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供应和稀缺对狩猎采集者健康，生育率和死亡率的影响上。然而，在过去的二十年里，对当代狩猎采集者的人口统计学研究表明，传染病也会影响他们的健康和人口增长。本项目探讨了居住在阿拉斯加湾科迪亚克群岛的祖先阿米特人容易受到鱼类影响的可能性-由于它们严重依赖海洋和淡水鱼以及它们的食物制备和群落，卫生习惯。随着时间的推移，海水鱼与淡水鱼的饮食重要性发生了变化，食物准备和卫生习惯也发生了变化，因此，非洲人可能会接触到不同的寄生虫病，从而导致健康和人口增长的变化。为了评估这些说法，共同研究者将恢复并量化科迪亚克考古沉积物中保存的寄生虫遗骸相对频率的变化，然后将这些结果与先前关于科迪亚克食物方式、定居实践、和人口增长记录。这个项目将增加我们对猎人的了解-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，收集疾病经验。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率长期变化的潜力。由于这些寄生虫的生命周期涉及许多宿主物种，除了他们的人类最终宿主，这个项目也将进一步阐明这些寄生虫类群和他们的非人类宿主的生态学和地理学。回归传统食物是许多土著努力振兴整个东北太平洋沿岸的祖先文化的一个重要组成部分，包括当代科迪亚克人。虽然这一振兴对健康的好处证明可以有效地对抗这些社区中的糖尿病等退行性疾病流行病，但传统食品也带来了自己的健康风险，必须了解这些风险，以便避免这些风险。该项目将提供有关鱼类健康重要性的宝贵知识，以及当代素食饮食中的食物准备做法。

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.