Cortical bone maintenance in an historic Afro-American cemetery sample from Cedar Grove, Arkansas

The relocation and analysis of 80 skeletons from the Cedar Grove Cemetery, located in southwest Arkansas, provides an opportunity to examine the level of health and nutrition experienced by Afro-Americans in the post-Reconstruction South (1878-1930). The demographic profile lends support to the interpretation that Cedar Grove participated in the nationwide decline in Afro-American health. The high frequencies of skeletal lesions indicative of dietary deficiencies and infectious disease demonstrate that this was a highly stressed population. For this analysis, adult femoral thin sections (15 females and 14 males) are examined histologically. These data provide support to the assertion that the Cedar Grove population experienced poor health. Measures taken from the sections include cortical thickness, percent cortical area, and mean number of resorption spaces and forming osteons per square millimeter of bone. As a group, they demonstrate low percent cortical area compared with well-nourished normals. They also show high rates of resorption to formation, thereby disrupting the balance necessary for normal cortical bone maintenance. The pattern established for bone porosity in this group is not a function of age but rather is due to other factors, most likely nutrition and disease stress. What may be unique about this group is that males, as well as females, experienced problems with calcium homeostasis and normal maintenance and repair of bone. Taken together, these data support the interpretation that diet and health were substandard in the post-Reconstruction South.