bioarchaeology (Other Keyword)
276-300 (301 Records)
Periosteal lesions are often used as non-specific indicators of overall levels of stress and health in the past. Using medieval London samples, Sharon DeWitte (2014) demonstrated that distinguishing between active and healed periosteal lesions can significantly improve our understanding of stress and differential frailty. She found that healed lesions correlated with higher levels of survivorship when compared to active or no lesions. This study examines whether such a pattern may be observable...
Testing the Utility of Rib Histology Methods in Age Estimation in Fragmentary Remains from Maya Rockshelter Burials (2015)
Poor skeletal preservation is a ubiquitous problem in the Maya area, complicating the use of macroscopic techniques aimed at producing age range estimates. An important, but underutilized, set of skeletal approaches to aging employ microscopic methods, which rely on quantifying age-related histomorphological changes. This study focuses on histological structures in ribs and has two objectives: 1) to refine age estimations for burials from two rockshelters in the Caves Branch River Valley, Belize...
That’s a Wrap: Understanding Processes of Cranial Modification among post-Wari populations from Huari-Vegachayoq Moqo (2016)
This study examines cranial vault modification (CVM) frequency and styles among 35 crania from the Vegachayoq Moqo sector at the site of Huari, the former capital of the Wari Empire. The crania date to the post-Wari era (AD 1250 – 1400). In order to document the process by which they were modified, the crania were analyzed by noting the number of pad impressions and locations, as well as the center of applied pressure; the design of the modification devices was extrapolated from the observed...
There’s An App For That: Cost-Effectiveness of Lidar/Photogrammetry Smart Phone Applications for Virtual Osteology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of three-dimensional (3D) models for skeletal analysis has become common practice for osteological research. However, current methods for obtaining the 3D models are either too costly, such as computer tomography (CT), or require time-consuming post-processing such as scanners or cameras. Recent advances in technology have resulted in the...
"They were dying in such great quantity": An archaeology of human burials at Gloucester Point (2018)
Human burials have been a consistent problem for archaeologists excavating in advance of development at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at Gloucester Point. Georeferencing the location of previously identified burials served as a pilot project for a more extensive archaeological GIS. The re-examination of burial features not only reveals their approximate locations on the contemporary landscape, but also illustrates the complex history of human occupation at Gloucester Point, including...
Those Who Came Before: Investigating Diet, Health and Mobility in the Moche Valley, 1800 BC – AD 200 (2016)
Much sweat and ink has been shed investigating the Moche of north coastal Peru. But what of those who came before? In order to understand the Moche world, we must explore their history. To address this issue, the skeletal remains of over 850 individuals who lived in the Moche valley during the Guañape, Salinar or Gallinazo phases were examined. The collected bioarchaeological data including demographic patterns, oral health indicators, light and heavy isotopes, and pathological conditions allow...
Three Decades of Identification: Advances in Civil War Bioarchaeology (2016)
In 1988, archaeologist Stephen Potter supervised the excavation of four battlefield burials found by relic collectors on the Roulette farm of Antietam Battlefield. Archival research into the discovery location, and the analysis of the artifacts and meager bone fragments, linked these men to the Irish Brigade. Nearly thirty years later, Civil War human remains continue to be the subject of inquiry. This review cites examples from several Civil War sites and contexts to illustrate how the process...
Till Death Do Us Part: A Bioarchaeological Investigation of Female Kinship Ties in Early Medieval Ireland (2015)
The introduction of Christianity in the 5th century had far reaching effects in Ireland. The first few centuries of the early medieval period (c.400-1200AD) is considered as a time of dramatic cultural transformation. The documentary record that emerged in the wake of this process was created by male clergy in a rural, hierarchical, patrilineal society where the position of women was complex. This research uses archaeologically-recovered human remains from the immediate post-conversion period...
To Live and Die in the City: Investigations of Health at the Huacas de Moche (2015)
During the last two decades of work at the Huacas de Moche site a large number of human interments have been excavated. Although the remains of human sacrificial victims have been well studied, those buried as part of the daily course of events at the site have received less attention. Yet, if we are to understand how the Southern Moche Polity developed, thrived, and ultimately declined, then we must investigate the everyday lives of the women, men and children who were the polity. In this paper...
The Tooth About Pastoralism: Oral Health, Physiological Stress and Diet in a 19th Century Mobile Pastoralist Population from Mongolia (2015)
To better understand diet, oral health, and physiological stress loads of historic 19th century mobile pastoralists from Central Asia, the frequency of caries, ante-mortem tooth loss (AMTL), and linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) were assessed macroscopically from a skeletal sample (n=40) of a pastoralist population from Urga (Ulaanbaatar), Mongolia. Results show a low percentage of individuals affected by caries (11.4%) consistent with a diet low in sugars and carbohydrates but high in animal...
Trophies of Violence: The Manufacturing and Processing of Human Trophy Heads at Uraca (2015)
Human trophy heads appear in the iconography of prehistoric Andean ceramics, weavings, and statuary as early as the Late Formative (400 BC – AD 100), and actual trophy heads are not uncommon bioarchaeological finds in south-coastal Peru. Human trophy heads were prepared by cleaving the head from the body, cutting the occipital and parietal bones to remove the brain, drilling holes in the frontal bone, and threading that hole with a carrying cord for display. At the Middle Horizon cemetery of...
Troubled Times in Late Prehistoric Wisconsin: Violent Skeletal Trauma Among the Winnebago Phase Oneota (2016)
In 1991, Milner et al. published a groundbreaking article that showed the Native American Oneota culture in a new light. Their research at the Norris Farms #36 cemetery in west-central Illinois indicated that the Oneota there were plagued by intergroup violence and small-scale tribal warfare. Milner et al. examined 264 skeletons and discovered evidence for trauma on 43 (16.29%). At least one-third of adults at Norris Farms #36 died violent deaths. However, the group at Norris Farms #36 was part...
Tucson Aqueduct Project Phase A
Reaches 1 and 2 of the Tucson Aqueduct portion of the Central Arizona Project extend from the terminus of the Salt-Gila Aqueduct just east of Picacho Reservoir (12 km southeast of Coolidge) south along the western flanks of the Picacho Mountains, east along the southern flanks of the Picacho Mountains through Picacho Pass, and then south to the vicinity of Red Rock. A Class III archaeological survey of the aqueduct corridor and associated areas was conducted by Arizona State Museum...
"Unclaimed": The Making of (Un)grievable Lives in the Huntington Archive (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Huntington Anatomical Collection (1893-1921) is comprised of immigrants and U.S.-born persons who died in New York City. Like many anatomical collections, the common narrative is that decedents were dissected and curated because they lacked next-of-kin to bury them, a social impoverishment used to justify their...
"Unwanted Guests": Evidence of Parasitic Infections in Archaeological Mortuary Contexts (2017)
Parasites have had a significant impact on the course of human history. Activities of a variety of parasites throughout the world can lead to lethargy, dementia, malabsorption of nutrients, bowel obstruction, internal bleeding, blindness, physical disability and deformation, and many other symptoms of disease. Furthermore, parasites have caused the deaths of countless individuals, have resulted in the abandonment of settlements, and have even affected the outcome of wars. The effect that...
Using GIS to Re-Associate Commingled Skeletal Remains (2015)
One problem forensic archaeologists have encountered during the investigation of mass graves is the commingling of human remains. Commingling can consist of disarticulated body parts, and can be more complex when remains are skeletonized or fragmented. Methods exist to address this problem; however, some are costly while others are time consuming. It has been shown that mapping the three dimensional location of body parts in a mass grave is useful for re-association based on proximity of the...
Using Historic Archaeology To Uncover Previously Ignored Collections (2016)
In 1891 George Dorsey conducted excavations Ancon, Peru, as archaeology was still a fledgeling discipline, and his conclusions reflect his naïveté of modern field methods to come. He assessed that the remains derived from one community, and classified the burials as elite/non-elite. From what we know today, there were two distinct time periods, between which mortuary practices and material culture changed dramatically. The collection has been repeatedly ignored due to the theorized disappearance...
Using oral health indicators as evidence of environmental instability and subsistence shifts in the Late Upper Paleolithic of Western Eurasia (2015)
Oral pathology prevalence can be used to make inferences about the behavioral and environmental factors that contribute to individual and population health. Late Upper Paleolithic Western Eurasian human groups were expanding geographically as well as increasing in density, and the major climatic oscillations that define this period stressed these pioneering humans. Evidence of this strain includes temporal differences in oral pathology prevalence, namely caries, periodontal disease, tooth loss,...
Using the Index of Care on a Bronze Age Teenager with Poliomyelitis: From Speculation to Strong Inference (2015)
Bioarchaeology has come a long way in using differential diagnosis, attending to the Osteological Paradox, using biocultural frameworks to integrate different levels of analysis, and developing ways to work with small sample sizes and fragmentary remains. Designed by Lorna Tilley (U. Aukland), the Index of Care offers a new scientifically-based and systematic tool to collect and integrate a range of information in life history, disease processes, and cultural context. This online tool tests...
Vertebral Wedging: A potential tool for the determination of parity in archaeological samples? (2016)
During pregnancy, women experience lordotic posturing to compensate for the weight of the growing fetus. Biomechanical stress from lordotic posturing causes bone remodeling of the lumbar spine during pregnancy resulting in lumbar wedging, which may persist after giving birth. Persistence of lumbar wedging in skeletal samples has potential applications for estimating parity in the archaeological record. This research analyzes the possibility that lumbar wedging is observable in the skeletal...
A View from the Periphery. Bioarchaeology and Funerary Archaeology at Al Khiday, Central Sudan (2017)
Archaeological sites south of Khartoum are much scarcer compared to those further to the north and this presentation aims to report on a multi-phase cemetery that is situated at the periphery of our archaeological knowledge. At present, burials dating to three chronological periods have been recovered at Al Khiday. The site is located on the left bank of the White Nile, approximately 20 km south of Omdurman (Khartoum). Forty-two individuals are dated to the Classic/Late Meroitic period (end of...
Wetherill Mesa, M.V.N.P Bioarchaeological Data (2021)
Analysis of bioarchaeological indicators of stress and skeletal fractures from selected Wetherill Mesa sites in Mesa Verde National Park. Data was collected in 1995 in compliance with NAGPRA.
Where's your Mummy? The Business of Mummification in Late and Roman Period Egypt (2015)
It is often said that the practice of mummification became a veritable business during the Late and Roman periods, when it was extended to include not only the elite, but also those on the lower end of the status scale. The increase in the number of bodies being embalmed led to the widespread adoption of more expeditious techniques, sometimes resulting in mummies that, though outwardly pleasing in appearance, concealed nothing but a jumbled mess of bones beneath their wrappings. The non-elite...
Who was Maria Grann? Balancing Archives of Narratives and Facts of a Contested Sámi(?) Skull (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper Bodies: Excavating Archival Tissues and Traces", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. One of the late nineteenth-century skulls in the anatomical collection at Lund University (Sweden) belongs to a middle adult woman (28-45 years of age); according to the archival documentation (including writing on the skull) she was a 28-year-old Sámi woman named Maria Grann. Media reports in Sweden have generally...
Who/What Is In That Vial? (2018)
Archaeologists typically conceptualize the "material" in an integrated analysis of material culture and biological data as artifacts/objects/things recovered through excavation from an historic mortuary setting. However, further explorations of meaning are possible when the definition of material encompasses both what is recovered and produced by archaeologists. Destructive testing, as a component of bioarchaeological analysis, creates additional materialized relationships between the living and...