bioarchaeology (Other Keyword)
176-200 (296 Records)
Mitochondrial DNA of ancient dogs in the Americas has been studied extensively, but most studies focus solely on the hypervariable region. We sequenced the complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of dogs in the Americas from multiple geographic regions and time periods in order to compare populations between regions as well as to compare the genetic diversity of ancient dogs in the Americas to modern dogs worldwide. When comparing the HVR and mitogenome data, we found that the two data sets...
Mixed burials and commingled human remains recovered from the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds Poor Farm Cemetery (2015)
From the mid-1800s to its abandonment in 1974, the MCIG Poor Farm Cemetery in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin served as a burial place for institutional residents, unidentified or unclaimed individuals from the Coroner's Office, and the community poor and indigent. Previous excavations at the cemetery in 1991 and 1992 recovered 1649 individuals in predominantly single interments with an occasional extraneous body part representing incidental amputation or autopsy. The 2013 excavations at the site yielded...
"A Monumental Blunder": The Challenging History and Uncertain Future of the Virginia State Penitentiary Collection (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Urban Erasures and Contested Memorial Assemblages" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Virginia State Penitentiary (1804-1991) loomed over the Falls of the James River and was a feared site of solitary confinement, carceral labor, and capital punishment. Designed by Benjamin Latrobe, the penitentiary was notorious for its inhumane treatment and poor management in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Fieldwork in...
More than Just Bones: A Biocultural Analysis of Fremont Human Remains (2016)
Many existing studies of Fremont mortuary data have been limited to documenting the location of burials, the presence or absence of burial goods, and the position of the remains. Furthermore, much of the analyses of Fremont human skeletal remains have focused almost exclusively on population-level comparisons or evidence of extreme violence. Current bioarchaeological methods have expanded the type of questions that researchers can ask. Equipped with hypotheses influenced by social theory, it is...
Morphological Signatures of High-Altitude Adaptations in the Andean Archaeological Record and the Challenges of Distinguishing Developmental Plasticity from Genetic Adaptations (2016)
High-altitude hypoxia, cold ambient temperatures, and malnutrition are critical environmental stressors affecting living human populations in the highland Andes. Decades of scholarship in human biology explain the complex physiological responses that provide adaptive fitness to living human groups at high altitudes through both developmental acclimatization, in which the human body adjusts to environmental stress during growth, and genetic adaptations from natural selection. Given the longevity...
Morphology and Culture among the Middle and Late Intermediate Period inhabitants of Catarpe (San Pedro de Atacama, Chile) (2015)
Catarpe tambo represents one of the clearest pieces of evidence for an Inca presence in north Chile’s Atacama oases. The tambo was built and used north of the oases, in the San Pedro river canyon. Catarpe was chosen by the Incas as the local administrative center, however the valley was already densely occupied since at least the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1400). Here, we study morphological affinities and the distribution of cranial vault modification among over 300 individuals from the...
A Mortuary Analysis of Adult and Child Burials of Río Viejo, Oaxaca, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mortuary practices are symbolically charged activities that vary depending on wealth, religion, manner of death, and even age. Recent excavations of the site of Río Viejo, Oaxaca, Mexico, suggest similar burial practices between adults and children during the Early Postclassic (AD 800–1100) and Late Classic (AD 500–800). The current understanding of burial...
Mortuary Archaeology, Burial Practices, and defining the Prehistoric Funerary Landscape on the Sunshine Coast, British Columbia (2017)
The ancestral burial practices among the peoples of the northwest coast of British Columbia have been well studied and documented by academics, heritage resource management professionals, and the First Nation Communities. Recent systematic surveys from archaeological impact assessments within the Sunshine Coast have yielded previously unidentified funerary archaeological features including various funerary petroforms atypical to this region. My aim is to revisit and define the types of...
Mortuary multiplicity: Variability in mortuary treatment at a Late Prehistoric matrix village from Spain (2016)
At 113 ha, Marroquíes Bajos (Jaén, Spain) is one of the largest villages known for the Iberian Copper Age. Attention was first focused on the site in the 1960s after construction work underneath the modern city of Jaén unearthed a series of elaborate artificial burial caves. However, over the past several decades salvage excavations revealed even more mortuary areas at the site, including commingled depositions in enclosure ditches, primary and secondary inhumations in discrete subterranean...
Mortuary Variability and Identity Upstream of the Fourth Cataract (2017)
Fieldwork upstream of the Fourth Cataract in northern Sudan reveals substantial variation in mortuary practices among roughly contemporaneous sites on both local and regional levels. Cemeteries in the Bioarchaeology of Nubia Expedition (BONE) concession on the right (north) bank of the Nile River near el-Qinefab include intervisible clusters of graves from the Kerma period (c. 2500-1500 BC) and into the subsequent period of Egyptian colonization of Nubia. These sites constitute a mortuary...
Multiethnic Colonial Communities and Endogamy: Evaluating the Dual Diaspora Model of Moquegua Tiwanaku Social Organization (2017)
The Moquegua Valley Tiwanaku colonial enclave was comprised of two Tiwanaku-affiliated populations: camelid agropastoralists who used Omo-style ceramics and maize agricultural specialists associated with Chen Chen-style ceramics. Despite living in close proximity, Chen Chen- and Omo-style communities maintained distinct social and cultural boundaries for several centuries. Goldstein’s dual diaspora model suggests that Omo- and Chen Chen-style Tiwanaku colonists represent two separate but...
A Multistage Model for Treponemal Disease Susceptibility (2015)
There are numerous historical, bioarchaeological, and paleopathological studies of treponemal disease, but most have focused on the origin and antiquity of syphilis. Therefore, little is known about the evolution and ecology of the other treponematoses, such as yaws. In modern populations, research options are limited by difficulty in culturing the causal bacteria, lack of animal models, and ethical issues with human testing. Treatment with antibiotics has also limited clinical research into...
Mummy studies and the soft tissue evidence of care (2015)
Evidence of care in the bioarchaeological record has focused on two broad circumstances; (1) long term survival with disability in which functional independence is impossible and (2) healed/healing trauma or illness that would have necessitated intervention or care to ensure recovery and survival. These conditions reflect relatively extreme, life-or-death circumstances and thus provide the clearest opportunity to observe care. The preservation of soft tissue, however, not only affords the...
NAGPRA Human Remains Inventory: Making Our Work More Vsible (2016)
In 2008, Central Washington University NAGPRA Program and the Columbia Plateau Tribes created a more visible, participatory osteobiography process. CWU let go of the “culture of secrecy” around our NAGPRA human remains documentation process and found the benefits outweigh fears. The change showed the tribes what we really do and generated research questions from Tribal representatives.
Narrativizing a Bioarchaeology of Care: A Case Study from Ancient Dilmun (2015)
Since 2008, the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project has been studying and publishing the materials from Peter B. Cornwall’s 1940-41 expedition to Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, which now reside in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. By analyzing these skeletal and artifactual remains, our multi-disciplinary team is adding to anthropologists’ understanding of how life was experienced and death commemorated in Dilmun. One of the most exceptional skeletons belongs to a young woman who...
Neonatal line assessment among Milwaukee County Institution Grounds (MCIG) perinates to determine viability (2015)
A sample of perinatal individuals recovered from MCIG Cemetery (ca. 1890-1920) included broken teeth. We evaluate these teeth for the presence of the neonatal line to differentiate stillborn individuals from those that died as postnatal individuals. Our research is nondestructive. We compare the results of the dental analysis to the distribution of stillborns and live births documented in the MCIG burial record and City of Milwaukee vital records. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR...
New bioarchaeological evidence for Guangala and Manteño-Huancavilca Cultures in Santa Elena peninsula (Southern Ecuadorian coast). (2015)
In this contribution we present the preliminary results of a study that addresses the funerary practices and the osteobiographical profile of various sites from Guangala culture (Regional Development Period, 300 BC-800AD) and Manteño-Huancavilca culture (Integration Period, 800AD-1530AD). In this case, we have investigated human remains from the Guangala site OGSE-46 from Samarina, several locations from the Manteño-Huancavilca period in La Libertad (OGSE-47) and Chanduy; most of them have not...
New Perspectives on Casas Grandes Mortuary Practices: (2015)
The diversity of Casas Grandes mortuary practices has often been cited as strong evidence for hierarchy and political centralization at Paquimé. Initial mortuary analyses argued that variability in grave furniture, corpse treatment, and burial location represented the social identity of the deceased. A central finding of these analyses was that mortuary variability cross-cut age and sex categories, supporting inferences of ascribed vertical status differentiation. In this study, we use recent...
New Perspectives on Past Vitamin D Deficiency (2017)
Less than half of the current world population is estimated to have adequate vitamin D status and potential consequences are much debated. For those engaged in addressing the challenges that vitamin D deficiency poses, information on past deficiency provides an important time dimension to current debates. Over the last 15 years I have undertaken extensive collaborative work on past deficiency. Investigations at St. Martin’s, a 19th-century UK site, established diagnostic criteria and revealed...
No Better Angels Here: Bioarchaeology of Non-Lethal Head Wounds in the Greater Southwest (AD 900-1350) (2015)
A survey of healed cranial depression fractures from Southwest collections revealed new information on the patterning of head wounds by age and sex. Head wounds demonstrate nuance and a non-linear trend over time. Thus suggests a much more complex picture than has been offered by recent scholarship that examined fracture rates based on published literature for select sites. This analysis is based on new data collected directly from Southwestern skeletal collections representing Ancestral Pueblo...
No Big Dudes Here: Bioarchaeology of Social Control at Aztec Ruins ( (2015)
The discussion of elite leaders in the Greater Southwest has primarily focused on Chaco Canyon. This project extends that discussion to the later site to the north called Aztec Ruins. Because of its size and some architectural similarities to sites in Chaco Canyon, it has also been suggested to be a regional center with considerable political-economic power. Morris recovered a number of human skeletal remains from Aztec Ruins between 1916 and 1922. One burial in particular is of interest...
A Novel Method of Stature Estimation for Fragmentary Femora (2015)
Stature estimation formulae for native populations in North America have historically been problematic, utilizing incorrect reference samples, for example; however recent research has allowed for the creation of more precise formula for evaluation of adult remains. Incomplete bones, however, can hinder stature estimation. There are a number of methods which can provide estimates of the overall length of the bone, or of stature, based on segments of a bone. A method that uses a simple to collect...
Of Mummies and Guinea Pigs: An Analysis of Burial Contexts at Chiribaya Alta (2017)
In the Pre-Incan site of Chiribaya Alta, animals were often included in the graves of the deceased. Cuy, or Guinea pig, are amongst the most common type of animal found in these contexts, signaling the significance of these animals for the Chiribaya peoples in life and in death. Among traditional peoples in the Andes documented ethnohistorically and ethnographically, guinea pigs are consumed as food and are also used for divination and other religious practices. At Chiribaya Alta, a site in...
‘On the Apparitions of Drowned Men’: Unnatural Death, Folklore, and Bioarchaeology at Haffjarðarey, Western Iceland. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Burial, Space, and Memory of Unusual Death" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The church of Saint Nicholas at Haffjarðarey (1200 to 1563 CE) was active during two outbreaks of bubonic plague, religious transitions, and the establishment of the Icelandic fishing industry. Both the church and cemetery were suddenly closed and abandoned in 1563 after the supposed sudden deaths of the priest and parishioners after...
ON THE TRAIL OF IVORY: MAPPING TRADE IN IRON AGE SOUTHERN AFRICA (2015)
Our current knowledge of the pre-colonial ivory trade in southern Africa consists of evidence from a number of archaeological sites dating from the 7-11th centuries AD, such as Schroda, K2, Ndondonwane, and KwaGandaGanda. These sites have yielded large caches of ivory debris, suggesting that these places were centres for ivory carving/production. However, it is unknown whether raw ivory was obtained locally or brought from further afield, whether there was a standardised mode of production, and...