Hi Laszlo and everybody else,
Indeed this is good fun! Regarding aetiologies, I do not think that there is
any way around us zooarchers getting to terms with things ourselves by
putting in a fair bit of painstaking methodological work. As noted by
others, many of the questions we ask in animal palaeopathology are rarely,
if ever, asked by vets. Accordingly, the species-specific empirical basis
for discussing the aetiologies of many of the phenomena we're interested
in - especially those unrelated to diseases with a specific bacterial origin
or to sudden traumatic injury/fractures - simply does not exist. We have to
build that up ourselves (as various people are already doing), e.g. through
comparative studies of modern animals with known or partially known living
conditions/histories, while remaining conscious of all those things we can
learn from vets and human osteologists. So there's plenty to do...
Niels Johannsen
Dept.of Prehistoric Archaeology,
University of Aarhus
----- Original Message -----
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Sent: Friday, August 19, 2005 1:31 AM
Subject: Re: [ZOOARCH] ankylosing spondylitis
> Perhaps we could agree (as is common sense) that the use of human
> medical terms critically in zooarchaeology should remain descriptive, w/o
> aetiological implications. It would be actually very exciting to know what
> causes ankylosing spondylitis in various species? Many conditions are
> multicausal. Is there a shared aetiology between beavers, foxes, horses
and
> humans? What causes could be different? For one thing, riding could be
> excluded in most cases. Perhaps even in horses.
>
> No anger, of course. This discussion is fun :o))
>
> Laszlo
>
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