No. 44. Fayetteville, AR.

    Google Scholar 

  • Byrnes, J. F. (2015). ‘A pauper’s shame’: A biocultural and historical investigation of trauma, impairment, and disability in the Erie County Poorhouse Cemetery (Ph.D. dissertation, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY).

    Google Scholar 

  • Chambers, J. W. (2004). The tyranny of change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cho, S., Crenshaw, K. W., & McCall, L. (2013). Toward a field of intersectionality studies: Theory, applications, and praxis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 38(4), 785–810.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Collins, P. H. (2003). Some group matters: Intersectionality, situated standpoints, and black feminist thought. In T. L. Lott & J. P. Pittman (Eds.), A companion to African-American philosophy (Vol. 25, pp. 205–229). Malden: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crenshaw, K. W. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989, 139–167.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crenshaw, K. W. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dettwyler, K. A. (1991). Can paleopathology provide evidence for ‘compassion’? American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 84, 375–384.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dickel, D. N., & Doran, G. H. (1989). Severe neural tube defect syndrome from the Early Archaic of Florida. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 80, 325–334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diner, S. J. (1998). A very different age: Americans of the Progressive Era. New York: Hill and Wang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Finlay, N. (1999). Disability and archaeology. Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 15(2).

    Google Scholar 

  • Frayer, D. W., Horton, W. A., Macchiareli, R., & Mussi, M. (1987). Dwarfism in an adolescent from the Italian Late Upper Paleolithic. Nature, 330, 60–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Geller, P. L. (2004). Transforming bodies, transforming identities: A consideration of pre-Columbian Maya corporeal beliefs and practices (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Ann Arbor).

    Google Scholar 

  • Geller, P. L. (2009). Bodyscapes, biology, and heteronormativity. American Anthropologist, 111(4), 504–516.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gerber, D. A. (1989). The making of an American pluralism: Buffalo, New York, 1825–1860. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, M. F. (2015). Intersecting deviance: Social work, difference and the legacy of eugenics. British Journal of Social Work, 45(1), 313–330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Glencross, B., & Sawchuk, L. (2003). The person-years construct: Ageing and the prevalence of health related phenomena from skeletal samples. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 13(6), 369–374.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, M. (1983). High hopes: The rise and decline of Buffalo, New York. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gowland, R. (2006). Age as an aspect of social identity: The archaeological funerary evidence. In R. L. Gowland & C. J. Knüsel (Eds.), The social archaeology of funerary remains (pp. 143–154). Oxford: Oxbow.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gowland, R., & Thompson, T. (2013). Human identity and identification. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Grauer, A. L., & Roberts, C. A. (1996). Paleoepidemiology, healing, and possible treatment of trauma in the medieval cemetery population of St. Helen-on-the-Walls, York, England. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 100(4), 531–544.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grech, S. (2011). Poverty and disability. Disability & Society, 26(7), 888–891.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Groce, N., Kett, M., Lang, R., & Trani, J.-F. (2011). Disability and poverty: The need for a more nuanced understanding of implications for development policy and practice. Third World Quarterly, 32(8), 1493–1513.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Halcrow, S. E., & Tayles, N. (2008). The bioarchaeological investigations of childhood and social age: Problems and prospects. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 15(2), 190–215.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heiser, V. G. (1927). Rebuilding the industrial cripple. The North American Review, 224, 84–90.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higgins, R. L. (1998). The biology of poverty: Epidemiological transition in Western New York (Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY).

    Google Scholar 

  • Higgins, R. L. (2014). Mortality registeries from 1880–1913.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higgins, R. L., Liber Raines, J., & Montague, N. L. (2014). Confirming burial location in the Erie County Poorhouse Cemetery using death certificates and mortality records from 1880–1913. In 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropology, Calgary, Alberta, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Howson, B. (2008). Almshouses: A social & architectural history. Stroud: The History Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hubert, J. (Ed.). (2000). Madness, disability and social exclusion: The archaeology and anthropology of ‘difference’ (One World Archaeology). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Judd, M. A., & Roberts, C. A. (1999). Fracture trauma in a medieval British farming village. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 109, 229–243.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Katz, M. B. (1996). In the shadow of the poorhouse: A social history of welfare in America. New York: BasicBooks.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klaus, H. D. (2008). Out of light came darkness: Bioarchaeology of mortuary ritual, health, and ethnogenesis in the Lambayeque Valley Complex, North Coast Peru (AD 900–1750). The Ohio State University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Knudson, K. J., Pestle, W. J., Torres-Rouff, C., & Pimentel, G. (2012). Assessing the life history of an Andean Traveller through biogeochemistry: Stable and radiogenic isotope analyses of archaeological human remains from Northern Chile. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 22, 435–451.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knudson, K. J., & Stojanowski, C. M. (2008). New directions in bioarchaeology: Recent contributions to the study of human social identities. Journal of Archaeological Research, 16(4), 397–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kowalski, E., & Chung, K. C. (2012). Impairment and disability: Renoir’s adaptive coping strategies against rheumatoid arthritis. Hand (New York, N.Y.), 7(4), 357–363.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. (1977). The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics, 33, 159–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Liber Raines, J. (2014). Demographics from Annual Reports of Erie County Poorhouse.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lovell, N. C. (2016). Tiptoeing through the rest of his life: A functional adaptation to a leg shortened by femoral neck fracture. International Journal of Paleopathology, 13, 91–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacKinnon, C. A. (2013). Intersectionality as method: A note. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 38(4), 1019–1030.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marsteller, S. J., Torres-Rouff, C., & Knudson, K. J. (2011). Pre-Columbian Andean sickness ideology and the social experience of leishmaniasis: A contextualized analysis of bioarchaeological and paleopathological data from San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. International Journal of Paleopathology, 1(1), 24–34.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marx, K., Engels, F., Moore, S., & McLellan, D. (1992). The communist manifesto (English translation). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McLean, F. H. (1907). Industrial accidents and dependency in New York State. Charities and the Commons, 19, 1203–1212.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nielsen, K. E. (2012). A disability history of the United States. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nystrom, K. C., Sirianni, J., Higgins, R., Perrelli, D., & Liber Raines, J. L. (2017). Structural inequality and postmortem examination at the Erie County Poorhouse. In K. C. Nystrom (Ed.), The bioarchaeology of dissection and autopsy in the United States (Bioarchaeology and social theory, pp. 279–300). New York, NY: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perrelli, D. J., & Hartner, J. E. (2014). Erie County Poorhouse Cemetery Site (UB 2756) excavation methods and results. In 83rd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropology, Calgary, Alberta, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rondinelli, R. D., Genovese, E., Katz, R. T., Mayer, T. G., Mueller, K., Ranavaya, M., et al. (Eds.). (2008). Guides to the evaluation of permanent impairment (6th ed.). Chicago, IL: American Medical Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothman, D. J. (2002). The Discovery of the Asylum: Social order and disorder in the New Republic (New lines in criminology). New Brunswich: Aldine Transaction.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheer, J., & Groce, N. (1988). Impairment as a human constant: Cross-cultural and historical perspectives on variation. Journal of Social Issues, 44(1), 23–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schmitt, A., Wapler, U., Couallier, V., & Cunha, E. (2007). Are bone losers distinguishable from bone formers in a skeletal series? Implications for adult age at death assessment methods. HOMO - Journal of Comparative Human Biology, 58(1), 53–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schweik, S. M. (2009). The ugly laws: Disability in public (History of disability). New York: NYU Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shakespeare, T. (1999). Commentary: Observations on disability and archaeology. Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 15(2), 99–101.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shakespeare, T. (2013). Disability rights and wrongs revisited (2nd ed.). Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

    Google Scholar 

  • Siebers, T. (2008). Disability theory. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sofaer, J. (2006). The body as material culture: A theoretical osteoarchaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Southwell-Wright, W. (2013). Past perspectives: What can archaeology offer disability studies? In M. Wappett & K. Arndt (Eds.), Emerging perspectives on disability studies (pp. 67–95). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Stern, M. J. (1987). Society and family strategy: Erie County, New York, 1850–1920. Albany: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stodder, A. L. W. (2016). Quantifying Morbidity in prehispanic southwestern Villages. In C. L. Herhahn & A. F. Ramenofsky (Eds.), Exploring cause and explanation: Historical ecology, demography, and movement in the American Southwest (pp. 121–136). Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Stodder, A. L. W., & Palkovich, A. M. (Eds.). (2012). The bioarchaeology of individuals. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tilley, L. (2015). Theory and practice in the bioarchaeology of care (Bioarchaeology and social theory). New York, NY: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tilley, L., & Cameron, T. (2014). Introducing the index of care: A web-based application supporting archaeological research into health-related care. International Journal of Paleopathology, 6, 5–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tilley, L., & Oxenham, M. F. (2011). Survival against the odds: Modeling the social implications of care provision to seriously disabled individuals. International Journal of Paleopathology, 1(1), 35–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tilley, L., & Schrenk, A. A. (Eds.). (2017). New developments in the bioarchaeology of care: Further case studies and expanded theory (Bioarchaeology and social theory). New York, NY: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tremblay Critcher, L. A. (2017). An exploration of a modified bioarchaeology of care methodological approach for historic institutionalized populations. In L. Tilley & A. A. Schrenk (Eds.), New developments in the bioarchaeology of care: Further case studies and expanded theory (Bioarchaeology and social theory, pp. 277–288). New York, NY: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trinkaus, E., & Zimmerman, M. R. (1982). Trauma among the Shanidar Neanderthals. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 57, 61–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walter, F. J. (1958). A social and cultural history of Buffalo, New York, 1865–1901. Western Reserve University.

    Google Scholar 

  • WHO. (2001). International classification of functioning. Disability and health. Geneva: World Health Organization.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, J. L., & Lemaire, E. D. (2014). Linking bone changes in the distal femur to functional deficits. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 24(6), 709–721.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to Jennifer Liber Raines, for both facilitating access to the historical documentation, as well as sharing her passion and general knowledge for Buffalo’s rich history with me. Much of my comparative analysis relied on data collected by Rosanne Higgins, in which she provided access to her dissertation data on the mortality data from the ECP. Jennifer Odien assisted in collecting traumatic injury, demographic, and interobserver data for this study. Erin Chapman for her assistance with photography editing. Many thanks as well to Jennifer Muller and the three anonymous reviewers who provided critical reviews and commentaries on this chapter. David Ingleman for his keen editorial eye and thought-provoking conversations lending to the conceptualization of this work. Lastly, Joyce Sirianni for her continued support with my dissertation and beyond.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Social Sciences, University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu, 91-1001 Farrington Highway, Kapolei, HI, 96707, USA

    Jennifer F. Byrnes

Authors
  1. Jennifer F. Byrnes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jennifer F. Byrnes .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Social Sciences, University of Hawai‘i–West O‘ahu, Kapolei, Hawaii, USA

    Jennifer F. Byrnes

  2. Department of Anthropology, Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York, USA

    Jennifer L. Muller

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Byrnes, J.F. (2017). Injuries, Impairment, and Intersecting Identities: The Poor in Buffalo, NY 1851–1913. In: Byrnes, J., Muller, J. (eds) Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56949-9_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56949-9_11

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56948-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56949-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation