ISBN : 9780198849711
Evolutionary medicine has been steadily gaining recognition, not only in modern clinical research and practice, but also in bioarchaeology (the study of archaeological human remains) and especially its sub-discipline, palaeopathology. To date, however, palaeopathology has not been necessarily recognised as particularly useful to the field and most key texts in evolutionary medicine have tended to overlook it. This novel text is the first to highlight the benefits of using palaeopathological research to answer questions about the evolution of disease and its application to current health problems, as well as the benefits of using evolutionary thinking in medicine to help interpret historical disease processes. It presents hypothesis-driven research by experts in biological anthropology (including palaeopathology), medicine, health sciences, and evolutionary medicine through a series of unique case studies that address specific research questions. Each chapter has been co-authored by two or more researchers with different disciplinary perspectives in order to provide original, insightful, and interdisciplinary contributions that will provide new insights for both palaeopathology and evolutionary medicine. Palaeopathology and Evolutionary Medicine is intended for graduate level students and professional researchers in a wide range of fields including the humanities (history), social sciences (anthropology, archaeology, palaeopathology, geography), and life sciences (medicine and biology). Relevant courses include evolutionary medicine, evolutionary anthropology, medical anthropology, and palaeopathology.
Frank Ruhli: Foreword
1 Kimberly A. Plomp, Charlotte A. Roberts, Sarah Elton, and Gillian R. Bentley: What's it all about? A legacy for the next generation of scholars in evolutionary medicine and palaeopathology
2 Julia Gamble and Gillian Bentley: Developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD): perspectives from bioarchaeology
3 Kimberly A. Plomp, Ella Been and Mark Collard: Acquired spinal conditions in humans: the roles of spinal curvature, the shape of the lumbar vertebrae, and evolutionary history
4 Sarah-Louise Decrausaz and Frances Galloway: Birthing humans in the past, the present and future: how birth can be approached holistically through an evolutionary medicine lens
5 Nicole Burt and Alexandra M. Greenwald: Isotopic reconstruction of ancient human diet and health: implications for evolutionary medicine
6 Tanya M. Smith and Christina Warinner: Developmental, evolutionary, and behavioural perspectives on oral health
7 Malcolm C. Lillie and Sarah Elton: Palaeoecology: considering proximate and ultimate influences in human diets and environmental responses in the early Holocene Dnieper River region of Ukraine
8 Kirsten Bos and Sharon N. DeWitte: Human resistance and the evolution of plague in Medieval Europe
9 Charlotte Roberts, David M. Scollard and Vinicius M. Fava: Leprosy Is down but not yet out: new insights shed light on its origin and evolution
10 Charlotte A. Roberts, Peter D.O. Davies, Kelly E. Blevins and Anne C. Stone: Preventable and curable, but still a global problem: tuberculosis from an evolutionary perspective
11 Marissa L. Ledger and Piers D. Mitchell: Evolutionary perspectives on human parasitic infection: ancient parasites to modern medicine.
12 Randall C. Thompson, Chris J. Rowan, Nicholas W. Weis, M. Linda Sutherland, Caleb E. Finch, Michaela Binder, Charlotte A. Roberts and Gregory S. Thomas: Cardiovascular disease in ancient people and contemporary implications
13 Carina Marques, Zachary Compton and Amy M. Boddy: Connecting palaeopathology and evolutionary medicine to cancer research: past and present
14 Daniel H. Temple and Ashley N. Edes: Stress in bioarchaeology, epidemiology, and evolutionary medicine: an integrated conceptual model of shared history from the descriptive to the developmental
15 Jonathan C. Wells, Nelissa Ling, Jay T. Stock, Hallie Buckley and William R. Leonard: Metabolic diseases in bioarchaeology: an evolutionary medicine approach
16 Ryan P. Harrod and Anna J. Osterholtz: The palaeopathology of traumatic injuries: an evolutionary medicine perspective
17 Elizabeth W. Uhl and Richard Thomas: Uncovering tales of transmission: an integrated palaeopathological perspective on the evolution of shared human and animal pathogens
18 Gillian Bentley, Charlotte A. Roberts, Sarah Elton and Kimberly A. Plomp: Now you have read the book, what next?
Jane Buikstra: Afterword