bioarchaeology (Other Keyword)
76-100 (309 Records)
While the structure of Middle Woodland (2050-1600 BP) burial mounds from the lower Illinois River valley (LIV) is widely understood in terms of ramps, tombs, and peripheral interment facilities, those for the subsequent Late Woodland period (1600-1000 BP) remain poorly characterized. To illustrate commonalities between Late Woodland sites from the LIV, we here compare Feature 36 from Helton Md 20 and Feature 15 from Carter Md 2. The detailed excavation notes from the Helton excavation are used...
Conflict Bioarchaeology: Analysis of Probable Hessian Soldiers’ Remains from the Revolutionary War Battlefield at Red Bank, New Jersey (2025)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "“A Little Grass and Earth Thrown in to fill up the Grave”: Archaeological studies of American War for Independence burial spaces", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The first conference on “conflict archaeology” was held 25 years ago. Since then, the study of battlefields has provided unique but incomplete insights into the nature of large-scale violence and warfare technology. Bioarchaeology helps to complete...
Corporeal Congregations and Asynchronous Lives: Unpacking the Pews at Spring Street (2017)
This paper seeks to expose the "fallacies of synchrony" that often accompany the analysis of human remains. In approaching a cemetery, for example, we all too easily think of the bodies there as a "community," even when they belong to different generations or geographic contexts. This simple point has major implications, especially for the bioarchaeology of urban landscapes. Here, chronologically disparate elements accumulate in vast mélanges, offering innumerable examples of the...
Cranial morphological variation among Paleoamerican skeletons: a test of the coastal migration hypothesis (2015)
Although the origin of the first Americans has been resolved through genetics, the routes that early humans traveled from Asia into North and South America are still the subject of intense scholarly debate. Recent genetic and archaeological data suggest an early migration may have occurred along the Pacific coast of the Americas. Based on these lines of evidence, it is hypothesized that Paleoamericans may show morphological affinities to prehistoric skeletons from coastal sites if an early...
Creating an Interdisciplinary Map of Social and Environmental Change through Topography and Bioarchaeology (2016)
Societal change does not occur in a vacuum and marks the social and physical landscape in a myriad of ways. The natural world—the lived in landscape—is the most pervasive and enduring reminder and example of social order. Water is a staple of both domestic and ritual life and leaves its mark in architectural and biological manifestations of society. Mountains, caves, and ravines and other landscape monuments are emblematic of regional geology and influence the local human population both at the...
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?...
Curating Large Skeletal Collections: An Example from the Ancient Maya Site of Copan, Honduras (2017)
Bioarchaeologists draw data from the detailed study of human remains from archaeological contexts. The information embedded in the skeleton provides a powerful window into prehistory; informing us of past lifeways, health/disease, diet, kinship, migration, and conflict. The intimate relationship between the living and the dead is necessarily imbued with respect and an ethical responsibility to properly handle and curate the remains of those that we study. However, the conservation of skeletal...
Curation and Best Practice with Human Remains in Northwest Belize (2016)
As of the summer of 2015, approximately 135 burials have been recovered and investigated through the Programme for Belize Archaeological Project (PfBAP) in Northwest Belize. Within the 270,000 acres of land on which the PfBAP operates, approximately 60 archaeological sites have been recorded and investigated. As the number of burials increases with new site identification and investigation, a need for data consolidation and accessibility has arisen. We aim to make this data more attainable...
Curation in the Digital Age: The Potential for Bioarchaeology (2017)
Digital imaging and curation are increasingly accessible to and implemented by bioarchaeologists working in both academic and CRM positions. In the field, 3D scanning and LiDAR technology record mortuary contexts quickly and in incredible detail. These techniques make poorly preserved remains available for study that may not survive excavation intact. In a lab setting, photogrammetry and construction of 3D models of skeletal elements shows promise for augmenting and preserving teaching...
Curation of Human Skeletal Remains and Bioarchaeological Practice in Greek Context (2017)
Human skeletal remains constitute perhaps the most sensitive archaeological material, both biologically and socioculturally. Their recovery, preservation, curation, storage, and analysis are complex issues that need to be addressed within any given biocultural context. Given the country’s geography and the long history of human occupation, Greek field archaeology is intense and ongoing, as part of either rescue excavations or academic research projects. Graves, cemeteries, and human skeletal...
Dead Bodies & the Politics of Memory: Bioarchaeology at the UWI Mona and the Decolonization of Heritage (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2016, the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona interned human skeletal material recovered during the construction of its Basic Medical Sciences Complex (BMSC). Fragmented and bereft of context, these remains were initially believed to be of little scientific value, but as James Deetz would concur, greater narratives often...
Death on the Early Formative Oaxaca Coast: The Human Remains of La Consentida (2015)
The initial Early Formative period site of La Consentida was occupied between 1950 and 1550 calBC. This early village community on the western Oaxaca coast has produced evidence of some of Mesoamerica’s oldest known ceramics, mounded earthen architecture, and musical instruments but the site’s human remains have received little attention thus far. The people of La Consentida lived and died during a period of social and economic transformations, including the establishment of sedentary villages,...
Death on the Middle Nile: Mortuary Traditions and Identity at the Top of the Great Bend (2015)
Our understanding of ancient Nubian mortuary traditions principally derives from monumental elite cemeteries such as Kerma, El-Kurru, and Meroe and the 1960s salvage excavations in Lower Nubia. More recent work in Upper Nubia, in northern Sudan, however, has revealed substantial regional variation. Assessment of habitation, rock art, and cemetery sites from the Mesolithic through Christian periods in the Bioarchaeology of Nubia Expedition (BONE) project area on the right (north) bank of the Nile...
DECODING THE SWAHILI: ANCIENT DNA STUDIES ON THE KENYAN COAST (2015)
Our project examines the role of migration in the development of the large autonomous Swahili towns and city-states that grew out of small fishing, agrarian, and pastoral settlements on the East African coast in the late first millennium CE. Our sample is comprised of 97 individuals from three sites on the Kenya coast: Mtwapa (N=72; 900-1732 BCE) near Mombasa, and two sites in the Lamu archipelago, Manda (N=16; 800-1400 BCE), and Shanga (N=9; 800-1400 BCE). The teeth were well preserved and...
The Demise of the European Neolithic Mode of Animal Husbandry: A Combined Effect of Milk Consumption, Zoonotic Diseases, and Genetic Changes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A new form of husbandry developed by the Neolithic settlers of Europe provided solid foundations for their unprecedented growth and sustainability. Its constituting elements comprised the secondary product’s mode of exploitation, the effective adaptation of major domesticates to different environmental and ecological zones, and changes in their genomes....
Demographic Analysis of a Looted Late Intermediate Period Tomb, Chincha Valley, Peru (2015)
Ethnohistorical and archaeological sources establish that the Chincha Valley on Peru’s south coast hosted a populous and economically complex polity during the Late Intermediate Period (1200-1470 CE). A 2013 survey of the middle valley revealed more than 40 cemeteries containing over five hundred highly visible, above-ground collective tombs resembling highland chullpas. To establish a baseline demographic profile for this mortuary tradition, we conducted an osteological analysis of one looted...
Demographic and cultural dynamics of the Portuguese Estremadura in the 4th-3rd millennia BC: A multi-proxy approach (2016)
The cultural dynamics of the Late Neolithic-Copper Age of the Portuguese Estremadura have traditionally been viewed in purely socio-economic terms, involving an increase in social differentiation and economic intensification. In this study, by using analyses of dental morphology and stable and radiogenic isotopes from collective burial populations in the region, we contribute additional lines of evidence to this historical trajectory. In particular we use this biological evidence to elucidate...
Dentistry as Social Discourse: Aspects of Oral Health and Consumer Choice using a Bioarchaeological Perspective (2016)
This study examines the presence (or absence) of professional dental restorative work in the form of fillings, crowns, bridges, or even full sets of dentures, using an integrative biocultural approach. The dataset is derived from an intensive survey of historic cemeteries subjected to bioarchaeological analyses, and include differences in geography (urban versus rural), gender, race/ethnicity, age, and commensurate socioeconomic levels. Since restorative dental work was both expensive and...
Depopulation and Massacres: Bioarchaeological Evidence of Violence within the Ancestral Pueblo of the Southwest Region of North America (2015)
This paper investigates forensic data within the Southwest region of the United States for indicators of violence, conflict, and warfare related events. The main focus is the Mesa Verde region of the Southwest and other sites inhabited by the Ancestral Pueblo. In this area, I examine forensic evidence supportive of trophy-killing and cannibalism; both have documented evidence at other sites in the Southwest area. Different types of trauma, such as, cut marks and blunt force trauma are also...
A Descriptive Analysis of Animal Paleopathology from the Archaeological Site of Salmon Ruins (2016)
This thesis research is a small part of the greater potential study of the interactions between people in prehistory and the animals they relied upon for food and ritual items. Analysis will compare the prevalence of osteological changes and abnormalities in the remains of wild animals and domestic turkeys at Salmon Ruin, New Mexico. Domestic turkeys, being influenced by the hand of humans, are unique cases of paleopathology that could potentially provide insight into the domestication and care...
Developmental stress and disease susceptibility: the association between skeletal indicators of leprosy and other physiological stressors (2015)
Leprosy has long interested bioarchaeologists because of its antiquity and because it can cause skeletal lesions. These lesions are primarily associated with lepromatous leprosy resulting from a minimal cellular immune response. This study tests the hypothesis that early-life developmental stress increases the risk of developing lepromatous leprosy by examining the association between skeletal signs of leprosy and other skeletal stress markers. A combined sample of 126 adults from two Danish...
Did Potters Urn? Potential Skeletal Evidence of Ceramic Production from the Ch’iji Jawira Site in Tiwanaku, Bolivia. (2016)
The city of Tiwanaku (AD 500-1100) in the Bolivian altiplano was comprised of multiethnic neighborhoods, with some of these barrios being home to "guild-like" specialists laboring at differing jobs. Ch’iji Jawira, one site within this community, is often described in the archaeological record as containing both a manufacturing center for pottery and a residential area home to these ceramic manufacturers. Prior bioarchaeological research has also shown that the people who were buried at the...
Dietary Adaptation in Coastal Virginia and North Carolina during the Late Woodland Period (2016)
According to early historic accounts that depict coastal Virginia and North Carolina, maize was a component of Native American diet by the late 16th and early 17th centuries. There remain questions, however, regarding the introduction of maize into the region and how it was incorporated into local subsistence regimes, especially within a coastal setting. Previous stable isotope studies have focused upon the presence or absence of maize as a component of diet at the population level. This...
A Different Kind of Poor: A Multi-Method Demographic Analysis of the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Historic Cemetery (2017)
From 2012-2014 excavations at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (SCVMC) Historic cemetery (circa 1875-1935) resulted in the exhumation of 1,004 individuals. The cemetery, which served as one of several county burial grounds for the indigent and unknown individuals of the area, provides a glimpse into the growth and development of Santa Clara County, California. To date no cemetery records have been located, leaving the identity of these individuals a mystery. To better understand this...
Differentiating Commingled Human Remains through EDXRF (Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence) (2017)
The ability to differentiate commingled skeletal remains is critical in the analysis of mass burials, archaeological sites and mass fatality events in forensic cases. The potential application of EDXRF (Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence) to aid in differentiating commingled remains is being explored at the MAX Lab (McMaster Archaeological XRF Lab), expanding the lab’s research focus from solely obsidian sourcing to include bio-archaeological applications. There are numerous factors affecting...