Frailty, thy Name is Not Always Woman: Health and Disease of Women in the Past

The unique nature of the human skeleton as a product of both tissue level bone biology as well as behavior over the life course, provides bioarchaeologists with a powerful perspective on the construction of gendered identity in past populations. Variation or changes in bone morphology observed on the skeleton have particularly been used in the study of gendered health. However, observation of traces of health and disease on the skeleton are first viewed within the lens of biological sex, casting subsequent interpretations into normative reconstructions of identity. For example, the frequent observation of bone loss (or osteoporosis) in the bioarchaeological record is typically regarded as the inevitable outcome of the female skeleton bound by the aging body and reproductive hormones. Drawing on empirical studies of bone maintenance in the bioarchaeological record I have conducted using a life course perspective, I demonstrate how patterns of bone loss are not only directed by reproductive biology but uniquely crafted by individual and population-specific gender-related choice and roles.

Speaker: Sabrina Agarwal, Professor, Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Room 101