Assessing Oneota Diet And Health: A Community And Lifeway Perspective

Abstract

This preliminary study uses a gross measure of potential nutritional adequacy as a starting point from which to examine the interplay of the dietary impact of corn agriculture and the complexity of community health. We use subsistence data from three Oneota sites (ca. A.D. 1300 to 1650) in the La Crosse locality of southwestern Wisconsin, Tremaine (47 -Lc-95), OT (47 -Lc-262) and Filler (47 -Lc-149), to model nutritional adequacy of diet at each site. Following the assessment of available nutrients, skeletal pathologies often interpreted within a dietary framework in Oneota studies (dental caries, enamel hypoplasias, porotic hyperostosis, and cribra orbitalia) are considered. The Tremaine site with its longhouses and associated human burials provides an important context for understanding health, diet and disease in an Oneota community. We suggest that the etiology of the skeletal pathologies is best understood within a framework that incorporates lifeway choices linked to settlement and subsistence impacts on the community, such as increasing population density within longhouses, rather than explanations that focus on issues of nutrient availability due to food shortages or narrowing of food choices.