Urban population dynamics in a preindustrial New World city: Morbidity, mortality, and immigration in postclassic Cholula

It has long been argued that preindustrial cities were unhealthy environments that facilitated the transmission of infectious disease. As a result, Early Modern London and other Old World cities were assumed to have had such high mortality rates that deaths greatly surpassed births, resulting in negative intrinsic population growth. Consequently, preindustrial cities were believed to be "population sinks" dependent on immigration from rural areas to increase in size. While this vision of preindustrial cities has gained widespread acceptance, it has not gone unchallenged, on both theoretical and evidentiary grounds.;The current investigation contributes to this debate by examining urban population dynamics in the prehispanic New World urban center of Cholula, Puebla. New World cities differed significantly from those of the Old World, not just in terms of their epidemiological environments, but also in terms of their social, political, and economic organization. A paleodemographic and paleopathological study of 309 Postclassic human skeletons from Cholula was combined with strontium and oxygen isotope analyses in order to characterize morbidity, mortality, and immigration to this prehispanic Mesoamerican city. Several new methodological approaches, including the use of transition analysis, a parametric model of mortality, and a multistate model of health were incorporated into the paleodemographic and paleopathological analyses. Strontium and oxygen isotope studies allowed immigrants in the population to be identified so that their impact on demographic processes in Cholula could be considered. The results of this investigation suggest that the cultural and epidemiological environments of Cholula contributed to the formation of urban demographic patterns in this New World city that differed from those observed in the Old World.