124 • Jerome C. Rose and Philip Hartnady 



This contract labor system soon 

 came to an end and the large plantations 

 were broken up into individual allot- 

 ments, farmed by the Afro-Americans 

 under a sharecropping arrangement 

 (i.e., a portion of all crops was turned 

 over to the landowner). The system of 

 advancing loans for seed and supplies, 

 which was commonly intnxiuced through- 

 out the South, usually served to keep 

 the sharecroppers poor and in debt to 

 the landowners and merchants (Chris- 

 tensen 1958). Conditions deteriorated 

 further in 1888 when a rapid decline in 

 cotton prices left all southern Arkansas 

 farmers poor and in debt to the stores 

 (Graves 1967:30). A further disaster 

 occurred in 1905 when the boll weevil 

 arrived in southeast Arkansas and vir- 

 tually wiped out the cotton crops, the 

 major source of cash income (Sylva 

 1981:52). These deteriorating agrarian 

 conditions stimulated the Euro-Ameri- 

 can backlash which wiped out virtually 

 all the social gains of the Reconstruc- 

 tion period. The process of segregation 

 and political disenfranchisement began 

 with the passage of new discriminatory 

 voting laws and the first Arkansas seg- 

 regation law, the separate coach act, in 

 1891 (Graves 1967:61-94). These po- 

 litical and social changes, in combina- 

 tion with the farm price crisis, should 

 have seriously and adversely impacted 

 Afro-American diet and health in the 

 Cedar Grove area. 



Sylva identifies a decline in the Afro- 

 American population in southwest 

 Arkansas during this period and at- 

 tributes it to outmigration ( 1 98 1 : 1 6). In 

 contrast, Farley observes a national 

 trend of significant slowing of the Afro- 

 American population growth between 

 1880 and 1940 (1970:3). He notes that 

 Afro-American women who began 

 childbearing before 1850 and survived 

 until menopause produced an average 

 of seven children and less than \Q% of 

 these women produced no children. 

 Women born between 1900 and 1920 

 not only had the lowest fertility before 

 or since, but 30% never had a child and 

 those that did had fewer (Farley 1970: 



3). These data suggest that a biological 

 crisis occurred for the entire Afro- 

 American population at the turn of the 

 century. This trend was so noticeable 

 that Holmes (1937) prepared a mono- 

 graph predicting the disappearance of 

 Afro- Americans. 



The population decline is to be at- 

 tributed not only to decreased fertility, 

 but also to greatly increased mortality. 

 Urban Afro-American life expectancy 

 at birth in 1900 was 33 years for males 

 and 35 years for females (Farley 

 1970:61). In 1900 the Afro-American 

 mortality rate was 3.02%, nearly twice 

 that of Euro-Americans with 1.73% 

 (Holmes 1937:40; Kiple and King 

 1981:188). This high mortality rate is 

 observed at all demographic levels. The 

 non-Euro-American infant death rate 

 was 275 per 1000 live births (Farley 

 1970:212). The non-Euro-American 

 maternal mortality rate in 1920 was still 

 13 per 1000 live births, while the neo- 

 natal death ratio was 72 per 1000 live 

 births (Farley 1970:209). Physicians 

 commonly noted that the Afro-Ameri- 

 can stillbirth rate was two to three times 

 higher than Euro- Americans ( Kiple and 

 King 1981:188). Farley, in an attempt to 

 explain both the high stillbirth rate and 

 decreased fertility, suggests venereal 

 disease, citing as evidence a 20% infec- 

 tion rate among Afro-American females 

 and a 1900 infant death rate of 2.7 per 

 1000 live births due to congenital syph- 

 ilis (1970:12). 



Donald's examination of the recorded 

 disease patterns shows that Afro- Amer- 

 icans suffered a higher mortality rate 

 than Euro-Americans from all diseases 

 except cancer (1952:162). Using the 

 1900 census, Farley (1970:70) lists the 

 most frequent causes of Afro- American 

 deaths as tuberculosis, pneumonia, ner- 

 vous disorders, diarrhea, typhoid fever, 

 and malaria. Both tuberculosis and 

 pneumonia were major killers of Afro- 

 Americans (Kiple and King 1981: 188) 

 with Afro-American tuberculosis rates 

 being reported as three times higher than 

 Euro-Americans (Holmes 1937:76). 



The data and interpretations pre- 



sented above are derived primarily 

 from the national census and pertain to 

 the areas of registration. They may or 

 may not describe the situation in south- 

 west Arkansas nor, in particular, the 

 community of Cedar Grove. Keeping in 

 mind this limitation of the data, they are 

 compared and contrasted with those 

 collected from the Cedar Grove skeletal 

 sample. 



Using the cross-sectional skeletal de- 

 mographics as a true birth cohort allows 

 thecalculationof mortality rates. Using 

 the ratio of skeletons aged to less than 

 one year to total skeletons produces an 

 infant mortality rate of 27.5%, which is 

 identical to the national non-Euro- 

 American infant mortality of 27.5% 

 cited by Farley ( 1 970:2 1 2) for this same 

 time period. Using the ratio of skel- 

 etons aged younger than birth to total 

 skeletons produces an estimated still- 

 birth rate of 6.2%, which is close to 

 Farley's (1970:209) 1920 national non- 

 Euro-American rate of 7.2%. Although 

 life expectancy at birth obtained from 

 the skeletal life table (14 years) is far 

 below the 33 years for males and 35 

 years for females reported by Farley 

 (1970:61), the average adult skeletal 

 ages at death (males 41.2, females 

 37.7) are reasonably close to these 

 national statistics. The entire Cedar 

 Grove paleodemographic profile calcu- 

 lated from the skeletal data is in excel- 

 lent concordance with the national sta- 

 tistics and the historic reconstructions. 

 These results suggest not only that pal- 

 eodemography can be used reliably, but 

 also that the Cedar Grove community 

 followed the national trends of in- 

 creased mortality and decreased fertil- 

 ity. In other words, the Cedar Grove 

 community was highly stressed during 

 the post-Reconstruction period. 



There is abundant evidence of di- 

 etary deficiencies in the Cedar Grove 

 skeletal sample. The high rate of active 

 cribra orbitalia among children (58%) 

 and the rates of healed cribra orbitalia 

 and porotic hyperostosis among adults 

 (males 33%, females 24%) indicate ex- 

 tensive anemia. Most of the anemia can 



Zagreb Paleopathology Symp. 1988 



