UC Riverside

This research reorients a clinical question regarding the relationship between overly narrow femoral intercondylar notches and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury within an anthropological perspective. I argue that biomedical research tends to assume that the dimensions of the notch are only related to genetics or previous ACL rupture. This view, while intended to help determine risk factors for narrow notch development, is a biologically deterministic one that ignores how differential access to resources and opportunities shape individuals’ life experiences and health outcomes. To address this shortcoming, I shift the question from a medical perspective – which groups are most likely to suffer narrow notches and therefore ACL injury? – to an anthropological one: to what degree do genetics, metabolic stress, and mechanical factors influence femoral intercondylar notch morphology, and what is the importance of the historical socioeconomic context on these factors? To answer this question, I analyzed historically documented remains from the mid-19th to mid-20th century Santa Clara Valley and use the osteological data to draw conclusions about assigned racial categories, the construction of Whiteness in this region, lived experiences, and their relationship to morphological outcomes at the knee joint.The six most important findings from this research are presented as an enumerated list in the concluding chapter, and consist of the following: (1) notch width index and notch volume are not redundant measures and do quantify the notch in noticeably different ways, (2) experiences of metabolic stress, particularly those resulting in porotic hyperostosis, are positively correlated with notch volume, (3) notch volume is not linked to femoral rousticity or shaft shape, (4) notch volume scales with body size, (5) genetics do not seem to significantly influence notch volume, and (6) osteological results support that the category of whiteness in California and the Santa Clara Valley was enlarged compared to other regions of the U.S. during this time period.