Thesis
A Test of Female Entheseal Robusticity and Occupational Bone Loading
University of Iowa
Bachelor of Science (BS), University of Iowa
Spring 2023
Abstract
This study is an application of entheseal development analysis of a small, non-contemporary, documented human skeleton sample to explore whether skeletal evidence of occupation and habitual activity is present among women in the University of Iowa Stanford Collection (UI-SC). To explore patterns of entheseal robusticity, observational scores were taken for 23 entheses on nine bones throughout the body. Each enthesis was scored on a scale of 1a-3 using criteria established by Mariotti (2007) in their standardized scoring method. All scores were then adjusted respectively on a range between zero to four. Due to the sample size (N=24) of the study, a One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test was conducted to compare the observed cumulative distribution for age. Age-at-death was also tested across the sample using a Shapiro-Wilks test. Once data assumptions had been met, exploratory data analysis via k-means and hierarchical clustering was conducted to explore occupational clusters present within the dataset. The outcome of these initial analyses was then used for the classification of occupation clusters via MANOVA and Tukey’s honestly significant difference test. Finally, to determine what correlating factors drive the observed clusters, a scree test, and principal components analysis were performed. The results of these tests partially confirm observable skeletal evidence of occupation and habitual activity as significance levels indicate that the variation may be driven solely by enthesis robusticity or that cluster distinctions can be provided to different clusters. As predicted, the development of entheses among individuals of “domestic” occupations is highly variable, indicating the need for further analysis of these broad, ill-defined occupational categories.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A Test of Female Entheseal Robusticity and Occupational Bone Loading
- Creators
- Chloe Cummings
- Contributors
- Ben Landsee (Advisor) - University of IowaLara Noldner (Mentor) - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Project Type
- Honors Thesis
- Degree Awarded
- Bachelor of Science (BS), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Anthropology
- Date degree season
- Spring 2023
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- 44 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2023 Chloe R. Cummings
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- CLAS Honors Theses
- Record Identifier
- 9984413064502771
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