Frailty or resilience? Hazard-based and cumulative phenotype approaches to discerning signals of health inequality in medieval London.

Bioarchaeology uses human skeletal remains to reconstruct varied experiences of individuals and populations in the past, including patterns of health across time periods and cultural contexts. In the past three decades, bioarchaeological studies have highlighted the concept of "frailty," operationalizing it as increased risk of mortality or cumulative phenotypes. Using data from medieval London cemeteries, we integrate these two approaches to frailty in past populations.

Exercises in ethically engaged work in biological anthropology.

An ethical paradigm shift currently taking place within biological anthropology is pushing scholars to envisage and develop paths toward more ethical futures. Drawing from case studies in our own teaching, research, and fieldwork experience, we reflect on the complex, diverse, and dynamic nature of ethical considerations in our field. We discuss the acquisition and institutional narrative of a human osteological teaching collection at the University of Louisville as an embodiment of structural apathy turned structural violence, and the need for professional guidance in the potential retirement of deceased individuals from our classrooms.

Ethical futures in biological anthropology: Research, teaching, community engagement, and curation involving deceased individuals.

Although ethical reforms in biological anthropology have gained ground in recent years, there is still a scarcity of ethical standards for work involving historical documented collections (HDCs) at US museums and universities. These collections of deceased individuals were created in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries under anatomy laws that targeted socially marginalized communities and allowed for the dissection of these individuals without their consent. Due to the extensive information associated with the individuals and made available to researchers, these collections have served as foundational resources for theory and methods development in biological anthropology into the 21st century.

Frail or hale: Skeletal frailty indices in Medieval London skeletons.

To broaden bioarchaeological applicability of skeletal frailty indices (SFIs) and increase sample size, we propose indices with fewer biomarkers (2-11 non-metric biomarkers) and compare these reduced biomarker SFIs to the original metric/non-metric 13-biomarker SFI. From the 2-11-biomarker SFIs, we choose the index with the fewest biomarkers (6-biomarker SFI), which still maintains the statistical robusticity of a 13-biomarker SFI, and apply this index to the same Medieval monastic and nonmonastic populations, albeit with an increased sample size. For this increased monastic and nonmonastic sample, we also propose and implement a 4-biomarker SFI, comprised of biomarkers from each of four stressor categories, and compare these SFI distributions with those of the non-metric biomarker SFIs.

In sickness and in death: Assessing frailty in human skeletal remains.

Stress plays an important role in the etiology of multiple morbid and mortal outcomes among the living. Drawing on health paradigms constructed among the living augments our evolving knowledge of relationships between stress and health. Therefore, elucidating relationships between stress and both chronic and acute skeletal lesions may help clarify our understanding of long-term health trends in the past.