bioarchaeology (Other Keyword)
251-275 (296 Records)
Background. The presence of limited settlements has limited the understanding of prehistoric occupation in the Arabian Peninsula (Potts 1990). Interest and research of Arabia during the Bronze (3200-1200 BC) and Iron Age (1200-400 BC) has increased producing a greater understanding of the people from the region and their culture. Methods. A total of sixty-four tombs were excavated with twenty-seven yielding human remains. These twenty-seven tombs originated from various periods of the Bronze...
Skeletal Trauma in an Ancient High Altitude Himalayan Community of Mustang, Nepal (2015)
High altitude regions in the Himalayas provided a challenging environment for the early human populations who migrated there. In addition to the risks of hypoxia and cold stress, people had to deal with difficult terrain and limited resources. Yet populations persisted and established complex polities, including those in the Mustang region of Nepal. Surface recovery and excavations of shaft tombs located near the village of Samdzong in Upper Mustang have yielded human remains and artifacts...
Slavery and the subaltern: bioarchaeological analyses of Viking Age Swedish populations (2016)
The definition of slavery during the long Scandinavian Viking Age (AD c.750–1100) is far from simple. In recent years scholars have pointed out that the terminology for slaves, and the attitudes towards unfree labourers, found in Icelandic Sagas, on rune stones or in law codes, actually reflect a significant variation in social rank. Even though slaves and the slave trade constituted an important and determining element in the Scandinavian economy during this time, a material culture clearly...
Small Waists and Tiny Feet: The Influence of Fashion on Deformed Skeletal Remains, Even in a Girl from the Wild West (2017)
Fashion depicts many aspects of a person's life; from socioeconomic status to personal taste. Emmie Baker Scott followed the trends of fashionable dress from childhood to her death in 1885. Her skeletal remains and clothing reveal her family's emphasis on emulating the upper class and the presentation of an ideal Victorian era female figure. Born to a doctor, his occupation would have brought wealth and social standing to the family. Emmie might have been scrutinized with increased pressure...
Social Bioarchaelogy of Forager-Farmer Transition in the Balkans (2017)
In Europe, Greece and the Balkans were the first areas to be reached by expanding Neolithic, agricultural lifestyles. The Danube Gorges of the central Balkans represents one of the best case studies in Europe for studying bioarchaeological consequences of the change from foraging to farming thanks to abundant settlement and mortuary record found here. It also provides a good regional anchor point for the contextualization of other contemporaneous sites across the Balkans. A large number of...
Soil Systems, Inc. ASU Dental Traits Recording Form
This form was used along with ASU's system for recording dental nonmetric trait data for the permanent dentition by dental anthropologist Lorrie Lincoln-Babb (Bioarch, LLC).
Soil Systems, Inc. Dentition Analysis Form (2000)
This is a laboratory form used by dental anthropologist Lorrie Lincoln-Babb (Bioarch, LLC) for recording dental data. It was last modified in 2000.
Soil Systems, Inc. Inhumation Excavation Form (2004)
Some version of this excavation form has been used by SSI at least since the Hohokam Expressway (Pueblo Grande) project (1987). The form was last modified in 2004.
Soil Systems, Inc. Skeletal Inventory Form (2003)
This form was used to record human remains in both the field and the lab by SSI. It was last modified in 2003, but some version of it was used at least since 1997.
Specific Skeletal Injuries as a Proxy for Domestic Violence (2016)
The prevalence of violence in past societies is generally assessed through observable skeletal trauma. Common contexts of violence vary from culture to culture, and differences in acceptable forms of violence can be evident after documenting the different shapes, locations, and stages of healing of injuries. Contemporary cross-cultural studies show the physical effects of household violence primarily display on the middle third of the face in female victims, can commonly cause concomitant...
Stable Isotope Analysis of African Slave Burials from the Grassmere Plantation, Nashville, Tennessee (2015)
Carbon and oxygen isotope analyses of dental apatite from a captive slave population (ca. 1840s) from the Grassmere Plantation (now the Nashville Zoo) in Tennessee is examined to reconstruct childhood diet and determine whether individuals were local to the Middle Tennessee region or forcefully moved from another locale. Among the 19 burials recovered, enamel apatite was obtained from 11 individuals, representing 3 juveniles and 8 adults (3 males, 4 females, and 1 unsexed). At least two teeth...
The standardization of prehistoric cranial vault modification practices in the Andes: a 3D geometric morphometric approach (2016)
Bioarchaeologists have long been interested in documenting the forms and techniques involved in cranial modification and exploring the larger social significance of such practices, particularly in the Andes. While such studies have enriched our understanding of head-shaping practices among pre-Hispanic populations, there has been a dearth of research that investigates the individuals who were responsible for carrying out these corporeal modifications on infants. Was the practice carried out by a...
Statistically Comparing Demographic Distributions of Mortuary Assemblages (2017)
This analysis includes data from 50 archaeological mortuary assemblages variously attributed to sacrifice, warfare, and standard mortality processes. The research compares two sites, both attributed to sacrifice, to those produced by the two alternative processes of warfare and standard mortality and explores the question of whether these assemblages may be differentiated from them based on the age distribution of deaths. The analysis incorporates a novel feature in that preservation bias is...
Status, Health, and Ancestry of a Late Prehistoric Burial from Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands (1999)
This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Excavating Burials, or how a Bioarchaeologist can be in Two (or Three) Places at Once (2017)
Bioarchaeologists often are faced with the challenge of managing field excavations and lab analyses of skeletal remains at the same time, along with student and staff training and curation of osteological remains. I present results from recent fieldwork at the Classic Maya sites Actuncan and San Lorenzo, Belize that were excavated using a method designed for non-osteologists. This includes complex burial deposits that were re-entered, secondary burials, and comingled and disturbed remains that...
Stress and daily life in an Andean reducción town: preliminary osteological analyses of juvenile burials in a church sacristy (2017)
Juvenile mortality and morbidity is a sensitive marker of overall group health, as juvenile individuals are more susceptible to circulating endemic diseases and nutritional stress. Thus, reconstructing relative frailty of the juvenile population at Mawchu Llacta provides important data about daily life at this colonial site, in a relatively understudied transitional period of Peruvian history. In this paper, we present the results of preliminary skeletal analyses of burials excavated from the...
Subadult Mortality at McLemore: An Unexpected Culprit (2016)
This study focuses on the subadult skeletal remains excavated in 1960 from the Late Prehistoric-age McLemore site (34WA5) in southwest Oklahoma. Past analyses of this skeletal collection primarily focused on the adults, and what they could contribute to the overall understanding of the health and lifestyle of the individuals who inhabited McLemore. The goal of this study was to reexamine the skeletal collection in light of new methodologies in diagnosing pathology, focusing on the subadult...
The sum of their parts: reconstituting individuality from atypical mixed burials at the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds Poor Farm Cemetery (2015)
Excavations in 2013 at the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds cemetery recovered 650 burials from one of four locations used by Milwaukee County officials for burial of more than 7000 individuals from the mid-1800s through 1925. Of those recovered during the 2013 excavations, at least 25% have been identified as multiple interments. The diverse depositional contexts of several of these burials are indicative of a variety of mortuary behaviors atypical for a historic cemetery during this...
Surrounded by the Dead: A Spatial Analysis of Kuelap’s Mortuary Practices, Chachapoyas, Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kuelap is a monumental archaeological complex in the northeastern Andes that was occupied by the Chachapoya (ca. 500 – 1470 CE) and Inca (1470 – 1535 CE). Previous GIS research in the region has involved architecture and viewshed analysis of funerary features across the Utcubamba valley. This study uses GIS mapping to investigate the within site spatial...
Surviving Trepanation: Approaching the Relationship of Violence and the Care of "War Wounds" through a Case Study from Prehistoric Peru (2015)
The political instability that characterizes the early Late Intermediate Period (ca. AD 1000—1250) in Andean prehistory had widespread impacts on how people lived, ranging from changes in settlement patterns to an increase in skeletal trauma and infectious disease. This paper explores the social experiences of violence and its implications for healthcare, primarily through the analysis of a notable case study: a young male from Andahuaylas, Peru, whose skeleton evinces multiple lesions and...
Temporal and Spatial Liminality in Early Bronze Age Central Europe: A Bioarchaeological Analysis of a Mierzanowice Culture Cemetery (2016)
The cemetery at Szarbia in southeastern Poland is a Mierzanowice culture cemetery, from which 45 individuals have been excavated. The skeletal remains from this site had yet to be examined or published prior to this study. The Mierzanowice culture conforms to the “Borderlands” theme well in terms of its many modes of liminality. It is temporally liminal in that it is an Early Bronze Age culture, transitional between Late Neolithic and Bronze Age paradigms. It is culturally liminal in that modes...
TENDING THE VINES: BIOMECHANICAL EVIDENCE OF LATERALITY AND GENDERED LABOR DIVISION IN VITICULTURE AT PESSINUS, TURKEY (2015)
Skeletal remains from Sankuş Mevkiinde Tomb (Late Roman, AD 200–300) at Pessinus, Turkey included 12 adult males with asymmetrical, robust definition of the peroneal trochlea extending outward (>1 cm) from the lateral calcaneus and situated between the peroneus longus and brevis tendons, nine of which are on the right calcaneus. Adult females did not exhibit this variation. Asymmetrical variation suggests repeated biomechanical eversion of the foot and plantar flexion of the ankle on the side...
Testing Differential Frailty in a Nubian Sample (2016)
Periosteal lesions are often used as non-specific indicators of overall levels of stress and health in the past. Using medieval London samples, Sharon DeWitte (2014) demonstrated that distinguishing between active and healed periosteal lesions can significantly improve our understanding of stress and differential frailty. She found that healed lesions correlated with higher levels of survivorship when compared to active or no lesions. This study examines whether such a pattern may be observable...
Testing the Utility of Rib Histology Methods in Age Estimation in Fragmentary Remains from Maya Rockshelter Burials (2015)
Poor skeletal preservation is a ubiquitous problem in the Maya area, complicating the use of macroscopic techniques aimed at producing age range estimates. An important, but underutilized, set of skeletal approaches to aging employ microscopic methods, which rely on quantifying age-related histomorphological changes. This study focuses on histological structures in ribs and has two objectives: 1) to refine age estimations for burials from two rockshelters in the Caves Branch River Valley, Belize...
That’s a Wrap: Understanding Processes of Cranial Modification among post-Wari populations from Huari-Vegachayoq Moqo (2016)
This study examines cranial vault modification (CVM) frequency and styles among 35 crania from the Vegachayoq Moqo sector at the site of Huari, the former capital of the Wari Empire. The crania date to the post-Wari era (AD 1250 – 1400). In order to document the process by which they were modified, the crania were analyzed by noting the number of pad impressions and locations, as well as the center of applied pressure; the design of the modification devices was extrapolated from the observed...