bioarchaeology (Other Keyword)
151-175 (311 Records)
Highly stratified societies are characterized by differentiation between groups along various socially defined axes. The Tibanica community (950-1350 AD), part of the Muisca culture from the Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia, is an ideal population to study how social roles and identities are intertwined with human diet and skeletal health. Here we present stable isotope data to investigate the complexity of human diets across the life course by comparing childhood diets to adulthood diets for the same...
Isotopes and Environments: Exploring Palaeoenvironmental Change during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic in the Cantabrian Region, Northern Spain (2016)
The Cantabrian region Northern Spain was an archaeologically important region throughout the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, and was home to some of the last surviving Neanderthals in Europe, and during the Last Glacial Maximum the region acted as a refugium for plants, animals and humans. Changes in the environment are thought to have been driving factors behind the extinction of the Neanderthals, the rise of Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs), and later the development of the rich cave art...
Isotopic Evidence for the Presence of Immigrants at Casas Grandes (2016)
Casas Grandes is widely recognized as having cultural characteristics of both Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. Although the presence of objects and ideas from surrounding areas clearly demonstrates some degree of regional interaction, the nature and extent of Casas Grandes’ relationship with neighbouring communities is largely unresolved. In particular, one of the key issues in Chihuahuan archaeology is whether Medio period complexity arose from internal developments or external stimuli,...
Isotopic examination of human remains associated with the Korell-Bordeaux site (48GO54), Goshen County, Wyoming: δ13C and δ18O from bone and enamel apatite (2015)
Bone and enamel apatite from human remains (N=17) recovered at the Korell-Bordeaux (48GO54) site in Goshen County, Wyoming during the 1980 and 2009 field seasons was analyzed using stable carbon and oxygen isotope methods. Patterns related to the geographic mobility and overall sustenance sourcing of the members of the population during their first and final decades of life are detailed. Remains stained with degraded copper alloys were examined through the same procedural methods and differences...
"I’m not Black, I’m Dominican": Diaspora and bioarchaeology from a descendant’s perspective (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Global Archaeologies and Latin American Voices: Dialogues Transcending Colonizing Archaeologies", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Growing up, my father taught me to say, “I’m not Black, I’m Dominican.” But I eventually realized I am indeed also Black. I do not speak Spanish, and my Latinx heritage is recognizable only in certain spaces. I noticed the conflation of racial constructs and ethnic backgrounds...
Kiva B Internments at the Mine Canyon Site, New Mexico: a bioarchaeology and ancient DNA approach (2016)
Excavations at the Mine Canyon site, a PIII Chaco outlier near Farmington, New Mexico, revealed a cluster of thirteen individuals interred within Kiva B. Ancient DNA analysis of the individuals from the site demonstrated that six of the Kiva B internments belonged to the same derived form of Haplogroup A, suggesting a matrilineal relationship. Recent analysis of their burial positions suggests the Kiva B individuals are distinct from others at the site, further supported by a lack of grave...
Kneeling difficulty and osteoarthritis: what data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative can tell us about prehistoric Californians (2015)
An essential part of California hunter-gatherer diet was ground foods, such as acorns. Grinding food with the use of mortars and pestles likely required extensive kneeling. Most of the food grinding among prehistoric Californians was likely accomplished by females. In Ryan’s Mound (CA-Ala-329; N = 284), for instance, 33% of females were buried with mortars or pestles whereas 14% of males were buried with mortars or pestles (Chi-square = 10.48, P < 0.001). A rich literature on kneeling effects on...
La Cueva de la Colmena: bioarchaeological analysis of a funerary context from the Sonora – Sinaloa Project / R. A. Pailes 1967. (2015)
In the past six years the Centro INAH Sonora has turned its gaze to the Archaeological Collections under its charge, keeping priority to conservation, research, documentation and registration of such collections. Key member of this acquis is the collection product of the archaeological research conducted by Dr. Richard Allen Pailes in the year 1967 as part of the Sonora-Sinaloa Project. The main goal of the project was the recognition of different surface locations in the basin of the Mayo and...
Laboring in Tiwanaku's Moquegua Colony: A Bioarchaeological Activity Indicator Comparison Using Population-Based and Life Course Approaches (2015)
Diverse, lower elevation areas were home to producers and procurers of goods not easily grown or obtainable in the South Central Andean heartland of the Tiwanaku state. Various Tiwanaku colonial settlement clusters, near present-day Moquegua, Peru, comprised one such region. Tiwanaku colonists in this area participated in activities that included farming of corn and coca, as well as transportation of goods between the heartland and colony. For example, Omo-style (Omo M16D and Rio Muerto M70...
The Langobards in Italy: A Bioarchaeological Analysis of the Seventh-Century A.D. Necropolis of Sovizzo in Vicenza, Italy (2017)
The Romans and Byzantines in Veneto (northeast Italy), experienced invasions from a Germanic tribal group, the Langobards, in AD 567, with occupations lasting until the 8th century AD; however, Langobard diet and health are largely unknown during this period of transition. Information on Langobard diet and health is pertinent to understanding the political, economic, and social changes that occurred during the Langobard arrival and subsequent occupation. To address these questions, we focused on...
Late Bronze Age women of the steppe frontier: a bioarchaeological analysis of multiple sites in northern China (2017)
The late Bronze Age in the Inner Asian steppe was a transitional period, with the adoption of mobile herding, as well as increasing sociopolitical interaction and complexity among groups in this region. Although archaeological studies have indicated that many steppe groups engaged in a variety of subsistence practices, pastoralism in general has been characterized as a rather uniform lifestyle; and nomadic pastoralism in particular has been associated more often with the role of males, i.e., as...
Life and Death among the Late Fort Ancient: Injury Recidivism and Perimortem Trauma at Hardin Village, Kentucky (2017)
Hardin Village is a Fort Ancient site located less than half a kilometer from the south bank of the Ohio River. It was excavated under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration in the late 1930s. The skeletal remains from the Late Middle and Late Fort Ancient Periods (A.D. 1450–1675) represent more than 300 individuals, both male and female, aged neonate to 60+ years. Adult individuals presented a range of possible cranial and post-cranial trauma, including blunt force, sharp force, and...
Life and Death at the mouth of the River Loa: Bioarchaeological and biogeochemical analysis of human remains from Formative Period northern Chile (2015)
Recent research has shown that during the Formative Period (1500 B.C.-A.D. 500), in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert life was sustained and enriched by inter-zonal movement and networks of exchange of both prestige goods and staple materials. In order to further detail these phenomena, a series of five cemeteries in the region of Caleta Huelén were recently excavated. In this work, we present the results of contextualized bioarchaeological and biogeochemical analysis of over 30 individuals,...
Life Course as Slow Bioarchaeology: Recovering the Lives of Laborers and Immigrants in an Anatomical Collection (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Slow Archaeology + Fast Capitalism: Hard Lessons and Future Strategies from Urban Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. I consider the potentials of a slow bioarchaeology of the Huntington Anatomical collection, focusing on the collection’s Irish immigrants, who lived and worked in New York City in the nineteenth century. Taking the skeleton as a record of experience, life course approaches interpret...
A Life History of the Transbay Man as Reconstructed through Stable Isotope Analysis (2015)
By analyzing tissues that develop at different points in the life cycle, such as early-forming first molars and later-forming third molars, archaeologists can trace the dietary life histories of individuals from the past. Because environments differ in the food and water resources, these dietary patterns can also be linked to mobility patterns. This paper reconstructs a dietary and mobility life history of the 7600-year-old "Transbay Man" discovered in 2014 in downtown San Francisco, CA, a...
Life in Suleiman’s Army: Preliminary Investigations of Health in an Ottoman Cemetery Site (2016)
In recent years, analyses of human skeletal remains have significantly contributed to our understanding of the past. A cemetery collection of 160 skeletons from the 16th and 17th centuries excavated from the city center of Timişoara, Romania have provided a rare opportunity to study a brief, tumultuous time when the Ottoman Empire extended into Central Europe. The inhumations, representative of the Ottoman population that relocated into the fortified city center after Turkish expansion, provide...
Life in times of change – A bioarchaeological perspective on health and living conditions in Upper Nubia in the late 2nd and early 1st millennium BC (2017)
With the end of the Pharaonic Egyptian colonial occupation c. 1070BC and the increasing deterioration of climatic conditions, communities in Upper Nubia faced significant changes, both to the political structure (which may have affected trade networks), and to the agricultural potential of the region (e.g. availability of arable land). This presentation aims to elucidate if, and in what ways, these alterations impacted upon the living conditions of the people in the area, using the skeletal...
Life on the Northern Frontier, Bioarchaeological Reconstructions of 11th century Households in the Skagafjörður Region, North Iceland. (2016)
Iceland was settled in the 9th century by people of Norse and Celtic stock. Located on the margins of the Viking world, the Skagafjörður region was, by the 11th century, home to a large number of independent households forming core social units in a country without a king or central government. Although they maintained close ties with their old home world, ship arrivals were erratic and individual households were largely dependent on their own produce for survival. Early settlers lived in a...
Like Pulling Teeth: Relationships Between Material Culture And Osteology At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery (2018)
Material culture is a mediator between the living and the dead (Hallam and Hockey 2017). Items used by the living can leave their mark osteologically, can follow an individual into a burial context, or can become part of an individual. Each of these actions leaves archaeological evidence of cultural communication. This paper examines the dialectical relationships between artifacts and osteology through an integrative analysis of the multilayered relationships between osteological data, artifact...
A Line in the Sand: Bioarchaeological interpretations of life along the borders of the Great Basin and Southwest. (2016)
Prior to A.D. 1300, several archaeologically defined cultures were identified at the intersection of the American Great Basin and Southwest. Human skeletal remains were analyzed from site that represent the borders and the heartlands of the Fremont, the Virgin Branch Puebloan, and the Northern San Juan Puebloan cultural areas. The goal was to examine how life in the crossroads of these regions affected the experiences of individuals and groups. The following indicators were used to reconstruct...
Lives in Transition: Impacts and Adaptations in the Georgia Bight (2015)
The St. Catherines Island Archaeological Project, now more than 40 years in duration, has provided a wealth of data for addressing questions and hypotheses about native adaptations in the Georgia bight. Owing to the rich archaeological context and robust research design, the project has provided opportunities to document and interpret key developments and adaptive transitions in ways not dreamed of when fieldwork began in 1975. The bioarchaeological arm of the investigation, viewed in its rich...
Living and Dying a Bioarchaeological Analysis of Human Remains Recovered by Earl Morris at Aztec Ruins (2017)
Aztec Ruins, an Ancestral Pueblo site in northern New Mexico, is recognized as a large and socially complex site. Aztec Ruins is typically considered in relation to the Chaco Phenomenon, although connections to Mesa Verde have also been made. Combined these relationships suggest close ties to other temporally occupied sites. Excavations of Aztec Ruins were undertaken between 1916 and 1923 by southwestern archaeologist Earl Morris. Among his many finds he reported excavating 186 sets of human...
The Living and the Dead: The Icelandic Household From Early Medieval to Historic Times. (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Medieval to Modern Transitions and Historical Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. How does one reconstruct population demography in the past and what lines of evidence exist to assist in these interpretations? The census of 1703 recorded information about household composition in Iceland and this rich resource has been used as a proxy for early population demography. Until recently, actual cemetery...
Living on the Border: Health and Identity during the Colonial Egyptian New Kingdom Period in Nubia (2016)
Tombos is located at the Third Cataract of the Nile River in modern-day Sudan, and marks an important literal and figurative boundary between Egyptian and Nubian interaction. During the New Kingdom Period (1400-1050 BC), the cemetery at Tombos in Upper Nubia exhibits the use of Egyptian mortuary practices, including monumental pyramid complexes, likely used by both immigrant Egyptians and local Nubians. Despite the influence of Egyptian culture during this colonial period, there are several...
Los Aatributos de la Identidad el Caso de Tamtoc, San Luis Potosí, México (2017)
La ritualidad de los grupos humanos está íntimamente ligada a su cosmovisión, a su organización social, así como con aquellos elementos que les otorgan identidad. Las modificaciones corporales que se han estudiado tradicionalmente en la antropología física, como son la modificación intencional el cráneo, el limado dental, la lesión suprainiana y la trepanación, deben ser consideradas como expresión de los elementos antes mencionados. El significado de cada una de ellas solo puede ser entendido...