Skeletal markers of occupational stress in the Fur Trade: A case study from a Hudson's Bay Company Fur Trade post

The Seafort Burial Site (FcPr100) is a Fur Trade Period cemetery located near the town of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta. The results of recent analysis of skeletons recovered during salvage excavations between 1969 and 1971 suggest that three males in this sample were voyageurs in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company. Vertebral osteophytosis and osteoarthritis, Schmorl's nodes, muscle origin robusticity and new bone formation at entheses and syndesmoses, and osteoarthritis at the elbow and shoulder joints provide evidence for carrying, lifting, and paddling or rowing. The presence of accessory sacral facets also may be stress-related. In addition, the development of accessory articular facets on the metatarsals and proximal pedal phalanges may indicate activity-induced stress from hyperdorsiflexion of the toes in habitual kneeling, such as when river canoeing.     

Evidence for Spanish influence on activity induced musculoskeletal stress markers at Pecos Pueblo

In the present study, hypotheses regarding the effect of Spanish contact on some habitual activities among the indigenous population of Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico, are tested using analyses of upper body musculoskeletal stress markers (MSM). Historical records demonstrate that the Spanish desired maize, animal hides, woven cotton mantas, and labour from the Puebloan Indians of this area. Therefore, it is hypothesized that a comparison of MSM data from pre- and post-Spanish contact groups at Pecos would display evidence of intensification of activities related to the procurement of these goods. The MSM data from this research do support the contention that Spanish contact had an effect on habitual activities performed by both sexes; however, the number of muscles demonstrating a statistically significant difference over time is limited. Yet trends in the mean MSM expression as well as rank order of these muscles and others uphold the hypothesized increase in maize production and processing as well as an increase in burden bearing. No evidence is found to support an increase in weaving activity. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The house gun: White writing,white fears and black justice (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

One way of understanding the Pistorius case is through the powerful writings of white South African authors such as Nobel Prize laureate Nadine Gordimer's anticipatory post‐apartheid novel, The house gun, in which she imagined a scenario similar to the one played out in the Pistorius trial where white fears and black justice met in the courtroom. South Africa is not unique. The mobilization of white peoples' fear of black or brown ‘intruders’ has infected other divided nations, like the United States and Israel. Here the social and architectural construction of ‘white’ settler or settler‐like special enclosures fortified by the legal right to self‐defence with private weapons has reproduced a colonial ‘paranoid ethos’ and a dangerous denial of the violence that is nested like a coiled rattlesnake from within their own segregated and hypervigilant enclosures.