ABSTRACT
Social and physical aspects of the environment impact human health. However, the social environment is arguably a greater contributor to health outcomes than the natural environment since structural inequalities within societies often govern access to resources. This chapter explores ways that diversity in the social positioning of individuals living in urban environments impacts their skeletal stress. Specifically, a modified skeletal frailty index is used to examine whether or not stress load is related to markers of social identity, including age, sex, the number of grave goods, and burial style at the Greek colony Himera (648–409 BCE). Our data indicate that stress load is significantly correlated with age-at-death at Himera. Stress load did not differ between the sexes. Similarly, there was no clear relationship between stress load and the number of grave goods. However, significant differences in stress load existed between individuals interred in different grave types. Variation in physiological stress seems to be idiosyncratic at Himera, not showing a clear association with the number of grave goods (commonly used to estimate social status). Perhaps we see incipient socioeconomic inequality evidenced by differences in levels of skeletal stress between different burial styles, but being buried with a greater number of grave goods did not provide a buffer against stress at Himera.
