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

这个项目回答了关于身体大小和死亡率之间关系的问题。 身体大小如何影响死亡率？身体大小和死亡率之间的关系取决于社会地位或病史吗？ 这些问题在当今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，医学专业人士和后中世纪欧洲历史学家的兴趣。它还将促进对一名理科女研究生的培训。 身材矮小和体重在分布的两个极端一直与现代人类的健康状况不佳有关，但对身体大小和死亡率之间关系的性质知之甚少。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集，探讨了经统计估计的身体大小（身高和体重）与死亡率之间的关系，以及这种关系如何随社会经济地位和健康状况不佳的证据而变化。通过过渡分析估计死亡时的骨龄，并使用回归公式重建身体尺寸，以根据骨骼测量估计身高和体重。从Gompertz-Makeham模型作为基线死亡率开始，使用Usher健康和死亡率的多状态模型来确定特定体型是否会导致死亡风险增加。将社会经济状况和发病率的证据作为协变量进行建模，以确定体型对死亡率的影响是直接的（独立于其他压力因素）、间接的（与其他压力因素协同）还是巧合。高风险的身体类型的频率之间的墓地进行比较，以测试不同的社会阶层之间的风险分布。

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.