Examining childhood stress through vertebral neural canal size: implications for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease hypothesis.

There has been a recent emphasis in bioarchaeology on the relationship between early-life stress and risk for early mortality. Increasingly, this research is framed within the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis. Multiple skeletal indicators, including vertebral neural canal size, have been used to assess the link between stresses in childhood with risk of earlier mortality. Recent study of vertebral neural canal (VNC) size in archaeological samples has renewed some of the earlier promises of the method and is worth further study to better understand how childhood stress impacts health throughout the life course. In this poster we present vertebral neural canal data from the late medieval rural population of Villamagna (n = 72) of central Italy. Vertebral neural canals were measured following standard protocols, with thoracic elements considered separately from lumbar ones as they complete growth at different stages in the life course. Statistical analyses demonstrate that smaller transverse canals in both thoracic and lumbar vertebrae are associated with earlier age-at-death, while anterior-posterior canal measures are not. An important implication of these findings is that stress likely occurred later in childhood and into early adolescence, instead of in infancy and early childhood. These data are also discussed in relation to other indicators of early life stress to explore some of the potential uses of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease hypothesis in bioarchaeological research.