Abstract
This study compares two cemetery series together with their civil records from the city of Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, which spotlight changes in lifestyle, life expectancy, and health during the twentieth century. To this end, we scored health indications in a skeletal series from the Central Cemetery of Mérida (N = 104; collected during the beginning of last century), and a recent population from the Xoclán Cemetery of Mérida, collected last decade (N = 174). The latter materializes living conditions towards and during the turn of the twenty-first century. The records under study include basic life and socioeconomic information, obtained from the civil records, along with skeletal data of age at death, sex, benign tumors, nonspecific stress markers, arthritis, and osteopenia. Our results, once age-corrected, indicate a rise in almost all analyzed indications towards the turn of the present century, which we will discuss in terms of pharmaceutical advances, public sanitation and longevity, changes in lifestyle and nutrition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Brickley M, Ives R (2008) The bioarchaeology of metabolic bone disease. Academic Press, Oxford
Brooks ST, Suchey JM (1990) Skeletal age determination based on the os pubis: a comparison of the Ascari-Nemeskéri and Suchey Brooks methods. Hum Evol 5:227–238
Bruzek J (2002) A method for visual determination of sex, using the human hip bone. Am J Phys Anthropol 117:158–167
Buikstra JE, Ubelaker D (1994) Standards for data collection form human skeletal remains. Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series no. 44, Fayetteville
Chi-Keb J et al (2013) A new reference collection of documented human skeletons from Mérida, Yucatan, Mexico. Homo 64(5):366–376
Consejo Nacional de Población (2013) Indicadores demográficos básicos 1990–2010, México http://www.conapo.gob.mx/es/CONAPO/De_las_Entidades_Federativas_1990-2010. Accessed 9 May 2010
Cova C (2010) Cultural patterns of trauma among 19th-century-born males in cadaver collections. Am Anthropol 112:589–606
Gómez-Valdés J et al (2011) Discriminant function analysis for sex assessment in pelvic girdle bones: sample of the contemporary Mexican population. J Forensic Sci 56:297–301
Gómez-Valdés J et al (2012) Comparison of methods to determine sex by evaluating the greater sciatic notch: visual, angular and geometric morphometrics. Forensic Sci Int 221:156.e1–156.e7
INEGI 2013a XII Censo de Población y Vivienda de México (México), Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía http://www.inegi.org.mx/est/contenidos/Proyectos/ccpv/cpv2000/. Accessed 9 May 2010
INEGI 2013b. II Conteo de Población y Vivienda de México, Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía http://www.inegi.org.mx/est/contenidos/proyectos/ccpv/cpv2005/. Accessed 9 May 2010
Lindeberg S (2010) Food and western disease. Health and nutrition from an evolutionary perspective. Wiley-Blackwell, New York
Lovejoy C et al (1985) Chronological metamorphosis of the auricular surface of the ilium: a new method for the determination of adult skeletal age-at-death. Am J Phys Anthropol 68:15–28
Menéndez A, Gómez J, Sánchez G (2011) Comparación de ecuaciones de regresión lineal para estimar estatura en restos óseos humanos en población mexicana. Antropo 25:11–21
Milner G (2013) Trauma in the medieval to early modern Sortebrode from Odense, Denmark. In: Lozada M, O’Donnabh B (eds) The dead tell tales. Essays in honor of Jane E. Buikstra. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, University of California, Los Angeles, pp 172–185
Ortner DJ (2003) Identification of pathological conditions in human skeletal remains. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Patch RW (1991) Decolonization, the agrarian problem and the origins of the caste war, 1812–1847. In: Brannon JT, Gilbert MJ (eds) Land, labor, and capital in modern Yucatan. Essays in regional history and political economic. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, pp 51–82
Reed N (2001) The caste war of Yucatán. Stanford University, Stanford. (Revised edition)
Schultz M (1988) Paläopathologische diagnostik. In: Knußmann R (ed) Anthropologie, wesen und methoden der anthropologie, vol 1. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart, pp 480–496
Talavera A et al (2006) Catálogo San Nicolás Tolentino: una colección osteológica contemporánea mexicana. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México
Tiesler V et al. (2012) What we learn from the past: health, life style and urbanism in prehispanic, colonial and modern populations in Yucatán. In: Meeting supplement of the 54° international congress of Americanists 54, Viena, Austria
Tiesler V et al (2015) Qué aprendemos del pasado: salud, estilo de vida y urbanismos en poblaciones prehispánicas, coloniales y contemporáneas en la península de Yucatán. Estudios de Antropol Biol 17(1):11–30
Ubelaker DH (1989) Human skeletal remains, 12th edn. Taraxacum, Washington, D.C.
Waldron T (2009) Trauma. In: Barker G (ed) Palaeopathology. Cambridge, manuals in archaeology. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 138–167
Acknowledgements
Funding was received through the projects “Demografía y enfermedad de los antiguos habitantes de Yucatán a través del análisis histomorfológico de sus restos óseos” (CONACYT, no. 37743-H), and “Nuevas referencias histomorfométricas sobre edad a la muerte, morbilidad y condiciones de vida entre los antiguos mayas (CONACYT, no. 49982, no. 152105), along with UC MEXUS Colaborative Grant VT/KT 2015-2017). We are indebted to our kind colleagues of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum for providing access and help throughout the study of Mérida’s historic cemetery collection from the Cementerio Central, to the Facultad de Ciencias Antropológicas de la Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, and the Dirección de Panteones y Cementerios de la Ciudad de Mérida, Yucatán (municipal government), for lending continued logistical and financial support for our recovery and recording efforts at the Xoclán cemetery. Collection and curation of the skeletal series was made possible by an agreement between the Autonomous University of Yucatán and the Municipal Government of Mérida (represented by Manuel Jesús Fuentes Alcocer and Leandro Martínez García). The support we received from Dr. Christopher Goetz, Araceli Hurtado, Margarita Valencia, Raúl López Pérez and Saúl Chay Vela whose initial study of the Xoclán collection has set the pace of our present endeavors, to the cemetery keepers was instrumental in collecting and identifying the skeletal individuals.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tiesler, V., Chi-Keb, J.R., Ortega Muñoz, A. (2020). Crossing the Threshold of Modern Life: Comparing Disease Patterns Between Two Documented Urban Cemetery Series from the City of Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico. In: Azcorra, H., Dickinson, F. (eds) Culture, Environment and Health in the Yucatan Peninsula. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27001-8_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27001-8_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27000-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27001-8
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)