Sacrum paleopathology in hunter-gatherers from Southern Patagonia

GARCÍA LABORDE, PAMELA; CAMPO MARTÍN, MANUEL ; MEDIALDEA, LAURA; SANTIAGO, FERNANDO; GUICHÓN, RICARDO A.; D´'ANGELO, MANUEL; SALEMME, MÓNICA; GONZÁLEZ MARTÍN, ARMANDO

Chungará. Revista de Antropología Chilena

Universidad de Tarapacá

Lugar: Arica; Año: 2021 vol. 53 p. 647 - 663

0716-1182

Sacrum is important for body stability, lower limbs attachment and pelvic organs protection. This bone could be affected by congenital, degenerative or multifactorial pathologies. The aim of the present study is to analyse sacral lesions in a sample well preserved remains from Southern Patagonian hunter-gatherers and the possible influences of temporal-spatial and lifestyle variables, with special attention to the Native-European contact effect. Pathological signs from 56 adult sacral bones from both sexes and comprising a wide chronology range (5200 years BP- 20th century), were analyzed following the methodology proposed by Campo (2003, 2015). Pathologies analysed showed that native individuals who lived at missionary places presented higher lesion prevalence than pre-contact and post-contact out of mission samples, except for Schmörl nodes. Age and sex effect showed similar patterns with respect to other populations. High prevalence of spondylolysis was observed, similarly to Inuit samples. Since the methodology for classifying Spina Bifida Oculta -SBO- are still lacking standardization, this work proposes the use of Kumar and Tubbs (2011) methods.