Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis (Other Keyword)
451-475 (487 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Myriad factors shaped cultural practices such as ‘trophy head’ taking in Andean prehistory. Zorropata, located in the Las Trancas Valley, Nasca, Peru, was a large domestic site with likely ceremonial function occupied relatively continuously from the Late Nasca period (c. AD 450-600) until the early Middle Horizon/Loro period (c. AD 600-1000). Archaeological...
Understanding the Diet of Late to Terminal Classic Period Maya Groups in the Sibun River Valley, Belize, through Food Web Reconstruction (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A stable isotope based dietary study, coupled with previously collected zooarchaeological and botanical data, expands our understanding of ancient Maya dietary variation in the Late and Terminal Classic periods in the Sibun River Valley of central Belize. A food web was created based on the analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in plants and...
Understanding Vertebral Anomalies and Growth Patterns During the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1470) in the Huanchaco Bay Area, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The mass sacrifice of Chimú children in the Moche Valley has become the largest event in the world. Two mass occurrences were discovered at the sites of Huanchaquito Las Llamas (HLL) and Pampa la Cruz (PLC). At PLC the sacrificial events date to the Late Intermediate period (AD 1000–1470). This research explores birth defects of the lumbosacral spine that...
Unidentified Oddity of the Petrous Portion of the Temporal Bone: A Case Study from a Historic Cemetery in Louisiana (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While there are several commonly tracked non-metric and pathological features of the temporal bone, rarely are they found on the internal petrous portion. In this case study, the bilateral presentation of perforations located on the internal, superior aspect of the petrous portion of the temporal bone are discussed. The lesions are laterally placed near to the...
Uniting the archaeological body: the bioarchaeological investigation of human remains and mortuary behaviors (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. Bioarchaeology has the unique power to deeply investigate mortuary space not only to identify lived experiences from human remains but also to illuminate elements of mortuary ritual. However, these two aspects of bioarchaeology still remain conceptually separated: one is biological and the other socio-cultural, one is scientific and the other...
Unravelling the Social Determinants of Lead Exposure in 19th Century British Royal Navy Stationed in Antigua, W.I. (2018)
An exploration into various aspects of lead exposure in the British Royal Navy stationed in 19th Century Antigua, West Indies has contributed to some unexpected insights. This research was facilitated by study of human remains mitigated from a Naval Hospital cemetery in response to modern development. The interred at the site were lower ranking naval personnel including enslaved individuals. Other work on lead exposure in the region focused on enslaved plantation laborers revealed high levels of...
Unwritten Histories: The People of the Phaleron Cemetery (2018)
Ancient Athens is cited as the contentious caldron from which the western political tradition emerged. During the formative Archaic period (ca. 700-480 BC), Athenian history was marked by major political developments (e.g., early law codification, citizenship formalization), social stratification (e.g., classes), and conflict (e.g., tyrants). To date, such processes are known to us through texts, artistic representations, and elite-centered mortuary grounds. The collaborative Phaleron...
The Ups & Downs of Iron Age Animal Management on the Oxfordshire Ridgeway, Southern England (2018)
As in any mixed farming system, the management of animals doubtless played an important part in Iron Age societies in southern Britain. Economically, they furnished meat, milk, wool and manure, and served as draught animals for transport and tillage. Intersecting with their economic uses, they were also important socially, politically and ritually. It is relatively straightforward to determine the proportional representation and mortality profiles of the major species – cattle, sheep/goat and...
Use of Proteomic Methods for Biological Age Estimation at Death (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Biological age at death (AAD) is an important component of the biological profile, to aid investigators in cases with skeletal remains, also in archaeology to aid establishing site context. Current methods rely on predictable patterns of bone or teeth mineralization, growth and fusion or damage over time, though these methods are often subject to...
Using Multiple Isotopic Analyses to Infer Population Mobility in Iron Age Britain (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents the ongoing results on isotopic research on Middle Iron Age (~400–200 cal BC) populations in Wessex and East Yorkshire. The multi-isotopic approach has been employed to infer population mobility for both the inhumed human population at a series of sites and the faunal assemblages from either the associated settlements or directly recovered...
Using Parry Fracture Data to Further Assess Violence in Andahuaylas during the Late Intermediate Period (2018)
Previous studies of crania showing recurrent trauma suggest high rates of violence in the Andahuaylas province of Peru during the Late Intermediate Period. Through an assessment of direct blow fractures to radius and ulna bones (lower arm bones), we further examined violence in the region, anticipating a high rate of parry fractures. The skeletal remains assessed come from Sonhuayo, a fortified habitation sector of Cachi, a Chanka site in the west-central portion of the Andahuaylas province....
Using Trauma Distributions, Victim Profiles, and Differential Scavenging to Infer Characteristics of Prehistoric Warfare: A Case Study from the Peruvian Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Non-state warfare has the potential to effect myriad aspects of people’s lives. The last several decades of archaeological research have revealed that conflict has shaped much our evolutionary history and regional population trajectories. Despite the importance of prehistoric warfare, it remains a substantial challenge to elucidate the basic characteristics of...
Variability among the Dead: Population Structure and Inferred Cultural Adaptations to the Changing Environmental and Sociopolitical Landscapes during the Late Moche (AD 650–800) Era in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru (2018)
Recent bioarchaeological and archaeological research regarding the environmentally influenced demise of the Moche (AD 200 – 800) of the Jequetepeque Valley, Perú, indicates a variety of responses, including population dispersals, political fragmentation, cultural hybridization, and new political alliances with recently arrived foreigners at ceremonial centers. Biodistance analyses suggest that adjacent highland Cajamarca peoples from the adjacent highlands arrived in the Jequetepeque and likely...
Victims or Venerated? A Bioarchaeological Examination of Gendered Ritual Violence and Social Identity of the Possible Aqlla at Túcume, Peru (2018)
Human sacrifices are frequently referred to as ‘victims’ of ritual violence, which presupposes that the sacrificed had no control over their fate or were unjustly harmed. Many examples of human sacrifice have been identified recently across the north coast of Peru involving a range of time periods and bodily treatment to suggest that there was incredible variation in practice, including in the identity of those sacrificed. Both males and females have been identified as sacrifices, but rarely are...
Violence among the Gallinazo: New Insights from Pampa la Cruz, Moche Valley (2018)
The Moche of the North Coast of Peru, are well known for their ritualized culture of violence. Warriors, prisoners, weapon bundles, and sacrifice are commonly depicted in a variety of Moche media, and archaeological evidence from urban centers suggests such acts were practiced. What is not known is if the Early Intermediate Period ancestors of the Moche also engaged in such acts of violence. Pre-Moche, Gallinazo phase urban sites were often located in defensible settings and some show evidence...
Violence and Veneration at the Edges: Mortuary Traditions and Social Order along the Northern and Southern Frontiers of Mesoamerica (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. The northern and southern frontiers of Mesoamerica are about 2000 km apart and are separated by an incredible diversity of peoples and environments. Yet, these frontier spaces appear to be developmentally similar in many ways during the period ca. AD 500-1000, including...
Violent Ritual and Inter-regional Interaction during the Early Intermediate Period and Early Middle Horizon in the Majes Valley, Arequipa, Peru (2018)
Artifacts from yungas and coastal zones of Arequipa, Peru show varying degrees of integration into the ideological and material networks of prominent neighboring cultures of the Early Intermediate Period (Nasca) and Middle Horizon (Wari). Ongoing research suggests these communities and towns were well-integrated into foreign trading networks, whether through direct interaction with foreign traders or down-the-line exchange. While foreign-produced goods and emulation of foreign goods or...
Vows and Violence: Identities Enacted through Diet and Trauma at the Late Medieval Tintern Abbey, Ireland (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Diet, mobility, and trauma are key factors in the performance of social identities and the maintenance of social boundaries between groups. In medieval Ireland, burial at monasteries also provided an opportunity for both lay and ecclesiastical communities to represent the religious identities of deceased individuals. In this study, mobility, trauma, and diet...
The WAC Origins of the New York African Burial Ground Project (2018)
This paper concerns the development of an interdisciplinary Project which studied 419 human remains at the 18th century cemetery for Africans enslaved in New York. The first World Archaeological Congress (1986) and Inter-Congress (1989) facilitated conversations among archaeologists and Indigenous peoples that would inspire change in archaeological practice. The African Burial Ground Project carried forward specific ideas of that encounter, joined with the activist scholarship and...
Warfare and Captive Sacrifice in the Moche World: New Data from Excavations at Pampa la Cruz, Moche Valley, Northern Coastal Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Depictions of combat and the capture and killing of captives are well known in Moche (ca. AD 200-850) art. Since 1995, the iconographic record has been joined by archaeological evidence of the practices themselves. The most dramatic discoveries were made in Plazas 3A and 3C at the Pyramid of the Moon between 1995 and 2001, with scattered deposits...
Warrior-Women: Strategic use of violence by women moving towards a broader understanding of the poetics of violence (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Women of Violence: Warriors, Aggressors, and Perpetrators of Violence" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Engaging social theory with bioarchaeological analyses offers provocative ways of re-examining (pre) historic populations. With regards to violence and conflict, the research continues to be driven by androcentric notions that this is a man’s arena, and that females, when associated with violence, are only victims....
What Happened to the Victims? Constructing a Model of Care for Cranial Trauma from Non-lethal Violence at Carrier Mills, Illinois (8000 – 2500 BP) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Systems of Care in Times of Violence" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A different model of care is required for trauma resulting from non-lethal violence. In the prehistoric Midwest, raiding and warfare were endemic, making trauma from non-lethal violence a part of everyday life. As such, the peoples living in this region would have needed a model of care specifically designed to treat individuals suffering from...
What is It? Doing Bioarchaeology with Matter (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. To know and to name bodies and their parts, bioarchaeologists rely on intimate encounters with material traces. At times, they closely examine the "same" objects, yet see quite different things. Understanding such difference is usually treated epistemologically. People have alternative vantage points on the same reality, and divergent...
What the Spanish Brought with Them: Phenetic Complexity of the Spanish Population at Contact (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Cultural and Biological Complexity in Mexico at the Time of Spanish Conquest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Colonial contact in Mexico brought together populations from diverse regions of the world – Europe (especially Spain), Mexico, Africa, and eventually, Asia. While much attention has been focused on the contributions of these groups to the admixed population that resulted, this attention has...
What’s Your Question? Theoretical Bioarchaeology in the American Southwest and Ancient Arabia (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. Bioarchaeology today is interdisciplinary, scientific, and theoretical. For over 30 years, Debra Martin has contributed substantially to archaeology by promoting these shifts in the discipline. Her scholarly accomplishments are extensive but I suggest that perhaps her most important contribution to the field of bioarchaeology...