Skeletal collections from past human populations provide a unique resource for understanding relationships between human culture and biology, including the study of disease dynamics across space and time. This doctoral dissertation project is a bioarchaeological study of skeletons from the 19th century to investigate the impact of early childhood nutrition and stress on infectious disease mortality in later life. This research contributes to our understanding of paleopathology, human biology and adaptation, and the developmental origins of disease, and has the potential to shift public health attention to early life conditions as a major factor contributing to infectious disease persistence. The project also will support undergraduate and graduate student training in STEM laboratory and field research.
This is a study to understand the role early childhood stress and diet play in mortality from infectious disease. The investigator will assess skeletal pathology, stunting, dental histology, and diet in a skeletal sample of 19th-century cholera victims and contemporaneous cholera survivors, and investigate whether early life conditions increased or decreased survivability later in life, in the context of the developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis. The study will test predictive-adaptive response and plasticity/constraint hypotheses that attempt to explain how stress in early life influences later-life well-being and mortality.
