Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis (Other Keyword)
101-125 (487 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Globalization and Colonialism through Archaeology and Bioarchaeology: An NSF REU Sponsored Site on the Caribbean’s Golden Rock (Sint Eustatius)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On the Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius (Statia), there are several cemeteries dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, primarily utilized during a time of colonization and trade by the European colonial powers, Netherlands, Great...
Comparing Demographic Shifts versus Permanence across the Maya Lowlands: A Multiproxy Approach to the Centuries Surrounding the “Maya Collapse” (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. he so-called Maya collapse has been seen as an entelechy of the depopulation and emigration of the great Maya cities of the lowlands during the ninth and tenth centuries AD. However, proper paleodemographic and archaeodemographic works that support this...
Comparing Isotopic Data for Diet and Mobility of Males and Females in the Lower Río Verde Valley, Oaxaca, Mexico (2018)
This poster presents a comparison of the isotopic data from male and female individuals interred in the lower Río Verde Valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico from the Early Formative period, beginning in 2000 BC, to the Early Postclassic period, ending in AD 1100. Our previous work in this region has focused primarily on broad dietary changes through time, focusing little attention on comparisons by sex. Our sample for the present study includes 54 individuals: 31 males and 23 females. These...
Comparing Patterns of Skeletal Pathology in Enslaved Africans from an Eighteenth-Century Cemetery on St. Eustatius (2021)
This is an abstract from the "NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research investigates the patterns of skeletal pathology of 15 enslaved individuals in an eighteenth-century cemetery on St. Eustatius. Nine different pathology markers were analyzed from the 15 individuals of St. Eustatius and compared to individuals from the Newton...
Comparing Short-Term Dietary Variability throughout Early Life between Trophy and Non-Trophy Head Individuals from Uraca, Arequipa, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleodietary analysis of incrementally forming δ13C and δ15N can show which points during early life growth and development individual diets converged and diverged from other individuals within a burial community. Understanding how those changes correspond with estimated age and sex and other key aspects of social identify or lived experience can shed...
Comparison by Non-Metrical Traits of Xaltocan's Shrine vs. Teotihuacan in Mexico by Using a Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling Method (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of The Basin of Mexico: The Ecological Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, Part 2" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is little information about the biological diversity of the populations that inhabited the Basin of Mexico. In this work we focused on showing the phenotypic differences between 118 skulls of the Xaltocan sanctuary and 44 adult skulls from Teotihuacan. It is not clear how this...
A Comparison of Mock Excavations and Active Case Excavations (2018)
Performing mock excavations of human skeletal material is a common practice throughout undergraduate and graduate studies in Forensic and Bioarchaeological programs. These class sessions include instruction on correct excavation methods, mapping techniques, documentation methods, and chain of custody. Inevitably however, there are differences between mock excavations within a class setting and active homicide excavations where no professor is present and the real-life ramifications of the...
A Comparison: Two Methods for Timing Linear Enamel Hypoplasia among a 19th Century African American Population from Newburgh, New York (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Linear enamel hypoplasia, also known as LEH, becomes apparent in dental enamel as horizontal indents from thinner layers of enamel being produced. This defect forms as the dental enamel responds to physiological disturbances from systematic stress attributable to biological, cultural, and environmental factors. LEH has allowed researchers to time the defect...
A Computational Approach to Bone Histology Analysis in Archaeology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Early Bronze Age in Transylvania exhibits two different mortuary traditions, one associated with the Yamnaya migration in the lowlands and the other associated with the local Transylvanian groups in the highlands. A key question for archaeologists has been how these traditions differ in respect to primary and secondary inhumation. The tempo of funerary...
Conquering Aztecs and Resisting Tlaxcaltecas: The Body as a Site of Creating and Challenging State Narratives (2018)
Narratives of Aztec grandeur dominate portrayals of Late Postclassic (AD 1325-1519) Mesoamerica. While imperial influence spread rapidly and thoroughly throughout the central valleys, Tlaxcallan appears as a rift in imperial control, resisting the encircling empire. Aztec narratives relegate Tlaxcallan to the peripheries, downplaying Tlaxcaltecas as one-dimensional barbaric enemies, unconquered by choice. In contrast, ethnohistoric accounts from within Tlaxcallan emphasize a state that...
Constructing a Colony: Investigating Stress from Endogenous Cortisol in Archaeological Hair from a Lupaqa Colony at Estuquiña (2018)
Using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to obtain segmented cortisol levels, these cortisol levels can reconstruct periods of heightened month-to-month duress leading up to death. Segmented cortisol levels provide a more nuanced understanding of stress variation through biocultural change and lived experiences in antiquity. This study aims to reconstruct periods of duress through assaying endogenous cortisol in archaeological hair (n=11) from the site of Estuquiña and investigate the...
Contextualizing Conflict: Social Theory in the Bioarchaeology of Central Anatolia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout her career Debra Martin has utilized an innovative, multidisciplinary, and theoretical approach to bioarchaeology. One of her most significant contributions to archaeology has been her pioneering work on violence, utilizing social theory and current methodologies in order to interpret the skeletal evidence. Her...
Contextualizing Ritual Violence: Kinship, Ethnicity, and Human Sacrifice in Epiclassic Central Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ritual violence has a long time-depth within Mesoamerica. While archaeologists and ethnohistorians have studied the political and cosmological significance of this practice extensively, less is understood about how or why particular individuals were targeted for...
Contributing Bodies: The Foundation of the Modern Human Skeletal Collection of the University of Athens in Greece (2018)
The capacity of humans to contribute positively even long after death includes not only donations and institutions but also one’s own body. The human body and its parts provide the opportunity to bridge time in archaeological and forensic contexts and appreciate human history. In 1996-7 this capacity was aptly evaluated by the scientific committee of the Wiener Laboratory of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and the foundation of the modern human skeletal reference collection...
Contributions of Osteological Evidence to Repatriation Assessments (2018)
Since the inception of the Repatriation Office at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in 1991, the documentation of Native American skeletal remains has been accomplished by the Repatriation Osteology Lab. The need for a computerized data entry system was recognized as a critical component to the success of this process along with a structured database for data access and management. The resulting software interface and SQL relational database, called Osteoware, is available to...
Cranial and Dental Pathologies in Mesolithic-Neolithic Inhabitants of the Danube Gorges, Serbia (2018)
We use anthropological data and a new statistical method to determine if there is a significant change to the health of people found in the Danube Gorges, Serbia (c. 9500–5500 BC), following the arrival of the Neolithic. A gross anatomical study of porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia was undertaken on 113 individuals. The results show a high prevalence of porotic hyperostosis (89%) and a lower prevalence of cribra orbitalia (13%). 1308 teeth deriving from 89 individuals were examined for...
Cranial Vault Modification in the Mariana Islands (2018)
Cultural flattening of the posterior skull, rare in the Mariana Islands, was recently observed in multiple human skeletons from a Latte Period site in Guam. Prior to this study, only one case of possible artificial cranial modification was reported for this region. The cranium of a young adult female from Songsong Village, Rota, was described as having "asymmetrical deformation in the occipital region consistent with artificial shaping practices." In a review of the ethnohistoric literature,...
Creating a Fisher’s Body: Using Ethnobioarchaeology to Reveal the Caballito de Totora-Body-Fish-Sea Assemblage in Ancient Huanchaco, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On the North Coast of Peru, archaeological evidence suggests artisanal fishers have used caballito de totora (reed) boats for over 3,000 years. In the modern-day fishing and surfing town of Huanchaco in the Moche Valley, these crescent-shaped boats are still used daily for gathering...
Cremation Mortuary Practices during the Archaic Period in Ancient Athens and Attica (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, we provide preliminary results for reconstructing cremation mortuary practices from the Archaic site of Phaleron (ca. 750–480 BCE), located in Athens, Greece. We build on performance theory and embodiment ideas to answer two main research questions: (1) Who were the cremated individuals? and (2) How were cremation mortuary rituals performed?...
Crossing Borders: What Isotope Geochemistry Reveals about Migration among the Maya (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Present day conversations about migration focus on borders and limiting population movement with the presence of police, harsh regulations, and walls. This paper examines the concept of migration in the Maya region and what the past decade of isotope geochemistry research tells...
Cultural Factors of Metabolic Disease in Infants and Young Children from Late Ottoman-Era Jordan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Tell Hisban in Jordan was seasonally occupied by nomadic agropastoral tribes for over a thousand years. In the latter half of the 1800s, the Ottoman Empire instituted the Tanzimat, a series of reforms intended to solidify control over the region, including a new system of private land ownership. This new land law conflicted with traditional...
The Curious Pacific Coast Distribution of Tightly Wrapped Bundle Burials in the Middle Formative (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Connections: Pacific Coastal Links from Mexico to Ecuador" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Highly unusual tightly wrapped bundle burials of previously cleaned and carefully arranged disarticulated human bones dating to the Middle Formative have been discovered by archaeologists at three sites in western Jalisco, Mexico, one site on the Pacific coastal plain in far northern Sinaloa, Mexico and eroding out of the...
Daily Lives in Early Medieval Bavaria: Degenerative Joint Disease in the Carolingian Altenerding, Germany (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project investigates lived experience in early medieval Germany by examining degenerative joint disease (DJD) in human skeletal remains from Altenerding, Germany. A 2008 excavation at the Petersbergl site unearthed 128 burials from a 9th century cemetery associated with the Carolingian court...
Death that Endures: A Bioarchaeological and Biogeochemcial Study of Human Sacrifices from the Moche Valley, Peru (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 investigates how rituals of human sacrifice performed by the Chimú Empire (AD 1000/1100-1450/1470) transformed in response to Inca imperialism (AD 1450-1532) in the Moche Valley of Peru. Recent discoveries of hundreds of sacrificial victims in the Moche Valley suggest that ritual violence was used to maintain the sociopolitical and religious...
The Death Within: Bone as Material among the Maya (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Houston’s "The Life Within" is among the most perceptive and nuanced statements on Classic Maya materials and the animate quality of things. Here, I draw inspiration from this future-classic work to more deeply probe Maya understandings of bone – a material most generally treated by...