Doctoral Dissertation Improvement: Body Size and Mortality in Post-Medieval England

这个项目回答了关于体型和死亡率之间关系的问题。体型如何影响死亡率？体型和死亡率之间的关系取决于社会地位或病史吗？这些问题在今天的公共卫生领域至关重要。这项研究可能会引起人类学家、流行病学家、医学专家和后中世纪欧洲历史学家的兴趣。它还将促进女性科学研究生的培养。在分布的两个极端，矮小的身材和体重一直与现代人的健康状况不佳有关，但人们对身材和死亡率之间关系的本质知之甚少。该项目关注17 -19世纪伦敦上层、中层和下层社会阶层的骨骼收藏，探索骨骼估计的身体尺寸（身高和质量）与死亡率之间的关系，以及这种关系如何随着社会经济地位和不健康的证据而变化。通过过渡分析估计死亡时的骨骼年龄，使用基于骨骼测量估计身高和体重的回归公式重建身体大小。从Gompertz-Makeham模型作为基准死亡率开始，Usher健康和死亡率的多状态模型被用来确定特定的身体类型是否会导致死亡风险增加。为了确定体型对死亡率的影响是直接的（独立于其他压力源）、间接的（与其他压力源协同）还是巧合，社会经济地位和发病率证据被建模为协变量。比较不同墓地之间高危体质的出现频率，以检验不同社会阶层之间的风险分布差异。

This project answers questions regarding the relationship between body size and mortality. How does body size influence mortality? Does the relationship between body size and mortality depend on social status or a history of illness? These questions are of critical importance in the field of public health today. This study will potentially be of interest to anthropologists, epidemiologists, medical professionals, and historians of post-medieval Europe alike. It will also advance the training of a female graduate student in science. Short stature and body mass at both extremes of the distribution have consistently been linked to poor health outcomes in modern humans, but the nature of the relationship between body size and mortality is poorly understood. Focusing on skeletal collections from London's upper, middle, and lower social strata during the 17th-19th centuries, this project explores the relationship between skeletally estimated body size (stature and mass) and mortality, and how that relationship varies with socioeconomic status and evidence of ill-health. Skeletal age at death is estimated via transition analysis, and body size is reconstructed using regression formulae developed to estimate stature and body mass based on skeletal measurements. Starting with a Gompertz-Makeham model as baseline mortality, the Usher multistate model of health and mortality is used to determine if particular body types result in increased risk of death. Socioeconomic status and evidence of morbidity are modeled as covariates in order to determine whether the influence of body size on mortality is direct (independent of other stressors), indirect (synergistic with other stressors), or coincidental. The frequency of high-risk body types is compared between the cemeteries to test for differential distribution of risk among social strata.