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的可获得性和稀缺性对狩猎采集者的健康、生育力和死亡率的影响。然而，在过去二十年中，当代狩猎-采集者的人口研究表明，传染病也影响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卢提人祖先由于严重依赖海鱼和淡水鱼及其食物准备和社区卫生做法而易受鱼类和其他胃肠道寄生虫感染的可能性。随着海水鱼与淡水鱼的饮食重要性随着时间的推移而发生变化，以及食物准备和卫生做法也发生了同样的变化，阿卢蒂特人可能会接触到不同的寄生虫病，从而导致健康和种群增长的变化。为了评估这些主张，联合PI将恢复并量化保存在科迪亚克考古沉积物中的寄生虫遗骸相对频率的变化，然后将这些结果与之前关于Alutiiq食物方式、定居做法和人口增长记录变化的研究进行比较。这个项目将通过探索对疾病的行为和生态影响及其对人口增长率的影响，增加我们对狩猎-采集疾病经验的日益增长的了解。该项目还将说明寄生虫学分析在系统开展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除人类最终宿主之外的许多宿主物种，该项目还将进一步阐明这些寄生虫分类群和它们的非人类宿主的生态和生物地理。回归传统食物是许多土著努力重振东北太平洋沿岸祖先文化的主要组成部分，包括当代科迪亚克·阿鲁蒂特人。虽然这种振兴的健康益处被证明在对抗这些社区中糖尿病等退行性疾病流行病方面是有效的，但传统食品也构成了自身的健康风险，必须了解这些风险，以便能够避免这些风险。该项目将提供关于鱼的健康重要性的宝贵知识和当代Alutiiq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.