Masters Thesis

Pathological cranial lesions in a juvenile cranial collection

The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze the age distributions and co-occurrence inflammatory processes in juveniles. The pathogenic changes studied are porotic hyperostosis, cribra orbitalia and endocranial lesions. The specific etiology of any of these lesions remains uncertain. (Lewis 2004, Janovic et al. 2012, Walker et al. 2009, Wilczak and Zimova Hopkins 2010). While porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia have been subject to multiple studies, to date no one has statistically confirmed a relationship between these lesions. Endocranial lesions have never been systematically studied in conjunction with porotic hyperostosis or cribra orbitalia. As Wilczak and Zimova Hopkins (2010) suggested that not all lesions classified as cribra orbitalia shared a common etiology, classification of porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia were modified for analysis here. Endocranial lesions were classified according to type (Hershkovitz et al. 2002 and Lewis 2004). The co-occurrence of each type of documented lesion was examined with chi-square analysis using the Monte Carlo method to estimate p-values. Analysis found that while there is a statistically significant association between lesions commonly referred to as endocranial lesions and porotic hyperostosis (p= 0.03), there was not an association between porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia (p= 0.2). This finding challenges two ideas that permeate the anthropological literature. First is the idea that there is not an association between endocranial lesions, porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia. This study indicates that there is in fact an association between porotic hyperostosis and endocranial lesions. The results also suggest that not all lesions classified as porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia have the same etiology.

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