Health and lifestyle of the Paleoamericans of Lagoa Santa: an ethnobioarchaeological approach

• Grant number: 13/00069-0
• Support type: Research Grants - Young Investigators Grants
• Duration: March 01, 2014 - February 28, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Archeology
• Principal Investigator: Pedro José Tótora da Glória
• Grantee: Pedro José Tótora da Glória
• Home Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Assoc. researchers: Barbara Ann Piperata ; Christian Hoffmann ; Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg ; Fernando Neves Nogueira ; Gregório Cardoso Tápias Ceccantini ; Maria Regina Lorenzetti Simionato ; Rodrigo Elias de Oliveira ; Rui Sérgio Sereni Murrieta ; Walter Alves Neves
• Associated scholarship(s): 16/19625-9 - Cariogenic potential of cerrado fruits at Lagoa Santa archaeological sites region, Minas Gerais, BP.IC; 16/20352-7 - Spatial distribution of the macro botanical seed and fruit remains at Lapa do Santo - MG site, BP.IC; 16/17013-6 - Comparing diet of men and women at the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve riverside, Amazonas, Brazil, BP.IC; 14/03424-9 - Health and lifestyle of the Paleoamericans of Lagoa Santa: an ethnobioarchaeological approach, BP.JP

Abstract

This project aims to understand the health and lifestyle of the Paleoamericans of Lagoa Santa, using an interdisciplinary approach. The human skeletons from Lagoa Santa traditionally have been studied by the methods of craniometrics, addressing issues about population history and models of human migration. This project aims to break that tradition of research, forming a research group focused on understanding the behavior of human populations, such as eating habits and physical activity patterns. Four lines of investigation will be adopted in this project. First, it is proposed both a chronological characterization of the Lagoa Santa collection and an application of methods to reconstruct diet (dental microwear) and physical activity (cross-section geometry of the femur and musculoskeletal stress marks) using human skeletons. Second, it will be investigated the cariogenic potential of foods from Lagoa Santa region, identifying food items that potentially caused the high caries prevalence found in the Paleoamericans skeletons. These data will be linked to the paleobotanical record and ethnographic accounts. Third, an exploratory project in Amazonia will investigate the importance of diet and fertility in the oral health of riverine populations of the middle Solimões River. In this part of the project, the goal is to understand the interaction of multiple factors causing cavities, helping to correctly interpret the prevalence of caries in skeletal populations. The interaction between the study of skeletal and living populations is unprecedented in the Brazilian academia, being named ethnobioarchaeology. The connection between areas of knowledge from different disciplines is essential for the understanding of human behavior in the past, being the crux point of the project elaborated here. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

SCHMIDT, CHRISTOPHER W.; REMY, SHLEY; VAN SESSEN, REBECCA; WILLMAN, JOHN; KRUEGER, KRISTIN; SCOTT, RACHEL; MAHONEY, PATRICK; BEACH, JEREMY; MCKINLEY, JAQUELINE; D'ANASTASIO, RUGGERO; CHIU, LAURA; BUZON, MICHELE; DE GREGORY, J. ROCCO; SHERIDAN, SUSAN; ENG, JACQUELINE; WATSON, JAMES; KLAUS, HAAGEN; DA-GLORIA, PEDRO; WILSON, JEREMY; STONE, ABIGAIL; SERENO, PAUL; DROKE, JESSICA; PERASH, ROSE; STOJANOWSKI, CHRISTOPHER; HERRMANN, NICHOLAS. Dental microwear texture analysis of Homo sapiens sapiens: Foragers, farmers, and pastoralists. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, v. 169, n. 2, p. 207-226, JUN 2019. Web of Science Citations: 0.

DA-GLORIA, PEDRO; OLIVEIRA, RODRIGO E.; NEVES, WALTER A. Dental caries at Lapa do Santo, central-eastern Brazil: An Early Holocene archaeological site. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, v. 89, n. 1, p. 307-316, MAR 2017. Web of Science Citations: 0.