I have read through this book several times and want to call it to your attention. It is premier archaelogical science that documents the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in the Levant. It shows how easy and healthy the life of hunting and gathering was and how arduous the farming that replaced it was. The tale is told in the skeletons.
This short passage from the book tells us much about that: We can identify the effects on the skeleton of the extra, and sometimes excessive, stresses involved in the carrying of loads, whether of game, crops, or building materials. These stresses can cause changes to the weight-bearing bones including the spine, shoulders, hips, and knees. We observed changes to the shape of the vertebral bodies, symptomatic of Scheuermann's disease, in the skeletons of subadults, especially adolescents, because they were required to labor in this way. The detached neural arch of a lumbar vertebra in a young adult (73.2255) from Trench B indicated spondylolisis arising from persistent and excessive load bearing, albeit in someone who was susceptible to develop this condition.
