Exploring Juvenile Vulnerability in Archaeological Contexts Through an Intersectional Approach

Abstract

The main goal of this dissertation is to reconstruct juvenile vulnerability in past populations using a bioarchaeological approach that integrates aspects of social theory and developmental biology. Previous bioarchaeological research on childhood and adolescent vulnerability often overlooks the complex biosocial relationships that influence vulnerability, instead focusing on mortality and pathological patterns based on age. The methodology proposed in this dissertation employs an intersectional approach that combines biological and social identity categories with contextual information to identify potential factors contributing to vulnerability. Vulnerability is defined as a state that increases an individual’s susceptibility to morbidity and early mortality due to the biological and social categories they possess. Here, vulnerability is linked to more than just a person's age or health status. Instead, it results from multiple categories. Although not all categories will equally impact vulnerability, understanding which categories and combinations of them influence vulnerability enables bioarchaeologists to develop population-specific models. The theoretical framework of intersectionality helps explain how different categories combine to create vulnerability. Previous bioarchaeological research has used an intersectional approach to explore patterns of health, especially among adults. This dissertation expands on that by focusing on juveniles and how intersecting identity categories lead to inequality or marginalization, making some juveniles more vulnerable than others. The population-specific models developed through this approach start with collecting demographic, contextual, and skeletal biomarker data. After gathering this information, statistical analyses that explore multi-way interactions between variables are performed. To test the applicability of this approach, it was first applied to a small group of juveniles from Turkey Creek Pueblo, a 13th-century Ancestral Puebloan community in the central Arizona highlands. This initial case study demonstrated the advantages of an intersectional approach for reconstructing vulnerability and was then used on a larger sample of juveniles from two disparate archaeological sites in Sonora, Mexico. The results of this dissertation suggest that identity categories beyond age and health influence juvenile vulnerability and that juvenility is not a single, uniform life phase. However, there are limitations to this approach, especially in prehistoric contexts. Specifically, it can be difficult to gather and interpret certain categories among individuals from prehistoric populations. Nonetheless, the approach to reconstructing juvenile vulnerability introduced and utilized in this dissertation demonstrates how bioarchaeologists can identify patterns of vulnerability that might be overlooked with a more traditional focus on age or pathology.