Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis (Other Keyword)
1-25 (487 Records)
Whiskey Flats, an archaeological site on the Llano Estacado (western Texas), is dated to the mid-18th century and represents Comanche occupation. Ongoing fieldwork has produced a vertebrate assemblage that includes coyote (Canis latrans) and a larger canid (Canis spp.) of a species that remains undetermined. The species of canids that may have been present at the time of deposition are grey wolf (C. lupus), coyote, domestic dog (C. lupus familiaris), and possibly red wolf (C. rufus). The Canis...
Across the Lake: Interregional Connections with the Tiwanaku Occupation of Copacabana (2018)
Tiwanaku, the first expansive state in the southern Andes, established colonies in many parts of the Andes (Moquegua, the Atacama Desert, Cochabamba) and exerted influence over the southern Titicaca basin. Archaeologists have recreated daily life for people living in these places, producing many insightful studies of Tiwanaku diet, cultural bodily modifications, disease, and occasional incidents of trauma. Many colonists living far from the Tiwanaku heartland developed hybrid lifestyles,...
Acts of God? Causation and Agency in Disease History (2018)
Epidemics are often understood both by historians and by ancient people as "acts of God" which structure human lives but originate outside systemic causation, and are simply caused by the advent of pathogens. But no simple model of unidirectional causation, whether by natural agents or humans, really does justice to the situation. Disease responds to social and biological environments (for instance, settlement distributions affecting contagion, and poverty and malnutrition compromising the...
Add to Cart? The Ethical Landscape of Buying Human Bone in the United States (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project examines the ethical landscape of the acquisition and curation of human skeletal materials for teaching purposes using the NCSU Human Skeletal Remains Collection as a case study. Lack of legislation in the United States regarding the sale of human remains, and an increase in social media, permits certain organizations and individuals to become...
Age Estimation Using Dental Development and Long Bone Length for the Children in the Late Classic Copan Maya Civilization (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Childhood growth and development remains difficult to estimate in past populations, yet, it provides a unique window into childhood experiences in prehistory. This study considers subadult skeletal remains estimated to be 1-21 years of age at the time of death from the ancient Maya population in Copan, Honduras based on the end of the eruption/development...
Alimento para las deidades: Nuevas prácticas sacrificiales y post sacrificiales en los centros mesoamericanos del Epiclásico y Posclásico inicial (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Durante las últimas décadas se han documentado varios conjuntos de restos humanos no reverenciales y altamente procesados en diferentes estados de manipulación dentro el territorio de Mesoamérica. En un principio se les apreció como hechos aislados hasta...
Analysis of Anatomical Dissection at Point San Jose Hospital, Fort Mason, San Francisco (2018)
During a 2010 National Park Service project to remove lead contaminated soils from behind a historic hospital at Point San Jose (now Fort Mason), San Francisco, a medical waste pit containing commingled human and faunal remains was discovered. From 1864-1903, several military surgeons were posted at the Point San Jose Hospital to treat military personnel. Analysis of the human remains revealed evidence of anatomical dissection indicated by numerous incised cut marks, saw cut marks, and other...
Analysis of Entheses Development and Implications on Labor in Late Medieval Poland (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Poland" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Studies of human behavior and habitual muscle use through analysis of entheses, or muscle insertion sites on the skeleton, continue to be an important way of examining labor among people in the past. In this study, we analyze entheses development on the skeletons of individuals from the recently discovered and excavated late medieval site of Gać in...
An Analysis of Fetal Remains Discovered in a New York Privy (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The remains of a thirty-six week old fetus were uncovered during the excavation of a privy on the Sargent Street site located in Cohoes, New York. Discovered in a 19th century town inhabited with textiles mill workers and their families, the skeleton was fragmentary and consisted of only four long bones. The context of these remains are unique and represents...
Analysis of Human Skeletal Remains from Late Postclassic Iximché, Guatemala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Analysis of human skeletal remains from the Postclassic Kaqchikel Maya capital of Iximché, Guatemala, supports the interpretation that many of the partial skeletal remains were trophies taken in war or were from war captives sacrificed at the site. Other, more complete, remains...
Analysis of Physical Activity Pattern of Women from the Castillo de Huarmey Mausoleum, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Decade of Multidisciplinary Research at Castillo de Huarmey, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper seeks to test the hypothesis that the elite individuals from the main chamber in the mausoleum in Castillo de Huarmey, Peru, functioned as specialized weavers. The sources available for the precolumbian Middle-Andes indicate the presence of aqllacuna (chosen women) who dedicated themselves to luxurious...
Analysis of the Vertebral Pathologies among Individuals from Fourteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Polish Cemeteries: Comparison between the Village and Town Inhabitants in Greater Poland (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Life and Death in Medieval Poland" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Vertebral degenerative changes are one of the most common pathologies found among historical human skeletal remains. They occur naturally with age and/or as a result of activity-related stress or illness. This study examines human remains discovered during the archaeological excavation of cemeteries from the town Dzwonowo (fourteenth–eighteenth...
Analyzing Stress, Discovering Cooperation: A case study of a Late Archaic sample from the Green River region of Kentucky (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While considerable portions of bioarchaeological work have been dedicated to examining evidence of violence and conflict, little research has been devoted to understanding collaboration in the past. Analysis of stress biomarkers, particularly that which utilizes an osteobiographical approach, provides one potential avenue for...
Anarchy, Heterarchy, and the Bioarchaeological Evidence of Labor in the Tiwanaku “State” (AD 500–1100) of Bolivia and Peru (2021)
This is an abstract from the "A New Horizon: Reassessing the Andean Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000) and Rethinking the Andean State" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Early explorers thought that Tiwanaku was a ritual or pilgrimage center because of its heartland location in the high-altitude, seemingly inhospitable altiplano of Bolivia. Years after “progressing” beyond a ceremonial center, Tiwanaku was fit into the “state” category within a political...
Anatomical Characteristics of the Pedal Skeleton Provide Insights into the History of Human Footwear (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no footwear in nature—only hooves and soles. Protecting feet through artificial means is a human invention of relatively recent origin. The oldest direct evidence for footwear includes woven sandals and moccasins dating to the early Holocene. Inferences from footprints, decorative beads, and morphological analysis of phalanges suggest an...
Ancient Maya Dentistry: New Evidence for Therapeutic Dental Interventions and Dental Care Practices (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to the Archaeology of Health: Sewers, Snakebites, and Skeletons" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya are often highly regarded for their skill in dentistry—evidenced by longstanding traditions of filing and inlaying teeth. These procedures had a considerable success rate suggesting a pervasive knowledge of dental anatomy among practitioners. However, this study of aesthetic practices has...
Ancient Maya Placemaking: An Isotopic Assessment of Ancestry, Memory, and Body Partibility (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Migrations are a key feature of human populations past and present, and people moved across landscapes regardless of cultural affiliation, hierarchical structures, or place of birth. But, what does it mean when individuals and/or pieces of their remains are moved elsewhere posthumously? This paper builds upon discourse centered around social memory and...
Animal, Human, and Crafted Bone from the S-Sector of Piedras Negras (2018)
Excavations within the S-Sector at Piedras Negras in 2016 yielded an assemblage of lithic and bone artifacts consistent with evidence of craft production. The Proyecto Paisaje Piedras Negras – Yaxchilan returned to the S-Sector during the 2017 field season to conduct more extensive excavations in an attempt to understand production and exchange at this Maya polity capital. Between the 2016 and 2017 seasons, over 4,300 fragments of worked and unworked bone, both human and animal, were excavated...
Apotguan Revisited: A Bioarchaeological Analysis of Latte Period Burials from Guam (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Research and CRM Are Not Mutually Exclusive: J. Stephen Athens—Forty Years and Counting" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cultural Resources Management studies in the Mariana Islands have consistently expanded opportunities for in-depth bioarchaeological research. Burial assemblages originating from historic preservation compliance obligations generally derive from one of three contexts: displaced fragmentary remains;...
Application of Multi-Isotopic Analysis (δ13C, δ15N, and δ34S) to Examine Mobility and Movement of People and Animals within an Iron Age British Society (2018)
The middle of the Iron Age in southern central Britain (c. 400–200 cal BC) is a period that is often seen as becoming regionally inward-looking. A primary focus of the mixed agriculturalists is on building and maintaining massive hillforts. There is very little long-distance exchange or trade noted in the archaeological record, and the metalwork at the time takes on insular forms (e.g. involuted brooches) that separate it from the Continental connections observable in both the Early and Late...
Applying a Social Autopsy Theoretical Framework to Bioarchaeological Analyses (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Not dissimilar to a medical autopsy, whereby a forensic pathologist directs their view inward towards a body’s tissues and organs in an attempt to reconstruct and explain an individual’s underlying cause of death, social autopsy directs its view outward. A social autopsy dissects the interworking layers of social institutions, political laws and policies,...
Archaeological Relocation of Five Historic Cemeteries in North-Central Tennessee (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Spring of 2020 Wood E&IS embarked on the removal and relocation of graves associated with five late 19th- early 20th- century historic cemeteries located in rural north-central Tennessee. The cemeteries were deemed eligible for the National Register; therefore, graves were removed archaeologically. Each cemetery was mapped using noninvasive geophysical...
Archaeological Research in the Historical Center of Xochimilco (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the fundamental tasks of archaeology in Mexico is to investigate, conserve, restore, and recover the archaeological monuments; likewise, it is interested in disseminating its studies, for this reason, the results of the analysis of the prehispanic materials found during an archaeological rescue that took place in the historical center of Xochimilco, in...
Archaeology Education in Bioarchaeology and Human Osteology: Value and Values of Experiential Service Learning (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human osteology and bioarchaeology remain an important part of archaeological practice, transitioning from a focus on legacy collections to service and compliance work rooted in the ethics of direct engagement with descendant communities. Higher education and archaeology can partner in new ways that center respect for pre-contact and historic era ancestral...
Archaeology of Death across the International Border: Research among the Hohokam and Trincheras Archaeological Groups (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future of Bioarchaeology in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I will explore similarities and differences between mortuary practices and concepts of embodiment of the dead from Hohokam Classic Period (AD 1150 to 1450/1500) sites in the Tucson Basin and from the Cerro de Trincheras, Sonora (ca. AD 1300 to 1450). I will discuss challenges and opportunities for conducting bioarchaeology...