Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Examination of Aging and the Elderly in Bioarchaeological Contexts

老年人代表着社区的共同历史，在过去和现在的社会中都发挥着重要作用。然而，在生物考古研究中，它们的代表性通常较低。本博士论文研究项目以考古记录中的老年成年人为研究对象，考察这一过去生物文化信息的重要来源。该项目是以衰老的生物考古学为框架的。这项研究通过将人类学和公共卫生中关于衰老的跨学科理论联系起来，有可能为人们对整个生命周期的健康的历史和临床理解提供信息。该项目支持STEM中一名女性的研究，为学生提供研究和培训机会，并与当地社区进行科学外展。该项目将进化论和社会学理论整合到更广泛的老龄化生物文化理论中，以重建老年人过去的经历，并为理解老龄化提供更广泛的历史和生物文化背景。利用骨骼的特定病理和退行性变化以及骨骼脆弱指数来估计骨骼的生物年龄。这些变化包括用于估计按时间顺序排列的死亡年龄的变化(即耻骨联合和髂骨耳廓表面的退行性变化)，但也包括其他变化(即牙齿磨损、生前牙齿脱落、骨关节炎和退行性关节疾病的发展)。除了所经历的退变的复杂性之外，退变的严重性也被考虑在内(例如，观察到了多少不同类别的退变或病理变化)。该网站的所有成年个体都包括在研究样本中，以提供额外的背景，以解释与在老年人中观察到的脆弱和弹性有关的发现。这项研究可以推进现有的从骨骼数据估计年龄的方法和定义，并提出了一个理论平台，生物考古学家可以通过这个平台从生物文化的角度更好地解释老年人的生活经历。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Older adults represent the shared history of communities and play important roles in societies both past and present. In bioarchaeological research, however, they are typically underrepresented. This doctoral dissertation research project focuses on elderly adults in the archaeological record to examine this important source of past biocultural information. The project is framed in terms of a bioarchaeology of aging. This research has potential to inform both historical and clinical understandings of health across the lifespan by connecting interdisciplinary theories of aging from anthropology and public health. The project supports the research of a woman in STEM, provides research and training opportunities for students, and engages with local communities in science outreach.The project integrates evolutionary and social theories into a broader biocultural theory of aging, to reconstruct the experiences of elderly individuals in the past and provide a broader, historical and biocultural context for understanding the aging. Specific pathological and degenerative changes to the skeleton, as well as the Skeletal Frailty Index, are utilized in order to estimate the biological age of skeletons. These changes include those utilized in the estimation of chronological age-at-death (i.e. degenerative changes to the pubic symphysis and auricular surface of the ilium) but also include other changes (i.e. dental wear, antemortem tooth-loss, and the development of osteoarthritis and degenerative joint disease). Severity of degeneration is taken into consideration in addition to the complexity of degeneration experienced (e.g. how many different categories of degenerative or pathological changes are observed). All adult individuals from the site are included in the study sample to provide additional context by which to interpret findings related to frailty and resilience observed among elderly individuals. This research can advance existing methods and definitions for age estimation from skeletal data and proposes a theoretical platform by which bioarchaeologists might better interpret the lived experiences of the elderly from a biocultural perspective.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.