The way pregnant women, mothers and infants are nourished and cared for has been, and still is, a key determinant of any human society, especially during times of crisis and societal upheaval. The mother-offspring relationship through infancy is deeply rooted during pregnancy and the early months of a child’s life. Indeed, mother, (breast)milk and child form a triad that determines the future adult life of any human and it is part of a co-adapting system deeply influencing infant development and maternal health. Ecological constraints, social adversities, cultural determinants and adaptive responses have played an active role in the mode and time of the evolution through time of this nexus.
The past years have seen growing attention on the importance of the mother-infant bond from a medical and social perspective, and only recently has stronger attention been paid to the historical and evolutionary reconstructions of this nexus and how it changed through time, space and cultures. From a broader long-term perspective, changes in women’s status during maternity, childcare and even alloparenting are pivotal for our understanding of the evolution of our species. The mother-infant interactions - in terms of nursing behaviour, infant and maternal health and care strategies - were woven into the major biocultural transitions of human evolution.
MOTHERS aims to reveal how the biocultural transitions influenced the mode and time of pregnancy and nursing of human infants in a well-known archaeological framework, from the Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gathering to Neolithic farming and domestication, until urbanization. This challenging task will be tackled through innovative analyses of deciduous and permanent human dental remains, which record at very high time resolution, ontogenetic trajectories, dietary changes and major health events. The research will be focused on key archaeological sites from Italy and Croatia, which represent ideal contexts for the research activities, given the presence of strategic archaeological sites, ecological variability and relative continuity in time in overall comparable climatic contexts.
MOTHERS will shed new light on women’s role in society, differential access to food resources, social stratification, and the way the mother-offspring relationship was integrated into the socioeconomic choices of these past human populations.
MOTHERS has the primary objectives:
1) Analysis of the variability of trace element and isotopic models in dental enamel and root dentine (when present) based on contemporary infants with well-known dietary and anamnestic history to broaden the interpretative framework of dietary histories, pathobiographies and growth trajectories during prenatal life and infancy. 2) Retracing the recent history of Homo sapiens from the mother-and-child perspective to disentangle the changes through time, from Upper Palaeolithic to Early Medieval time, of the mother-infant nexus in terms of nursing behaviour, infant and maternal health and care strategies. 3) Exploring the presence of non-human milk use in past human populations, the rise of herbivore domestication, and the role of alloparental care.
MOTHERS is expected to achieve the following outcomes:
1) Further assessment of the trace element and isotopic variability in modern dental enamel to interpret dietary variations in early life at high temporal resolution. 2) Reveal the diet and age-at-weaning (onset and end) for children across the hunter-gathering to farming transition and their correlation with sex and growth rates. 3) Reveal the diet and age-at-weaning (onset and end) for children across the transitions to early and full urbanization and their correlation with sex and growth rates. 4) Deepen the knowledge on dental enamel mineralization patterns in the deciduous dentition. 5) Deepen the knowledge of biorhythms and growth rates in past and present children. 6) Detect the rise of herbivore domestication and the early use of non-human milk in nursing infants. 7) Develop and validate a multi-factorial methodology that can be used to better understand diet, health and the mother-child relationship. 8) Contribution to present-day public health policy regarding diet and growth in contemporary children.
