Disease in Populations in Transition

Societies in transition are often faced with new settings and/or new diseases that require a response in order for the affected group to thrive or survive. A lack of effective response by a transitional population to a new pathogen can lead to the group's disintegration. A stark example of this, historically, is the decline of Native American civilizations with the arrival of European colonists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The transitional response mechanism has been a neglected topic in anthropology until the publication of this book. In a broad selection of nineteen essays by distinguished researchers, the epidemiology and health status of prehistoric, historical, and present day populations in transition are thoroughly explored.

Different models--biomedical, ethnomedical, ecological, and politicoeconomic--are used to illustrate the effects of transition on the health of human populations throughout the world. Swedlund and Armelagos have compiled and arranged these essays into three parts: genetic and evolutionary perspectives; infectious disease and nutrition in temporal perspective; and social epidemiology. Some of the topics studied in the essays include: disease and evolution in Amerindian populations; health and disease in prehistoric transitional peoples; mortality and morbidity consequences of nutritional variation in early child growth; and social support and mortality in post-transition populations. This insightful book will provide a vital perspective for medical anthropologists, development specialists, epidemiologists, and health professionals, as well as for graduate students in related course areas.

ALAN C. SWEDLUND is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He co-authored Demographic Anthropology with George Armelagos. Mr. Swedlund has also written a number of articles which have appeared in the Annual Review of Anthropology, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, and Human Biology. He is currently researching the relationship between social class and health for an upcoming book.

GEORGE J. ARMELAGOS is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Besides being co-author of Demographic Anthropology, he also co-authored Consuming Passion: The Anthropology of Eating and Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. He has also written articles for Science, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, and American Anthropologist. Mr. Armelagos served as President of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.