Lifeways and frailty experience of the population of Santiago de Chile during the 19th and 20th centuries: the Colección Osteológica Subactual de Santiago

This thesis explores the biological and socio-cultural variability in the experience of frailty of a population that inhabited Santiago de Chile, Latin America, during the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries. This population, whose remains comprise the Colección Osteológica Subactual de Santiago, lived in low socioeconomic status communities affected by economic rural-to-urban migration and social inequalities. Very little attention has been focused on non-adults and older adults in the sample, with the great majority of studies focusing on the adult population. This is in line with the broader context of the bioarchaeological field, were early and late life-course experiences are often relegated due to issues with sample size and methodologies.
The purpose of this study was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the morbidity and mortality patters of non-adult (<21 years of age) and older adult (>40 years of age) individuals. This research integrates conventional bioarchaeological evidence, documented antemortem data (age-at-death, sex and cause of death of each individual from cemetery documentary sources), as well as biomedical records from that era to enhance our current knowledge of skeletal evidence related to exposure to stressors during different stages of life.
Findings show that the effects of physiological stress on growth and development, pubertal timing, and survival are present within and across the samples. The results suggest that this population suffered from health assaults during the early stages of life, increasing mortality and morbidity during childhood, while also causing deficient immune and frailty phenotypes that marked their skeletal response to environmental and cultural stressors in later life.
This study has developed an interdisciplinary biocultural approach to the study of the lifeways of a modern population of Santiago, increasing our understanding of the health experiences and physiological responses to life events such as migration, social inequality, and urbanisation during this period.