Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Detecting Epidemiologic Transitions in Pre-Contact Kodiak

对过去狩猎采集者人口增长动态的研究主要集中在食物可得性和稀缺性对狩猎采集者健康、生育和死亡率的影响。然而，在过去的二十年中，对当代狩猎采集者的人口统计研究表明，传染病也影响着他们的健康和人口增长。该项目探讨了居住在阿拉斯加湾科迪亚克群岛的阿鲁提特人的祖先，由于他们严重依赖海洋和淡水鱼，以及他们的食物制备和社区卫生习惯，他们很容易受到鱼类传播和其他胃肠道寄生虫的侵害。随着时间的推移，海鱼和淡水鱼的饮食重要性发生了变化，食物制备和卫生习惯也发生了变化，阿鲁提特人可能会感染不同的寄生虫病，从而导致健康和人口增长方面的变化。为了评估这些说法，联合pi将恢复并量化科迪亚克考古沉积物中保存的寄生虫遗骸的相对频率变化，然后将这些结果与先前关于alutiq食物方式、定居习惯和人口增长记录变化的研究结果进行比较。该项目将通过探索行为和生态对疾病的影响及其对人口增长率的影响，增加我们对狩猎采集者疾病经历的日益增长的知识。该项目还将说明寄生虫学分析在系统进行时揭示传染病流行的长期变化的潜力。由于这些寄生虫的生命周期涉及到除人类最终宿主外的许多宿主物种，该项目还将进一步阐明这些寄生虫分类群及其非人类宿主的生态学和生物地理学。回归传统食物是环太平洋东北部许多土著努力振兴祖先文化的重要组成部分，包括当代科迪亚克阿鲁提特人。虽然这一复兴对健康的益处被证明有效地对抗了这些社区中的退行性疾病流行病，如糖尿病，但传统食品也有其自身的健康风险，必须了解这些风险，才能避免这些风险。该项目将提供有关当代阿鲁提克饮食中鱼类和食品制备方法对健康的重要性的宝贵知识。

Research on the population growth dynamics of past hunter-gatherers has focused mainly on the influence of food availability and scarcity on hunter-gatherer health, fertility, and mortality. Over the last two decades, however, demographic research among contemporary hunter-gatherers has revealed that infectious diseases also influence their health and population growth.This project explores the possibility that the ancestral Alutiit inhabiting the Kodiak Archipelago in the Gulf of Alaska were vulnerable to fish-borne and other gastrointestinal parasites as a result of their heavy reliance on marine and freshwater fish as well as their food preparation and community sanitation practices. As the dietary importance of marine vs. freshwater fish changed over time, and as food preparation and sanitation practices likewise changed, the Alutiit would have been exposed to different parasitic diseases, entailing changes in health and population growth. To evaluate these claims, the co-PI will recover and quantify changes in the relative frequencies of parasite remains preserved in Kodiak archaeological deposits, then compare these results against previous research on changes in Alutiiq food-ways, settlement practices, and population growth records.This project will add to our growing knowledge about hunter-gatherer disease experiences by exploring behavioral and ecological influences on disease and its impact on population growth rates. The project will also illustrate the potential of parasitological analysis to uncover long-term changes in the prevalence of infectious diseases when pursued systematically. Because the lifecycles of these parasites involve many host species beside their human final hosts, this project will also shed further light on the ecology and biogeography of these parasite taxa and their nonhuman hosts.Returning to traditional foods is a major component of many indigenous efforts to revitalize ancestral culture across the northeastern Pacific Rim, including among contemporary Kodiak Alutiit. While the health benefits of this revitalization are proving effective in counteracting degenerative disease epidemics such as diabetes among these communities, traditional foods also pose their own health risks that must be understood so that these can be avoided. This project will provide valuable knowledge about the health importance of fish and food preparation practices in the contemporary Alutiiq diet.