Chapter 8 - Health Consequences of Sexual Division of Labor Among Native Americans

Chapter 8 (Page 81)

Health Consequences of Sexual Division of Labor Among Native Americans: The Chumash of California and the Arikara of the Northern Plains

Sandra E. Hollimon
Jenner, California

Introduction

In this paper, I discuss health consequences of divisions of labor among the Chumash of the Santa Barbara Channel area and the Arikara of the Northern Plains. This analysis involves the comparison of human skeletal material, and expectations about health based on ethnohistoric information. As part of my discussion, I give an example of one way to examine gender in the archaeological record by looking for evidence of divisions of labor. In addition, one can go beyond a mere documentation of a division of labor, and ask questions concerning the consequences of a division of labor for the people participating in it.

Materials and Methods

Ethnographic and ethnohistoric information exist concerning division of labor among the Chumash and Arikara, including references to the economic activities of women and men (Hollimon 1990, 1991a, 1991b). These references about labor generated expectations about the health of women and men in these societies. Frequencies of pathological conditions were compared to expected patterns of male and female health.
This discussion of the health consequences of divisions of labor relies on evidence from human skeletal material. The Chumash sample consists of 351 males and 512 females. These skeletal remains come from archaeological sites that range from 3500 B.C. to A.D. 1804 (Hollimon 1990). The Arikara sample is comprised of 92 males and 78 females. These skeletons were derived from archaeological sites dating between A.D. 1650 and 1792 (Rogers 1990).

The Study Groups

The Chumash

The Chumash of the Santa Barbara Channel area were people who fished, collected shellfish and plant foods, and hunted game. Ethnographic information indicates that the Chumash had a division of labor in which women primarily collected and prepared wild plant foods and shellfish, while men fished and hunted sea mammals and terrestrial animals (Hollimon 1990).
The Chumash were an unusually complex group of non-agriculturalists (Kroeber 1925). During late prehistoric times, after A.D. 1150, Chumash society was characterized by a chiefdom level of political organization. The elite of this society were hereditary members of craft guilds and the political/religious group known as the "antap" cult (Arnold 1987; Blackburn 1975). By the time of European contact, the Chumash lived in large, densely populated coastal villages supported by a maritime economy and under the control of local hereditary chiefs (Arnold 1987).

The Arikara

The Arikara lived in settled earthlodge villages on the Upper Missouri River. These people had a mixed

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subsistence economy, in which the women were primarily responsible for the growing of corn, beans, squash and sunflowers, while the men primarily hunted buffalo (P. Holder 1970; Will and Hyde 1964).
Arikara villages were under the control of local hereditary chiefs (Curtis 1970). The society was organized into several classes, consisting of elites, those who had gained war honors, doctors, priests, and the general populace (Gilmore 1928; Rogers 1990).

Health Consequences of Labor Divisions

A number of pathological conditions have been documented among the skeletal remains examined in this study. These conditions provide evidence of the health consequences of divisions of labor for Chumash and Arikara women and men.

Demography

   Demographic analysis provides valuable information concerning differential mortality patterns in populations. In addition, the difference in demographic profiles between the Chumash and Arikara populations (Figure 1) may play a significant role in the frequencies of some pathological conditions.
    The Arikaras suffered much greater infant and child mortality than did the Chumash (Figure 1, 2). In contrast, the Chumash population experienced higher death rates in older age categories (Figure 1, 3). Peak mortality among the Chumash occurred in the 20-25 year category, while the Arikara peak was in the birth to 5 year category (Figure 1). Both populations had high death rates in the late teenage/young adult categories.
   The mean age at death for Chumash males was 36 years, and for Chumash females was 38 years (Figure 3). Arikara males had a mean age at death of 35 years,

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while for Arikara females the mean age at death was 28 years (Figure 2, Table 1).
   These results indicate that the average Arikara died younger than the average Chumash (Figure 1). In part, this may account for the higher rates of certain pathological conditions among the Chumash. For example, the Chumash exhibited more degenerative changes in their joints than did the Arikaras. Perhaps the longer average lifespan of the Chumash accounts for this finding. Alternatively, the Chumash fishing/gathering lifestyle may have been more mechanically stressful than the hunting/agriculture adaptation of the Arikaras.
   The younger age at death of Arikara females (Figure 2) may also account for observed sex differences in frequencies of pathological conditions. Arikara males tended to exhibit higher rates of conditions that are in some part age-dependent, such as degenerative joint disease and dental decay. These differences between Arikara males and females may be due to the seven year difference in mean ages at death (Table 1; Figure 2).
   The opposite mortality pattern was exhibited by the Chumash population. Males outnumbered females in the younger age categories, and the female mean age at death was higher than the male (Figure 3, Table 1). Unlike the Arikara population, the difference in male and female mean ages at death were not significant. This finding is congruent with the comparable frequencies of age-dependent pathological conditions among Chumash males and females.

Degenerative Joint Disease

Activity-induced pathologies, especially degenerative joint disease (DJD or arthritis), allows one to make inferences about the activities a person engaged in during life. Patterns of DJD differ between the Chumash and Arikara, suggesting that these people incurred different stresses by virtue of their activities.
The percentage of Chumash men and women displaying degenerative changes was roughly equal, while Arikara males had almost twice the rate of DJD displayed by Arikara females. This pattern could be due to the fact that Chumash male and female activities were equally mechanically stressful while those of the Arikara were not. For example, ethnohistoric sources suggest that Arikara women's work was

Table 1. Frequencies of Pathological Conditions by Sex

	Chumash		Arikara
	M	F	M	F
n=	351	512	92	78
Mean Age at Death (years)	36	38	35	28
Degenerative Joint Disease	189 (53%)	261 (50%)	42 (45%)	20 (25%)
Dental Pathology*	66/166	95/218	61	43
	(39%)	(43%)	(66%)	(55%)
Enamel Hypoplasia	108 (31%)	179 (35%)	16 (17%)	11 (14%)
Infectious Disease	138 (39%)	52 (29%)	6 (17%)	5 (17%)
Trauma	28 (7%)	19 (3%)	15 (16%)	6 (5%)

*based on number of individuals with scorable dentition

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much more physically demanding than men's activities (Hollimon 1991a). Hoeing, planting, harvesting, hauling wood and water, earthlodge construction and many other activities are described for Arikara women, while the men were said to lead lives of relative leisure, with the occasional buffalo hunt (Hollimon 1991a). In contrast, documentary sources suggest that Chumash women and men worked equally hard at food procurement (Hollimon 1990). This notion is supported by the finding that overall rates of DJD among Chumash males and females are roughly comparable, despite the fact that the location of arthritic joints differs between the sexes (Walker and Hollimon 1989).
Alternatively, this finding could be attributed to the differences in mean age at death in the two populations. Chumash males and females had comparable mean ages at death. In contrast, the average Arikara male outlived the average female by seven years (Table 1). The higher rate of DJD in Arikara males could be due to their older age at death, providing greater opportunities to experience degenerative changes.

Dental Pathology

   Dental pathology provides a tremendous amount of information concerning diet, and indirectly provides data concerning activities. Inferences can be made about food procurement and distribution on the basis of dental pathology patterns. Dental decay was observed in the form of carious lesions and alveolar abscesses.
   Through time, Chumash females had higher rates of dental caries than did the males (Table 1; cf. Walker and Erlandson 1986). It has been suggested that the women experienced more tooth decay because they ate more carbohydrate-rich plant foods than their male contemporaries. Conversely, the men had greater access to protein, by virtue of their hunting and fishing activities (Walker and Erlandson 1986).
   Arikara males had higher rates of dental decay than did the females. This could be accounted for if the males ate much more cariogenic plant food than the females. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric information indicate that Arikara women controlled the distribution of all foodstuffs (Blakeslee 1975; Deetz 1965; Orser 1980; Rogers 1990), and that they served the men first. They may have given the men more corn and squash, while saving more buffalo meat for themselves and their children.
   Alternatively, this sex difference could be attributed to the greater age at death among Arikara males. The seven additional years of an average male's life may have exposed him to the greater chance of dental decay when compared to the average Arikara female.
   Although both the Arikaras and the Chumash had high protein contents in their diets, the Arikaras appear to have suffered greater rates of dental decay. Stable isotope studies indicate that both populations were protein-dependent. The Chumash diet was based on marine foods, supplemented by wild plant foods; the Arikaras ate mostly buffalo meat, with agricultural products rounding out the diet (Tuross and Fogel 1992; Walker and De Niro 1986). Despite the fact that the Arikara population was younger than the Chumash, they may have suffered greater dental decay due to the presence of corn in the diet.

Enamel Hypoplasia

   Dental pathology also provides information about nutritional status and disease stress. In a study of skeletal remains spanning 5000 years of Santa Barbara Channel area prehistory, Walker (1984) examined teeth for evidence of enamel hypoplasia. These defects are deficiencies in enamel thickness that form when a person's system has been disrupted during enamel formation (Kreshover 1960). These defects have been convincingly linked to episodes of infectious disease and malnutrition (Pindborg 1982). Despite a lack of statistical significance, Walker found that women had higher proportions of hypoplastic teeth than did men throughout the prehistory of this area. This fact suggests that throughout prehistory, women in this area were at higher risk for nutritional or disease stress than were the men. Walker (1984) notes that this finding was unexpected, because growing males tend to be more sensitive to stress than females (Hamilton 1982; Stini 1969). Therefore, he expected to find more hypoplastic defects among men. The fact that women had a higher proportion of enamel lesions suggests that they were differentially affected by nutritional and disease stress.
   Among the Arikaras, males displayed more hypoplastic defects than did females (Table 1). Apparently, Arikara males were more susceptible to nutritional and disease stress. This finding is in agreement with the evidence of infectious disease among the Arikaras. Males exhibited more periosteal lesions than females did, indicating that infectious pathogens differentially affected males (Table 1).
   The Chumash population displayed higher rates of enamel hypoplasia than the Arikaras. This evidence suggests that the Chumash were under greater nutritional or disease stress than the Arikaras. A possible explanation for this finding is that the Arikara diet,

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based on buffalo meat, was more nutritionally adequate than the Chumash marine-dependent diet.
It is unlikely that this difference can be attributed to disease stress. The Arikaras displayed higher rates of infectious disease than the Chumash, but lower rates of enamel hypoplasia (Table 1). The spread of infectious diseases in the densely populated Chumash villages may also have played a role in the development of hypoplastic lesions, but a dietary cause seems more plausible given this evidence.
Nitrogen and carbon isotope studies have been conducted on part of the Chumash skeletal material in my sample, but there were too few individuals of known sex to adequately assess sex differences in diet (Walker and De Niro 1986). Sex differences in diet were not discussed in the Arikara stable isotope study (Tuross and Fogel 1992).

Infectious Disease

   Infectious diseases leave a permanent record in skeletal tissues. Inflamed bones often indicate that the person suffered from a streptococcal or staphylococcal infection during life. These infections are frequently found in populations that live in high densities, because the bacteria are easily spread and sanitation is often poor. Bacterial infections also flourish in individuals whose immune systems have been compromised by poor nutrition. This set of conditions almost certainly existed among the large, sedentary villages of the Chumash, while population density estimates among the Arikaras were much lower (cf. Owsley and Jantz 1985; Walker and Lambert 1989).
   Chumash females display lower rates of infectious disease than their male counterparts (Table 1). Chumash females were apparently less susceptible to infectious pathogens than were males. This finding suggests that the difference between rates of enamel hypoplasia among Chumash males and females is due to a nutritional difference. If the higher rate of enamel hypoplasia among Chumash females were due primarily to disease stress, we would expect to see higher frequencies of infectious disease among them.
   Arikara males and females have equal rates of infectious disease. This finding can be attributed to the prevalence of epidemic diseases to which the population was subjected during the 18th Century (Rogers 1990). These epidemics combined with other disruptive forces, such as the acquisition of the horse, increasing European presence in the Missouri River Valley, and intertribal warfare, to produce a steady depopulation on the Northern Plains. Arikara communities were exposed to smallpox, measles, chicken pox, cholera, and whooping cough (Owsley and Jantz 1985). These epidemics undoubtedly are reflected in the high rate of infectious disease in this Arikara population (Table 1).
   Paleoenvironmental data show that the climate in the Santa Barbara Channel area became quite adverse around A.D. 1150 (Pisias 1978). As the Chumash aggregated in large coastal villages and intensified their use of marine resources, the general health of the population declined. Rates of infectious disease and enamel hypoplasia increased among Chumash populations through time (Hollimon 1990). Apparently, this demographic shift was not as disruptive as that experienced by the Arikaras. Severe depopulation was not observed among the Chumash until they were brought into the Mission system, after A.D. 1780 (Johnson 1989; Walker et al. 1989).

Trauma

   Another health consequence of high population density and unpredictable resources is interpersonal violence. Traumatic injuries to bones may be inferred as evidence of interpersonal violence. Ethnographic evidence from California in general, and from the Chumash in particular, indicates that intervillage raiding was fairly common (Swezey et al. 1975). According to the ethnographic literature, Chumash men were more often involved in combat than were women (Hollimon 1990). Walker (1989) found that during all prehistoric periods, males outnumbered females in number of depressed cranial fractures. This physical evidence supports the notion that males were engaging in raids or other forms of interpersonal conflict more often than females.
   There is no ethnographic evidence to suggest that Chumash women participated in combat during organized warfare (cf. Hollimon 1990), although they may have been raided while in food gathering parties away from the village. It seems equally likely that women were engaged in scuffles over resources within their villages. It is also possible that women were victims of what is called domestic violence in contemporary American society. These women may have received their injuries at the hands of husbands or other family members.
   Through time, the number of traumatic injuries among Chumash females increased. The slightly higher number of post-cranial fractures among late prehistoric Chumash females may have been a consequence of activities not related to interpersonal violence. As the Chumash increased their reliance on marine resources, the women may have been injured while harvesting shellfish in rocky intertidal zones. Treacherous footing may have resulted in many falls and some injuries among these women (Hollimon 1991b).

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Arikara males outnumber Arikara females in traumatic injuries by a ratio of three to one (Table 1). This finding most likely reflects the participation of Arikara men in warfare. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric information indicate that waging war was an important activity among Arikara men (Hollimon 1991a). This conclusion is also supported by the location of fractures in Arikara males and females. Most fractures among males are on the head and face, suggesting that they may have been intentionally inflicted (cf. Walker 1989). In contrast, most fractures among females occurred in the vertebral bodies, a concomitant of degenerative changes in the spinal column. Arikara women may have injured their backs while tending their crops or hauling loads. This finding is congruent with documentary evidence indicating the Arikara women played a minor role in waging war (Ewers 1992).
Most information about the role of Arikara women in warfare describes them as victims. Travelers noted that the women were sometimes raided while working in the fields away from the village. This raiding may have included shooting and scalping (Taylor 1897). Arikara women may have been particularly susceptible to violence inflicted by the Sioux. Documentary sources indicate that the Sioux would beat or kill Arikara women during horse stealing raids (Abel 1939). Supporting evidence includes a probable skeletal example of scalping. A female skull from the Sully site exhibits cuts and infection suggestive of scalping (Hollimon and Owsley 1992).

Summary

In summary, the paleopathological evidence presents a somewhat mixed picture of the health of Chumash and Arikara males and females. Apparently, Chumash males and females had roughly comparable health and nutritional statuses, while Arikara males and females diverged in their patterns of pathological conditions. These findings may reflect the differences in mean age at death between Arikara males and females. Age-dependent conditions may be exhibited more often among Arikara males and Chumash females because they tended to outlive their counterparts.
In the case of enamel hypoplasia, the condition reflects nutritional and disease stress among growing children, not adults. Therefore, observed sex differences in the distribution of hypoplastic teeth in adults reflects differential health of young female and male children. The results of this study suggest that female children among the Chumash and male children among the Arikara were in poorer health and/or nutritionally compromised.

Gender Systems Among the Chumash and Arikara

   The approach I have used in this analysis may shed light on the activities of women and men in these societies, but it almost certainly ignores individuals who belonged to the third gender category. Berdaches were transvestite males who occupied an intermediate or mixed-gender status. Berdaches existed among the Chumash (King 1982) and the Arikara (A. Holder 1889).
   A complete understanding of Chumash and Arikara gender systems would require an examination of all gender categories: women, men and berdaches. However, it seems virtually impossible to identify berdaches in burial contexts (cf. Parsons 1916). If there were a complete dichotomy between the grave goods associated with the burials of males and females, it might be reasonable to conclude that a berdache burial would be that of an anatomical male associated with "female" artifacts. However, such dichotomies do not exist in burials from either group (cf. Hollimon 1990; O'Shea 1984).
   Despite difficulties in interpreting burial and artifact associations, the analysis of human skeletal material provides striking evidence of the relative health status of women and men in prehistory (Cohen 1987). I have demonstrated that there were specific health consequences associated with the divisions of labor practiced by the Chumash through time in the Santa Barbara Channel area and the Arikaras. These consequences allow us to examine economic roles of women and men in these societies, and to discuss the risks they faced by virtue of their activities.

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