Musculoskeletal stress markers (MSM): methodological reflections

The aim of bioarchaeological studies of human remains is to investigate ancient human societies from a biocultural point of view. In particular, the so-called “musculoskeletal stress markers” (MSM; Hawkey and Merbs, 1995), i.e. the degree of development of entheses and enthesopathies, have been used to reconstruct past activities. However, this research field is affected by three main problems: the ambiguity of the terminology used; the lack of standardized scoring methods shared by all researchers, preventing the reproducibility and comparability of the observations; and the interpretation of the results. In fact, osseous traits generally have a multifactorial etiology, and the effects of age, sex, individual factors, pathologies, physical activity, etc., generally overlap. The aim of this presentation is to discuss these problems. The standardized scoring methods for entheses and enthesopathies developed by our research group will be presented (Mariotti et al. 2004, 2007). The results of our research concerning the interpretative possibilities of MSM will also be shown. For this study, we analysed the skeletons of approximately 500 adult individuals of both sexes from modern identified (sex, age, occupation) collections (Frassetto collections, early XX c., Italy). The study of these collections allowed the evaluation of the relationship between the MSM and the age, sex and occupation of the individuals.