Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis (Other Keyword)
376-400 (487 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The colonization of the Americas by the Spanish presents a unique context for exploring structural violence. The rapacious extractivism practiced by the colonizers led to the immeasurable destruction of indigenous communities, particularly those working as tributary labor. At the nexus of the colonial mining industry were the mercury mines of Santa Bárbara in...
Radiocarbon Dating and Carbon/Nitrogen Stable Isotope Analysis of Human Skeletons from the Lambayeque Valley, North Peru (Formative to Inca) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We analyzed 73 human bone/tooth samples from the following archaeological sites of the Lambayeque Valley, North Peru: Huaca Rajada, Huaca Zarpán, Huaca Santa Rosa, Huaca El Pueblo, Huaca El Chorro, Huaca El Triunfo, Huaca Saltur and Huaca Ventarrón. The associated material culture indicates that this sample encompasses a deep and continuous time transect going...
Reappraising Mobility during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE among Lowland Maya Populations: A Bioarchaeological and Isotopic Approach (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. Conventional inferences of Maya mobility have been based on cultural exchange. The isotopic composition measured in human skeletal remains provides a direct measure of past peoples’ movements. Founded on published isotopic datasets across the Maya area,...
Reassessing Demography of the Bronze Age Tomb at Tell Abraq (UAE): Using Multiple Bone Elements from a Commingled Context (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A circular stone tomb at the site of Tell Abraq (UAE) on the southern coast of the Arabian Gulf was used as a mortuary feature for approximately 200 years (2200-2000BC) during the Bronze Age. Both adults and children were buried in the 6 meter wide tomb, causing significant admixture or commingling of the remains. This research reassessed the demography of the...
Reconstructing Childhood Diet in the Aftermath of Wari Imperial Decline: Stable Carbon Isotope Analysis of Human Dentition from Huari-Monqachayoq-Solano, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis can illuminate aspects about a population’s diet and migration patterns otherwise unavailable through skeletal analysis. The population for this study is a mass burial at the site of Huari-Mongachayoq, excavated by Francisco Solano in the 1980s. The skeletons date to the second half of the Andean Late Intermediate Period, ca. 1275 –...
Reconstructing Funerary Practices from a Heavily Looted Tomb: A Case from the Upper Nepeña Drainage, Ancash, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehispanic open sepulcher collective funerary contexts are ubiquitous in the landscape of the Andean highlands. Their study has mostly focused on their architecture and setting, including their role in ancestor worship. Even though some still contain significant material and human remains, very few of these monuments have been thoroughly excavated, mainly...
Reconstructing Holocene Coastal Adaptations: An Evaluation of the Archaeological Shell Midden Record along Guyana’s Northwestern Coast (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Guyana’s shell midden complex, which stretches across its northwestern coast, documents more than 7,500 years of human land use. Traditional interpretations of the middens have assumed a degree of environmental constancy save for fluctuating Holocene sea levels associated with species found in marine and brackish waters. This study provides a...
Reconstructing Individual Life Histories in Early Medieval Italy through Serial Analysis and Compositional Analysis of Bones and Teeth (2018)
This contribution aims at gaining on the life history of individuals buried in northeastern Italy between the fifth and the seventh centuries AD. Elemental analysis of human and animal remains provides data on the evolution of diet and mobility at a time of significant social changes. Our research strategy, based on a preliminary histological study on teeth and bones and on serial sampling, gives us the opportunity to observe these variations at the level of the individual. Thus, this research...
Reconstructing Life Histories at the Site of Estuquiña: Incorporating Isotopic Data from Archaeological Hair to Investigate Palaeodietary Trends (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 Estuquiña is a Late Intermediate Period (AD 1100-1476) site in the Osmore drainage near the modern city of Moquegua in southern Peru. This time period is characterized by regional socio-political decentralization and transition of imperial polities throughout much of Andean South America. Previous research on human remains from the site...
Reconstructing the Childhood Diet of an Eighteenth- to Nineteenth-Century North Carolina Land-Owning Family (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Breastfeeding and weaning practices can impact a child’s immune system development and nutritional status and cause long-term health effects. Here we explore the potential relationship between the weaning process and childhood frailty in a late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century land-owning family in coastal North Carolina. The 10 individuals recovered...
Reconstructing the Social Life of Death at Ancient Aksum through Micro-CT Imaging (AD 50–400) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents micro-CT histological data on bone samples from Aksum’s Stelae Park cemetery (AD 50–400). Aksum was the capital of an ancient polity (AD 50–800) that spread across the northern Horn of Africa and was a major global power in the Indian Ocean trade. The most notable lasting remains of the ancient capital are its towering funerary...
Reconstruction of the Diet at the Iron Age Site of Cvijina Gradina, Croatia (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cvijina Gradina, located along the Zrmanja River in present day Croatia, was once one of the largest Liburnian settlements during the Iron Age period (6th – 1st century BC). The settlement was prominent in the region’s economic and sociopolitical sphere, leaving behind significant bioarchaeological evidence of diet to be researched. Based on the fragmentary...
Recovering "Los Antepasados": Bioarchaeology of a Historic Genízaro Community in Colonial New Mexico (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. The Nuestra Señora de Belén Archaeological Project explores a colonial mission church and plaza site dating to the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Belén, New Mexico. The colonial village of Belén was populated by a diverse community of Spanish and mixed-heritage individuals, including a number of Native American...
Reevaluating Early Bronze Age Masculinities: Skeletal and Mortuary Analysis of Transgenderism at Ostojićevo, Serbia (2018)
The Early Bronze Age (EBA) is often characterized as a period of emerging social hierarchies dominated by high status warrior-males. Analysis of human skeletal remains in their mortuary context has the potential to challenge this assumption and inform more nuanced understandings of gender and social status. Individuals (n=285) at the EBA Maros cemetery at Ostojićevo, Serbia (ca. 1900-1500 B.C.E.) exhibit a strong correlation between biological sex and funerary treatment, specifically body...
Region of Origin Predictions of Human Remains from a Late 19th Century Medical Waste Pit: Oxygen and Strontium Isotope Evidence from the Point San Jose Hospital, San Francisco (2018)
In 2010, human remains were discovered in a medical waste pit behind the Civil War-era hospital at Point San Jose, San Francisco by National Park Service archaeologists. The commingled assemblage consisted of thousands of human bones, including cranial and dental remains. Extensive cut marks on these remains indicated they were used for anatomical dissection. Assessment of biological characteristics suggested that some of the individuals targeted for dissection are of non-European ancestry. In...
Regional Solidarity, Ethnic Diversity, and Family Networks: The Bioarchaeology of Belonging and Exclusion in the Tiwanaku Colonial Enclave in the Moquegua Valley, Peru (2018)
During the Middle Horizon, disparate communities in the south central Andes embraced Tiwanaku corporate culture to signal their affiliation with the Tiwanaku state, yet these communities also maintained separate regional and ethnic identities through distinct cultural practices. The archaeological record of the Moquegua Valley, Peru, provides an important opportunity to evaluate processes of belonging and exclusion within Tiwanaku society. Previous research indicates members of two...
Reinterpreting the Evidence for Violence in Cave 7, Grand Gulch, Utah (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Wetherill’s Cave 7 in Grand Gulch, Utah, has long been considered a massacre site, notable in particular for the large number of individuals in the assemblage (~90) and for its temporal placement in the Basketmaker II period. Recent debate concerning these remains has centered around the chronology of burials in the cave, as establishing contemporaneity of the...
Remembering Valdivia through a Unique Manteño Burial at Buen Suceso (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Community in the Past and Present through the 2022 PARCC Field School at Buen Suceso, Ecuador" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Burials have long been considered primary sources of information regarding social ranking and inequality, social understandings of ancestors, conceptions of death, diverse representations of identity and agency, and emotional expressions of mourning and loss (see Baitzel 2018; Buikstra...
Representation Matters: Disabled Professorship and a Move Toward a Higher Standard of Accessibility in the Office and the Field (2019)
This is an abstract from the "What Have You Done For Us Lately?: Discrimination, Harassment, and Chilly Climate in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While workplace affecting disabilities are covered by the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), oftentimes universities struggle with how to accommodate faculty with disabilities. When conversations between faculty and chairpersons occur, they may cover only the bare minimum that must be...
Resurrectionists, Criminals, and the Unclaimed: Social Context of Cadavers in the 19th Century (2018)
Cadavers have been used to study anatomy and practice anatomical dissection for over 2,000 years. For most of this time, the use of cadavers was neither ethical, nor legal. In U.S. medical study today, most cadavers come from body donation programs largely resulting from the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA), first proposed in 1968. The UAGA followed a change in social context of cadavers. It introduced the body as property and provided individuals the right to donate their body following...
Ritual and Death: A Paleopathological Analysis of Skeletal Remains from Salango, Ecuador during the Guangala Period (100 BCE-800 CE) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are many questions that have yet to be answered about the prehistoric people of Ecuador, especially along the southern coast. In particular, more studies are needed in order to understand how people lived and interacted with each other and the landscape at the important ritual site of Salango. Salango was occupied from 4000 BCE through Spanish contact...
Ritual Foods Compared with Daily Diet at Tenahaha in the Cotahuasi Valley during the Andean Middle Horizon (2018)
People in the past actively chose which foods were used in different contexts. Here we compare plant remains with human skeletal remains to understand dietary practices at Tenahaha in the Cotahuasi Valley (AD 850-1050). Tenahaha was built during the Middle Horizon as a communal space to take advantage of new social interaction spheres, stimulated in part by the Wari state. Tenahaha includes burial areas as well as food storage and preparation zones. Macrobotanical remains were found in public...
Ritual Performances in and around Caves in Bronze Age Sardinia (2018)
This paper understands performance as an embodied, site-specific and temporary event. It consequently emphasizes the diversity of ritual performances identifiable archaeologically, not only in the context of different types of cave and rock-shelter, but also between these and other types of site in the landscape. In doing so, the paper evaluates the liminality of these places and ritual performances, which were – to varying degrees – separated spatially, temporally and symbolically from the rest...
Ritual Use of the Rejolladas of Tahcabo, Yucatán (2018)
In Tahcabo, Yucatán, 5% of the town’s municipal land is contained within rejolladas. Rejolladas, like cenotes, are sinkholes formed in the karstic bedrock of Yucatán, although they do not reach to the level of the water table. They make for ideal gardens when located within settlements, as their low elevation allows for the collection of deep and moisture-rich soil that provides an advantage for the cultivation of almost any plant. At the nearby site of Kulubá it has also been shown that...
Ruptured: Bodies, Boundaries and Reproductive Loss in Bioarchaeology (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. The concept of the bounded body is powerfully resonant within the post-industrialised western world; it is performed and reinforced through cultural practices which observe the maintenance of bodily space and the delineation of individual bodies. Recent research on the developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis, epigenetics and...