Hyena (German) 8.8d serial key or number

This book recounts the biology of M. bovis, followed by the status of bovine Tuberculosis (bTB) in African countries, primarily based on zoonotic and epidemiological field reports. Since the accumulation of data is valueless unless it led to practicable control measures, emphasis is put on locally adapted protocols for future control of the disease. In order to systematically evaluate the knowledge base of bTB, Epidemiologic Problem Oriented Approach (EPOA) methodology was used. The methodology is composed of two triads: i) the problem identification/characterization triad, which is mainly descriptive in nature, and ii) the problem management/solution/mitigation triad, which is mainly geared toward problem management/solution (see figure). The first triad comprises three pillars: i) agent ii) host, and iii) environment and the second one: i) therapeutics/treatment, ii) prevention/control, and iii) health maintenance/promotion. The two triads are linked together by the diagnostic procedure linkage. The systematic and detailed studies of the ‘Host-Agent-Environment’ interactions are the building blocks to the understanding of agent transmission pathways and disease spread. These may include data about the disease status of the country, the nature of the disease agent and its hosts, the modes of transmission, the wildlife reservoirs in nature, persistence of infection, and agent survival in animal products and the environment. The problem identification and characterization triad identifies these interactions. Once a problem has been identified and well understood, the next step is to minimize the risk of transmission and spread of a disease. This area, referred to as problem solution/management triad, consists of problem management alternatives that rely upon prevention/control, and health maintenance/promotion of the disease in livestock, wildlife, and humans with the emphasis on resource-poor, developing countries in Africa.

• Asseged B.  Dibaba
• Nicolaas P. J.  Kriek
• Charles O. Thoen

1. 1.Department of Pathobiology, College of Veterinary MedicinceTuskegee UniversityTuskegeeUSA
2. 2.Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary ScienceUniversity of PretoriaOnderstepoortSouth Africa
3. 3.Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Preventive MedicineIowa State University College of Veterinary MedicineAmesUSA

Bibliographic information

BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE HUMAN SKELETON

BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE HUMAN SKELETON Second Edition

Edited by M. ANNE KATZENBERG Department of Archaeology, University of Calgary

SHELLEY R. SAUNDERS Department of Anthropology, McMaster University

Copyright # 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 780-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002. Wiley also publishes it books in variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication Data is available. ISBN: 978-0-471-79372-4

Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To our families to Steve and Marty M. Anne Katzenberg to Victor, Rob, and Barb Shelley R. Saunders

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION—M. ANNE KATZENBERG AND SHELLEY R. SAUNDERS

xi

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION—M. ANNE KATZENBERG AND SHELLEY R. SAUNDERS

xv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xxi

CONTRIBUTORS FOREWORD—JANE E. BUIKSTRA

xxiii xxxiii

PART I THEORY AND APPLICATION IN STUDIES OF PAST PEOPLES 1 1 Bioarchaeological Ethics: A Historical Perspective on the Value of Human Remains

3

Phillip L. Walker

2 Forensic Anthropology: Methodology and Diversity of Applications

41

Douglas H. Ubelaker

3 Taphonomy and the Nature of Archaeological Assemblages

71

Ann L. W. Stodder

vii

viii

CONTENTS

PART II

MORPHOLOGICAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL ANALYSES

4 Juvenile Skeletons and Growth-Related Studies

115 117

Shelley R. Saunders

5 Histomorphometry of Human Cortical Bone: Applications to Age Estimation

149

Alexander G. Robling and Sam D. Stout

6 Biomechanical Analyses of Archaeological Human Skeletons

183

Christopher B. Ruff

7 Morphometrics and Biological Anthropology in the Postgenomic Age

207

Benedikt Hallgr|¤ msson, Miriam Leah Zelditch, Trish E. Parsons, Erika Kristensen, Nathan M. Young, and Steven K. Boyd

8 Reading Between the Lines: Dental Development and Subadult Age Assessment Using the Microstructural Growth Markers of Teeth

237

Charles M. FitzGerald and Jerome C. Rose

9 Dental Morphology

265

G. Richard Scott

PART III 10

PREHISTORIC HEALTH AND DISEASE

Dental Pathology

299 301

Simon Hillson

11

Analysis and Interpretation of Skeletal Trauma

341

Nancy C. Lovell

12

Light and Broken Bones: Examining and Interpreting Bone Loss and Osteoporosis in Past Populations

387

Sabrina C. Agarwal

PART IV 13

CHEMICAL AND GENETIC ANALYSES OF HARD TISSUES 411

Stable Isotope Analysis: A Tool for Studying Past Diet, Demography, and Life History M. Anne Katzenberg

413

CONTENTS

14 Bone Chemistry and Trace Element Analysis

ix

443

James Burton

15 DNA Analysis of Archaeological Remains

461

Anne C. Stone

PART V QUANTITATIVE METHODS AND POPULATION STUDIES 16 Metric Analysis of Skeletal Remains: Methods and Applications

485 487

Michael Pietrusewsky

17 Nonmetric Trait Variation in the Skeleton: Abnormalities, Anomalies, and Atavisms

533

Shelley R. Saunders and Dori L. Rainey

18 Advances in Paleodemography

561

George R. Milner, James W. Wood, and Jesper L. Boldsen

19 Method and Theory in Paleodemography, with an Application to a Hunting, Fishing and Gathering Village from the Late Eastern Woodlands of North America

601

Richard S. Meindl, Robert P. Mensforth, and C. Owen Lovejoy

Index

619

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The preface to the first edition sets out the goals we hoped to accomplish by preparing the volume titled, Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton. In this second edition we endeavor to maintain those goals, to update recent developments in skeletal studies and particularly, to emphasize information that provides the reader with a basic understanding of the various techniques and methods of investigating bones and teeth. Many chapters include examples, set off from the main body of the text, that illustrate or offer more detail about the particular analysis under consideration. We also provide six new chapters on topics not covered in the previous edition. These topics include taphonomic factors affecting burial assemblages, nonmetric traits of the skeleton and dentition, trauma, osteoporosis, and new developments in morphometric analysis. It is our hope that the book will be used in upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in human skeletal studies (e.g., advanced human osteology) as well as by interested professionals seeking a better understanding of advanced methods in osteological research. The chapters should provide an entry point into a particular specialty, with background information as well

as practical guidelines, applications, and critical reviews of research approaches, including a wealth of selected references for additional reading. The book is divided into five parts, although considerable overlap exists and some chapters could have easily appeared in one or another section. Part I is titled “Theory and Application in Studies of Past People” and includes three chapters. As before, the first chapter, on ethical considerations of working with human skeletal remains, is presented by Phillip Walker. Walker has updated and expanded the scope of his chapter to include worldwide examples of problems and solutions to working with human remains. The second chapter, by Douglas Ubelaker, provides current perspectives on the interrelationship between forensic anthropology and more traditional studies in human osteology, arguing that these are complementary fields of inquiry. The field of forensic anthropology has gained prominence since the publication of the first edition of this book, with an increase in the number of academic positions in the field, and increased participation by forensic anthropologists in medico-legal investigations. The third chapter

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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

in the first section is a new contribution by Ann L. Stodder, on taphonomy and human skeletal remains. Stodder draws from her experience in working with burials and specific burial contexts in several different regions of the world to offer a comprehensive review of the various postmortem factors that affect the integrity of the skeleton after death. Part II is newly titled “Morphological and Developmental Analyses” and includes five chapters on development and modeling of bones and teeth. “Juvenile Skeletons and Growth Related Studies,” by Shelley Saunders, examines the problems of studying juvenile skeletal remains from archaeological sites. This chapter has been updated with new examples of applications from Saunders’ extensive work with historic cemeteries. Alexander Robling and Sam Stout have revised their previous contribution on histomorphometry and, once again, provide helpful appendices, including a worked example of age determination from cortical bone histology and a compilation of various histomorphometric techniques for age determination from various skeletal elements. Christopher Ruff has updated his chapter on biomechanical analyses, providing new examples and illustrations. Benedikt Hallgrimsson and colleagues present a new chapter on the “new morphometrics” and the importance of understanding the interface between morphometric studies in the biological sciences and those studies in biological anthropology in the context of a more solid understanding of genetic mechanisms and their role in determining phenotypic variation. The chapter on dental microstructure, by Charles FitzGerald and Jerome Rose, retains the clear descriptions of the microscopic structure of teeth and the events recorded in dental microstructures, including evidence for stress and for age determination. Examples of more recent applications and new technological developments have been added. The final chapter in this section is a new contribution by Richard Scott on dental morphology, specifically dental nonmetric traits. The chapter provides descriptions of various morphological

variants of the teeth and very practical advice on how to recognize and record dental crown traits so that they can be used in population studies. Part III, “Prehistoric Health and Disease,” includes three chapters. Simon Hillson has updated his previous chapter on dental pathology, retaining a protocol for data collection and updating the state of our understanding of the causes and implications of pathological conditions of the teeth and supporting structures. Nancy Lovell provides a new chapter on skeletal trauma. This chapter focuses on fractures but also includes more general information on responses of bone to trauma and diagnostic procedures for evaluating trauma in the past. The third chapter is also new to the second edition. Sabrina Agarwal presents information on osteoporosis in past populations with both cross-cultural and historical perspectives. She offers a very useful comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the different methodological techniques for obtaining information on bone mass, density, and quality and their relevance to the study of past populations. Part IV, “Chemical and Genetic Analyses of Hard Tissues,” as in the previous edition, includes three chapters. Anne Katzenberg describes methods and applications of stable isotope analysis that are used to reconstruct diet, estimate the duration of nursing, and determine residence and migration patterns of the past. This field has expanded considerably since the previous edition. James Burton discusses bone chemistry and the trace elements of bone that have been used to reconstruct past diet as well as studies focusing on postmortem alterations of bone chemistry. Anne Stone provides background and examples of ancient DNA studies from human remains. She illustrates the significant challenges of working with ancient DNA, the fact that it is highly subject to destruction and contamination and expensive to analyse. She also points out that hypotheses about the genetics of populations in the past must be consistent with what is known about modern populations and that

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

research projects require the coordination of expertise from many different fields from paleopathology to archaeology. Part V includes four chapters on quantitative methods and population studies. Michael Pietrusewsky has updated his contribution on metric analysis, focusing on craniometric studies for population reconstruction. He provides an example from his extensive work in Polynesia. Shelley Saunders and Dori Rainey provide a new chapter on skeletal non-metric traits. They critically review the background of such studies and include illustrations of many of the more commonly used traits. They offer suggestions for future areas of research in this field, including study of the ontogenic development of specific traits and the relationship between the prevalence of traits in past populations and information on other skeletal criteria

xiii

such as DNA studies. As in the previous edition, there are two chapters on paleodemography. George Milner, James Wood, and Jesper Boldsen have updated their previous contribution focusing on both the promises and the limitations of paleodemographic studies. A new chapter by Richard Meindl, Robert Mensforth, and Owen Lovejoy provides a detailed example of a particular paleodemographic study, from the Libben site, in northern Ohio. As with the previous edition, we hope that this volume will provide useful information for both current and future biological anthropologists interested in the latest research on human skeletal and dental remains.

M. ANNE KATZENBERG SHELLEY R. SAUNDERS

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

What’s Bred in the Bone, a novel by Robertson Davies, begins with the proverb, “What’s bred in the bone will not out in the flesh.” The story is about a man who supposedly reflects his “breeding” since his behavior and characteristics are direct reflections of what he has inherited from his family. Although biological determinism may work in fiction, it is anathema to the biological anthropologist. The cornerstone of biological anthropology is the interaction of culture and human biology. What is manifested in the physical and behavioral characteristics of any living being is a result of the intertwining of an inherited genome with environmental factors. Human osteologists have struggled with this concept from the earliest beginnings of skeletal studies and continue to struggle with it today. Ancient DNA studies suggest that we ultimately want to know the “inherent” properties coming out of the bones. If we could read the genome, we would “know” the person. But of course, we understand that, as living tissues, bones and teeth are influenced by environmental forces. Bones respond to mechanical forces, and thus, they alter in response to activities and stresses. Craniometric studies attempt to study population relationships, assuming that cranial shape and size reflect inherited features, but

we know that cranial shape and size can be altered purposefully (head binding) or unintentionally (chewing stresses). It is the job of the human osteologist to study the interactions between inherited characteristics and their modification by the environment in order to understand, not just what is “bred” in the bone but also what bones can tell us about the flesh, that is, the lives of earlier peoples. Each of the following chapters deals with a specific type of advanced analysis of bones and teeth. The original plan for the book was to be a second edition of our earlier edited book, Skeletal Biology of Past People: Research Methods. However, as work progressed, it seemed that with five additional chapters and many new contributors, it is really something different. The differences are directly related to changes that have occurred in the analysis of human skeletal and dental remains over the past few years. Most notably these changes include heightened ethical concerns about studying the skeletal remains of aboriginal peoples in many countries where those people are no longer the dominant culture. These concerns and the resulting legislation in some jurisdictions have radically changed the way physical anthropologists and archaeologists carry out their work. A second change is the xv

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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

rise of forensic anthropology and the fact that research in forensic anthropology, while still overlapping with more traditional approaches, now includes topics not central to studies of archaeological skeletons. We begin this book with chapters on the ethics of studying human remains and forensic anthropology. An important theme that is found throughout the book is the progress of new methods. We were training to become anthropologists in the 1970s when many new research areas were emerging in physical anthropology. The earlier practice of providing descriptive osteological reports either as stand-alone works or, more commonly, as appendices to archaeological site reports was fading out and more problemoriented research was emerging. Biological distance studies using both metric and nonmetric traits on human bones and teeth were carried out in order to investigate prehistoric migration and relatedness through time and space. Paleopathology was emerging as a means of addressing questions about prehistoric adaptations in contrast to the earlier emphasis on unusual cases of specific diseases. Paleodemography, similarly, addressed questions of adaptation of earlier populations. Since the initial enthusiastic studies all of these topics have undergone criticism and have emerged as, perhaps, humbled, but also strengthened, by the critiques. The same is true of the more recently introduced methods involving biochemical analyses of bones and teeth. These methods include analyses of trace elements, stable isotopes, and ancient DNA. Each of these methods has undergone a series of stages that may be characterized as follows: †

†

† †

Discovery—either entirely new or new to physical anthropology, a new method is discovered and the potential applications are explored. Applications to questions of interest regarding reconstructing past peoples. Critique, introspection, experimentation. Emergence in a stronger, more reasoned form.

NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) and similar legislation in other countries have led to a reconfiguring of how skeletal studies of past peoples are carried out. Some of these changes can be viewed in a positive light. For example, standards have been developed in the expectation that collections will not be curated indefinitely. These standards were needed even before the prospect of reburial emerged. In addition, an interesting configuration of events happened in the 1990s. As some Native Americans voiced their disapproval of skeletal studies, expanding urban development led to archaeological excavations of several large, historic cemeteries dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These cemeteries contained the remains of Euro-americans and African Americans as well as other groups. At the same time, the growing number of students trained in human osteology provided a pool of individuals to excavate and study these remains. Debates about excavation and study continued but in many cases some period of time was allowed for proper scientific study. One special example of the cooperation between scientists and concerned descendants is the work being conducted at Howard University on a large African-American slave cemetery discovered in New York City. In Europe, there is a long history of excavating historic cemeteries and the increasing number of trained human osteologists has led to larger scale studies (the St. Brides’ skeletal collection in London, England is a good example). The increased scientific study of skeletons from historic cemeteries has also provided opportunities for testing methods. In many cases, the identities of at least some individuals are known from legible coffin inscriptions or detailed cemetery maps. It has been possible to investigate the accuracy of methods of determining sex and age at death and to detect biases in mortality samples that are directly related to causes of death. This book is organized into five parts. Part I, theory and application, features two chapters that describe recent shifts in skeletal studies. Walker’s chapter provides information on how

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

humans have regarded the dead over time and across cultures. He grapples with the issues surrounding the ethics of skeletal research, the clash with cultural beliefs about treatment of the dead, and the politics of communities. Taking a clearly anthropological approach to these questions, he shows us that there is a tremendous diversity of attitudes about the physical remains of the dead. He makes a strong case for the value of and the justification of scientific research. Ubelaker focuses on the development of forensic anthropology with its roots in descriptive osteology and its current form as an applied specialization of human osteology. He discusses the major comparative collections used for establishing standards, including the recently developed forensic data bank. He then takes the reader through the various steps in forensic anthropology, including recovery, identification, sex and age determination, stature estimation, and positive identification. He concludes with information on training opportunities and professional organizations dedicated to forensic anthropology. Part II includes chapters on morphological analyses of bones and teeth and age changes. Four of these contributors prepared chapters for our earlier book, and although the topics are similar, each chapter includes contributions and advances that have occurred throughout the 1990s. Ruff describes biomechanical analyses of bones and the applications of such studies to understanding past human behavior ranging from fossil hominids through to early historic human groups. He draws from his own extensive research to provide examples of how biomechanical studies have improved our understanding of past activity patterns. Examples include changes in robusticity throughout human evolution, the relationship between subsistence and bone strength, and the relationship between gender roles and their biological manifestation in bone structure. Mayhall covers dental morphology highlighting newer methods of characterizing tooth size and shape, and the applications of such studies to biological and behavioral characteristics of past peoples. He emphasizes the importance of

xvii

achieving precision of observations of both dental measures and dental morphological traits. He also argues for maintaining simplicity in our methodological approaches. Both of these aspects of the research process are absolutely necessary for us to make meaningful comparisons of the results obtained by different observers. Mayhall shows that knowledge in the field of dental morphology remains limited because the precision necessary for properly evaluating population variability has still not been achieved. Saunders covers the various types of studies that are specific to subadults, focusing on age determination but also considering sex determination and variations in growth and development. One problem with proceeding to studies of growth and development is that of sampling. Differential burial practices, differential preservation, and biases related to cause of death can all cause problems in assessing past growth patterns from subadult burials. Some of these problems have been addressed in studies of a large historic cemetery where parish records are available for comparison. This cemetery has also provided opportunities for assessing historic variation in growth and development as well as for testing methods of age determination. Saunders and her students have demonstrated how careful study of historic samples can not only tell us more about those particular people but also can help us to evaluate methods used on prehistoric samples. FitzGerald and Rose present information on age determination for subadult remains through dental microstructure analysis. The use of newer image analysis techniques (which are now easy to install in most anthropology laboratories) improves precision and relieves the tedium of collecting these data. This research shows great promise. If we can get a clearer picture of the amount of interand intrapopulation variation in dental development, we will know more about how tissue growth is buffered from stress and whether meaningful population differences really do exist. As these authors explain, it is only very recently that the investigation of microstructural growth markers in dental tissues has become

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accepted as appropriate for estimating tooth crown formation times. Robling and Stout provide details as well as examples of adult age determination based on bone histomorphometry. They review the principles of bone modeling and remodeling as a prelude to explaining how cortical bone microstructure is used in age determination. Variations caused by activity, sex, disease, and population affinity are discussed. Appendices to their chapter allow one to practice the methods of histological age determination on photomicrographs from a femur and a rib. Part III is titled “Prehistoric Health and Disease” and includes three chapters. As in Part II, the sequence of chapters is as follows: studies based on gross observations of bones, gross observations of teeth, and microscopic studies. Lovell focuses on paleopathology and diagnosis of bony lesions. She provides detailed information on various diagnostic methods, including radiology and microscopy. Steps toward diagnosis are discussed with emphasis on accurate description and consideration of the distribution of lesions within an individual skeleton as well as the distribution within skeletal samples. Hillson presents methods for analyzing and describing dental pathology, with detailed information on the underlying causes of various conditions. He stresses the importance of careful observation, demonstrating how different ways of scoring pathological changes can dramatically alter determinations of disease prevalence. If care is taken with observations, so that the surviving jaws and teeth in skeletal collections really do represent what was buried, then the distribution of dental disease can tell us a lot about the diets and activities of past populations. Then we can seek correspondence between dental data and data from stable isotopes, faunal and botanical assemblages, and artifacts used in daily life. Pfeiffer covers the subject of bone histology with respect to healthy bone turnover and various disease states. This chapter ties in nicely with those of Ruff and Robling and Stout in that it covers information on bone structure at the histological level and the factors

that account for variation. Her work includes variation in bone histology over recent human evolution with examples drawn from Neandertals to recent European immigrants to Canada. Procedures for preparing bones in thin sections are reviewed with cautions regarding diagenetic alteration. Part IV, “Chemical and Genetic Analyses of Hard Tissues,” includes chapters on stable isotope analysis, trace element analysis, and ancient DNA. Katzenberg provides background information on stable isotope studies and examples of applications to questions regarding paleodiet, migration, and life history. She demonstrates how isotopic analysis of archaeological tissues has advanced dramatically over a relatively short time span. Rather than simply confirming information that was already available from other sources, she shows how this field has called into question various archaeologically hypotheses about subsistence adaptations as well as adding to our understanding of human ecology. She discusses three areas of research that are particularly promising because of their implications for a more detailed reading of the past. These areas include reconstructing infant feeding practices, detecting pathological changes in bones, and the management of animal and plant species by earlier human populations. Sandford and Weaver provide information on the current status of trace element studies. These studies include attempts to control for postmortem changes. They focus their discussion on the dietary indicators, strontium and barium, and the toxic element, lead. This chapter nicely illustrates the stages of new methods, discussed early in the preface. Sandford and Weaver have labeled these “Inaugural” (discovery and early applications), “Intermediate” (reevaluation and testing), and “Modern” (emphasis on experimental and simulation studies). The chapters on stable isotope analysis and trace element analysis both emphasize the importance of training in the physical sciences. Stone discusses advances in the isolation and analysis of ancient DNA. A great wave of excitement was ushered in with the first developments in the

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

extraction and amplification of ancient DNA. If we can retrieve fragments of genes from long deceased humans, surely we can reconstruct the evolutionary and population history of past human groups. But the early claims for the retrieval of ancient DNA from dinosaurs and other fossils were cast aside when it was shown that the amplified DNA came from modern contaminants. The promise of ancient DNA research lost some of its luster. Yet, more recently, Stone was part of the research team able to offer clear evidence for the sequencing of Neanderthal DNA. Nevertheless, she cautions us about the difficulties of proving positive results and warns us that the promise is there, but the road ahead is still difficult. Part V, “Quantitative Methods and Population Studies,” includes three chapters. Pietrusewsky discusses metric techniques and their applications to biological distance studies. He takes the reader through the various statistical procedures used to visualize biological relationships. These procedures include a range of multivariate statistics such as clustering techniques, multidimensional scaling, and Mahalanobis’s generalized distance. Craniometric analysis has been one of the transitional realms of osteological research. Pietrusewsky shows how this approach is still appropriate for the investigation of widespread museum collections, where destructive analyses are prohibited. Furthermore he demonstrates by using examples from his own extensive research in the Pacific, that multiple lines of evidence, including craniometric, dental, linguistic, and molecular data are all necessary to contribute to our understanding of human population history. Jackes tackles the problem of adult age determination and evaluates recent attempts to circumvent some problems. She surveys and evaluates all of the different approaches to age-at-death estimation, including single

xix

methods, such as metamorphosis of the pubic symphysis and cranial suture closure, as well as complex methods. She emphasizes the difficulties of dealing with the biases of reference samples and the effects of skeletal preservation on efforts to produce age distributions for archaeological samples. She takes the position that statistical investigation and manipulation cannot substitute for the necessity of having accurate biological age estimates. Finally, Milner, Wood, and Boldsen evaluate the current status of paleodemography by focusing on some questions that have fueled past debates within the field. They address problems of sampling, age and sex estimation, nonstationarity, heterogeneous risk, and selective mortality. Paleodemography draws from many of the types of studies covered in previous chapters and attempts to tie together the success of populations based on factors such as diet, disease experience, activity patterns, growth and development, and population interactions. Milner and colleagues provide a frank view of the potential and the limitations of achieving the goal of being able to determine the level of adaptation of past populations. All of these chapters have the common theme of determining information about past peoples from their skeletal and dental remains. Adult age determination is an important theme that appears in many chapters. Similarly, postmortem change, sampling, and the relationship between cemetery samples and living populations recurs throughout the book. Ethical considerations have had a major impact on all topics discussed. It is our hope that this information will provide both breadth and depth for advanced studies in human osteology and will serve as a guide to more intensive study. M. ANNE KATZENBERG SHELLEY R. SAUNDERS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors wish to thank the contributors to this volume for their efforts to present their areas of research expertise to students and professionals. We are grateful to contributors who have revised their work from the previous edition as well as those to who have prepared new contributions for this edition. It has

been a pleasure to work with everyone. We also thank our editors at Wiley, Thom Moore and Karen Chambers and our editorial assistant Ian Collins. Kristine Hepple and Charles FitzGerald provided excellent editorial assistance during the final phases of manuscript preparation.

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CONTRIBUTORS

SABRINA C. AGARWAL, received her M.Sc. and Ph.D. (2001) from the University of Toronto, working in the Department of Anthropology and the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto. She completed a two-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Anthropology, McMaster University. She is currently assistant professor of anthropology and faculty associate at the Archaeological Research Facility, University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests focus broadly on the study of skeletal health and disease, with particular focus on age, sex, and genderrelated changes in bone quantity and quality. She is particularly interested in the application of biocultural and evolutionary approaches to the study of bone maintenance and fragility. Her work has examined patterns of cortical bone microstructure, trabecular architecture, mineral density, and biomechanical properties in several archaeological populations in the Old World, including Medieval and Post-Medieval Britain, and Imperial Rome, as well as a pioneer population from nineteenth-century Upper Canada. She is currently examining the

effects of growth and development and lifestyle on bone maintenance and fragility over the lifecycle in an Anatolian Neolithic archaeological population from Çatalho¨yu¨k, Turkey. She is also examining the longterm effect of parity and lactation on the maternal skeleton with a large-scale project on bone maintenance in the nonhuman primate (monkey) model. Her publications include a co-edited volume, Bone Loss and Osteoporosis: An Anthropological Perspective (Kluwer Plenum Academic Press) with S.D. Stout, published in 2003, and “Medieval Trabecular Bone Architecture: The Influence of Age, Sex and Lifestyle” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2004, with M. Dimitriu, and M.D. Grynpas. JESPER L. BOLDSEN, received his Ph.D. in biology from the Department of Theoretical Statistics, Aarhus University (Denmark) in 1983. He is an associate professor with the Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, Odense. He is also adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Utah and associate editor of the Journal of Biosocial Science and Journal of Applied Oral Science. Research interests revolve around human population xxiii

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biology, epidemiology, demography, and evolution. In recent years, he has concentrated much of his research effort on analyzing the structure of the medieval population of Denmark. This work has been based on studies of extensively excavated medieval cemeteries. He has published widely in biological and anthropological journals. Several recent publications include “Early childhood stress and adult age mortality—a study of dental enamel hypoplasia in the medieval Danish village of Tirup,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2007; “Outside St. Jørgen: Leprosy in the medieval Danish city of Odense,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2006; “Leprosy and mortality in the Medieval Danish village of Tirup,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2005; and “Testing conditional independence in diagnostic palaeoepidemiology,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2005. STEVEN K. BOYD, received his Ph.D. from the University of Calgary in 2001. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland, before joining the faculty at the University of Calgary with a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (Schulich School of Engineering) and the Faculty of Kinesiology. Utilizing highresolution computed tomography (microCT), his research has focused on the area of orthopaedic biomechanics, focusing on adaptive changes to tissues that occur after a joint injury or disease, with particular interest in bone. Recent publications include “Monitoring individual morphological changes over time in ovariectomized rats by in vivo micro-computed tomography,” Bone, 2006, with P. Davison, R. Mu¨ller, and J.A Gasser, and “Establishment of an architecture-specific experimental validation approach for finite element modeling of bone by rapid prototyping and high resolution computed tomography,” Medical

Engineering and Physics, 2006, with R. Su and G.M. Campbell. JAMES BURTON, received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1986. He is the senior scientist and associate director of the Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Department of Anthropology). His research interests include the development of new archaeometric methods, particularly the use of chemical and isotopic methods for provenience studies. Current projects include exploration of alkaline-earth elements and various isotopic systems in the study of human mobility and the development of nondestructive methods to characterize historical materials; studies of the effect of marine resources on bone levels of barium and strontium; the origins of the Gila Polychrome tradition; and the eastern, selvatic origin of unusual pottery found at Late Formative sites in the Ecuadorian Andes. Recently he co-authored with T.D. Price and V. Tieseler “Early African diaspora in colonial Campeche, Mexico: Strontium isotopic evidence” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2006, and “Interpreting the trace-element components of bone—a current perspective from the Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry” with T.D. Price in Deciphering Ancient Bones: The Research Potential of Bioarchaeological Collections, edited by G. Grupe and J. Peters (2003). CHARLES M. FITZGERALD, received his Ph.D. in biological anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 1996. In 2000, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University, he worked with Simon Hillson at the Institute of Archaeology in University College London on a three-year project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK. This study’s objective was to clarify the nature of the dental reduction that is observed in Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Early Neolithic hominids and to test the

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major hypotheses that account for it. The study included the use of an approach to assess tooth size that overcame the problem of tooth wear, which was severe in these early modern humans. He returned to Canada where he was appointed the research coordinator for the Anthropology Hard Tissue and Light Microscopy Laboratory at McMaster University. The focus of much of his research has been on the validation and application of odontochronological techniques, but in addition to growth and development, his interests embrace several other areas of skeleto-dental biology and palaeoanthropology. Recent publications include two papers in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology: “Health of infants in an Imperial Roman skeletal sample: perspective from dental microstructure,” 2006, with S.R. Saunders, L. Bondioli, and R. Macchiarelli, and “A Test of histological methods of determining the chronology of accentuated striae in deciduous teeth,” 2005, with S.R. Saunders. BENEDIKT HALLGRI´MSSON, received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He is an associate professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Archaeology. He serves as the associate dean, Undergraduate Science Education and is a member of the Alberta Bone and Joint Institute and an associate member of the Institute of Maternal and Child Health. Research interests include the developmentalgenetic basis for phenotypic variation and the developmental-genetic basis for variation in canalization, morphological integration, and developmental stability. Dr. Hallgrimsson has published extensively in medical, biological, and anthropological journals, including a co-edited volume, Variation: A Central Concept in Biology with B.K. Hall (Academic Press, 2005). Recent articles include: “The brachymorph mouse and the developmental-genetic basis for canalization and morphological

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integration,” Evolution & Development, 2006, with J.J.Y. Brown, A.F. FordHutchinson, H.D. Sheets, M.L Zelditch, and F.R. Jirik, and “Canalization and developmental stability in the Brachyrrhine mouse,” Journal of Anatomy, 2006, with K.E. Willmore, M.L. Zelditch, N. Young, A. Ah-Seng, and S. Lozanoff. SIMON HILLSON, received his Ph.D. in London in 1979. He is a professor of bioarchaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Dr. Hillson’s research interests focus on the biology of past human populations, ranging from the most recent post-Medieval populations of London to Predynastic Egyptians, and remains from Upper Palaeolithic contexts. In particular, he works with dental remains, studying their morphology, microstructure, development, pathology, and evolution in Neanderthals and modern humans. As well as numerous journal articles, he has published three books: Dental Anthropology (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Mammal Bones and Teeth (Institute of Archaeology, UCL, 1992) and Teeth (Cambridge University Press, 2005, second edition). M. ANNE KATZENBERG, received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Toronto in 1983. She holds a university professorship at the University of Calgary (Department of Archaeology). Her research interests include diet and health in past peoples, and in particular, she explores the various applications of stable isotope analysis to reconstructing paleodiet, paleodemography, and ecology. She serves on the editorial board of the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology and is the vice-president of the Paleopathology Association. In 2003, she was elected to the Royal Society of Canada. She serves as a consultant in forensic anthropology for the Medical Examiner of Alberta (southern division). Recent publications include “Identification of historical human skeletal remains: a case

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study using skeletal and dental age, history and DNA” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 2005, with G. Oetelaar, J. Oetelaar, C. Fitzgerald, D. Yang, and S.R. Saunders, and “Skeletal Biology: Great Lakes Area,” Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 3, 2006, edited by D.H. Ubelaker. She is co-editor, with Stanley Ambrose of Close to the Bone: Biogeochemical Approaches to Paleodietary Analyses in Archaeology (Plenum Press, 2001). ERIKA KRISTENSEN, received her B.Sc. in biological engineering from the University of Guelph. She is completing her M.Sc. in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Calgary and plans to start on her Ph.D. in late 2007. Her research interests include applications of mechanical engineering principles to questions in developmental biology, such as the relationship between craniofacial shape and mandibular strength in growth-hormone-deficient mice. She recently submitted a paper titled “A novel high-throughput morphological method for phenotypic analysis,” with T.E. Parsons, B. Hallgrı´msson, and S.K. Boyd. C. OWEN LOVEJOY, received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts. He is a university professor in the Department of Anthropology at Kent State University, as well as serves in many other professional capacities, such as technical advisor in biological anthropology, Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, Cleveland; adjunct professor of anatomy, Department of Human Anatomy, NEOUCOM, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University). His research covers a broad spectrum of areas in human biology, from human paleoanthropology to the genetics of development. Much of his research focuses on bipedal locomotion and its evolution. Many of his publications involve the human postcranium and that of our ancestors. Recent

articles include a series in Gait and Posture (2005 – 2006) on “The natural history of human gait and posture”; and the article “Of muscle-bound crania and human brain evolution: The story behind the MYH16 headlines,” Journal of Human Evolution, 2006, with M.A. McCollum, C.C. Sherwood, C.J. Vinyard, and F. Schachat. NANCY C. LOVELL, received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1987 and is a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta. She specializes in bioarchaeology, paleopathology, and mortuary archaeology. Current research projects include the history of cemeteries in western Canada in order to assess the fit between archaeological interpretive models for prehistoric cemeteries with the documented evidence for burial practices, and the analysis of skeletal remains from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to examine health and biological relationships in complex societies. Recent publications include “Nonmetric traits of the deciduous dentitions from Bronze Age Tell Leilan, Syria,” 2007, and “Nonmetric analysis of the permanent dentition of Bronze Age Tell Leilan, Syria,” 2006, both with S. Haddow and appearing in the International Journal of Dental Anthropology, and “A comparative experiment in the consolidation of cremated bone,” International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 2004, with D. Rossi and S. De Gruchy. RICHARD S. MEINDL, received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts. He is professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Kent State University. He conducts research in archaeology and osteology, forensic sciences, primate and human evolution, and historic demography and population structure. Most recently, he has studied the paleodemography of various archeological areas, including the Shell Mound Region of western Kentucky, a Late Woodland population from northern Ohio, and a Late Classic site in lowland

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Yucatan. These areas provide special opportunities to examine the rise of complex societies, pre-agricultural sedentary living, and human demographic evolution. Publications include the review “Recent Advances in Method and Theory in Paleodemography,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 1998; and the co-edited book Archaic Transitions in Ohio and Kentucky Prehistory, with O.H. Prufer and S.E. Pedde (Kent State University Press, 2001). ROBERT P. MENSFORTH, received his Ph.D. from Kent State University. He joined the faculty in the Department of Anthropology at Cleveland State University in 1991. His research interests include skeletal biology, hominid paleontology, forensic anthropology, paleodemography, paleoepidemiology, medical anthropology, and human gross anatomy. Having completed the first phase of a forensic study on patterns and types of adult craniofacial trauma that characterize a very large sample of early twentieth century individuals from the Hamann – Todd collection at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, his current project is the analyses of the relationships among various forms of trauma and the age, sex, and ancestry of affected individuals. Among his publications are “Paleodemography of the Carlston-Annis (Bt-5) late Archaic skeletal population,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1990, and “Warfare and trophy taking in the Archaic Period,” Archaic Transitions in Ohio and Kentucky Prehistory, 2001, edited by O.H. Prufer, S.E. Pedde, and R.S. Meindl. GEORGE R. MILNER, received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern University in 1982. He is currently professor of anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University. Before coming to Penn State, he was a postdoctoral fellow in physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution and director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. His research has

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focused on both archaeology and human osteology, with an emphasis on the prehistory of eastern North America. He has conducted fieldwork on mortuary and habitation sites in several midwestern states, Egypt, and the Pacific. Currently he is serving on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. His latest book is The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America (Thames and Hudson, London, 2004) and, in 2006, The Cahokia Chiefdom: The Archaeology of a Mississippian Society, was reprinted by the University Press of Florida. Recent osteological publications include a co-authored article “Osteological applications of highresolution computed tomography: A prehistoric arrow injury,” Journal of Archaeological Science, 2006, and “Skeletal biology: Northeast,” Handbook of North American Indians: Environment, Origins, and Population, with Jane Buikstra and edited by D.H. Ubelaker (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, 2006). TRISH E. PARSONS, received her BSc. in biological anthropology from The Pennsylvania State University. She is currently a student in the Biological Anthropology Graduate Program at the University of Calgary. Her research interests include the developmental basis of facial length and the study of basic mammalian developmental processes in the skull through mouse models and primate evolution. She has been a student of morphometrics since her days as an undergraduate at Penn State. Her most recent publication is “Microstructure of trabecular bone in a mouse model for Down syndrome,” Anatomical Record: Advances in Integrative Anatomy and Evolutionary Biology, 2007, with T.M. Ryan, R.H. Reeves, and J.T. Richtsmeier. MICHAEL PIETRUSEWSKY, received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Toronto in 1969. He is currently professor of anthropology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu. His

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research focuses on studies of human skeletal remains from Australia, the Pacific, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, including the application of multivariate statistical procedures to cranial data for investigating historical – biological relationships. Recent publications include “Ban Chiang, A prehistoric village site in Northeast Thailand II: The human skeletal remains,” The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Memoir Series, 2002, with M.T. Douglas; “Multivariate comparisons of female cranial series from the Ryukyu Islands and Japan,” Anthropological Science, 2004; “Matrilocality during the prehistoric transition to agriculture in Thailand,” Antiquity, 2005, with R.A. Bentley, M.T. Douglas, and T.C. Atkinson; and “A multivariate craniometric study of the prehistoric and modern inhabitants of Southeast Asia, East Asia, and surrounding regions: a human kaleidoscope?” Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia, edited by M.R. Oxenham and N. Tayles (Cambridge University Press, 2006). He is a member of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Anthropologists, and member of the Editorial Boards of Anthropological Science, Anatomical Science International, and the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology. He has been a visiting professor/scholar to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan. DORI L. RAINEY, received her MA from the University of Western Ontario (working with the skeletal remains of the Huron of Southern Ontario under Dr. Michael Spence) and is currently working on her Ph.D. in the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University. With a broad focus on skeletal biology, including palaeopathology and forensic anthropology, her research attempts to determine social

organization in archaeological populations through nonmetric traits of the infracranial skeleton. More specifically, the research endeavors to address the variability observed in nonmetric traits and to integrate these data with pathological conditions, occupational markers, and the archaeological context. ALEXANDER G. ROBLING, received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in 1998 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Anatomy and Orthopedic Surgery at Indiana University— Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI). He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology and Biomedical Engineering at the IUPUI. Specializing in the effects of mechanical loading on bone at the organ, tissue, cell, and molecular levels, his current interests are focused on the signal transduction cascades involved in bone cell mechanosensation, including the genetic regulation of mechanosensitivity. Recent publications include the co-authored article, “Biomechanical and Molecular Regulation of Bone Remodeling” Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering, 2006; and the chapter, “Histomorphology, geometry, and mechanical loading in past populations” with S.D. Stout in Bone Loss and Osteoporosis: an Anthropological Perspective, (edited by S.C. Agarwal and S.D. Stout, (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, Inc.). JEROME C. ROSE, received his Ph.D. in anthropology/biological anthropology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1973. He is currently chair and professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and a member of the Department of Anthropology, Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan. His early research interest was dental anthropology with a particular focus on dental histology, including the study of enamel microdefects and enamel hypoplasias. Methodological

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specialties include light and electron microscopy and thin sectioning technology. He has conducted bioarchaeological excavations in Illinois, Arkansas, Texas, Egypt, and Jordan. Research on the origins of agriculture and the economic determinants of health provided the motivation to begin a specialty in the bioarchaeology of the Middle East. He is currently working in Jordan on the excavation and analysis of Byzantine tombs and in Egypt at the site of Amarna. Recent publications include “Saad: A Late Roman/Byzantine Site in North Jordan,” co-edited with D.L. Burke (2004); and “The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere,” co-edited with R.H. Steckel (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge). CHRISTOPHER B. RUFF, received his Ph.D. in biological anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981 and is currently the director of the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research interests are in biomechanics and primate locomotion, evolution of the hominoid postcranium, skeletal growth and development, osteoporosis, and skeletal remodeling and behavioral reconstruction in human populations. Recent publications include the co-authored “Body size, body shape, and long bone strength of the Tyrolean ‘Iceman,’” Journal of Human Evolution, 2006; “Gracilization of the modern human skeleton—The latent strength in our slender bones teaches lessons about human lives, current and past,” American Scientist, 2006; and “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolff?: “Wolff’s Law” and Bone Functional Adaptation,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2006, with B. Holt and E. Trinkaus. SHELLEY R. SAUNDERS, received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Toronto in 1977. She is currently a professor in the Department of Anthropology,

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McMaster University, and the director of the McMaster Anthropology Hard Tissue and Light Microscopy Laboratory. Her research covers microscopic and macroscopic human dental and skeletal growth and development, dental pathology, and methods of sex and age estimation from teeth and bones. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Human Disease and Population Origins and is the founder of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre. She is also North American editor of the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology and was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2001. Recent publications include the coauthored article, “Health of infants in an Imperial Roman skeletal sample: perspective from dental microstructure,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2006, and “Sexual dimorphism of the dental tissues in human permanent mandibular canines and first premolars,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2007, with A.H.W. Chan, B. Kahlon, H.F. Kluge, and C.M. FitzGerald. G. RICHARD SCOTT, holds a Ph.D. from Arizona State University (1973). He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is professor emeritus of anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Research interests include dental anthropology and skeletal biology, with special emphasis on tooth morphology and bioarchaeology. He has worked with groups in the American Southwest, Arctic, North Atlantic (Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Denmark), and Spain. He coauthored “Physical anthropology of the Arctic.” in The Arctic: Environment, People, Policy, edited by M. Nuttall and T.V. Callaghan (Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, 2000); “The Anthropology of Modern Human Teeth,” with C.G. Turner II (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1997); and “Dentition,” also co-authored with Christy

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G. Turner II and edited by D.H. Ubelaker, in the Handbook of North American Indians (Volume 3, 2006). ANN L. W. STODDER, received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado (1990). She is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at the Field Museum as well as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She also serves as treasurer of the Paleopathology Association. Her study of human remains focuses on paleopathology and the use of life histories in understanding human adaptation in the past, and on the taphonomic signatures of mortuary practices that reflect the human relationship with death and with the deceased. She is the author of “Skeletal biology: Southwest,” in the Handbook of North American Indians, edited by D.H. Ubelaker (Volume 3, 2006), and several taphonomic studies of human remains from New Guinea, including “The bioarchaeology and taphonomy of mortuary ritual on the Sepik Coast, Papua New Guinea,” in Interacting With the Dead: Perspectives on Mortuary Archaeology for the New Millennium, edited by G. Rakita, J. Buikstra, L. Beck, and S. Williams (2005). Dr. Stodder is also the editor of the forthcoming volume “Reanalysis and Reinterpretation in Southwestern Bioarchaeology” (Anthropological Research Paper No. 59, Arizona State University). ANNE C. STONE, received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1996. She is currently an associate professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. She specializes in anthropological genetics and specifically applications of population genetics to questions concerning the origins, population history, and evolution of humans and the great apes. Her current research focuses on the biological history of Native Americans and on the evolution and genetic diversity of the genus Pan,

which includes chimpanzees and bonobos. She is also investigating the evoultionary history of tuberculosis in ancient samples dating prior to and after the Age of Exploration. Current publications include the co-authored article, “Independent evolution of bitter-taste sensitivity in humans and chimpanzees,” in Nature, 2006, and “Comparative analyses reveal a complex history of molecular evolution for human MYH16,” Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2005. SAM D. STOUT, received his Ph.D. from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1976. He is currently a professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He specializes in histomorphometric analysis of bone and its applications in skeletal biology, bioarchaeology, paleopathology, and forensic anthropology. Recent publications include “Intraskeletal variability in bone mass,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2007, with J. Peck; “A comparison of cortical bone remodeling rates between African American and European American skeletal remains,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology,” 2006, with Cho et al.; and “Histomorphometric analysis of the cortical bone of the rib of Hanaab-Pakal,” with M. Streeter, Studying Janaab’Pakal and Recreating Maya Dynastic History, edited by V. Tiesler and A. Cucina (University of Arizona Press). In 2003 he co-edited, with S. Agarwal, Bone Loss and Osteoporosis: An Anthropological Perspective (Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers). Dr. Stout is a member of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the Paleothology Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. DOUGLAS H. UBELAKER, received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Kansas in 1973. Currently, he holds the position of

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curator of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. His research interests are focused within human skeletal biology and forensic applications. He has also worked extensively with prehistoric skeletal samples from Ecuador and from eastern North America. Recent publications include “The use of an improved pRIA technique in the identification of protein residues,” The Journal of Archaelogical Science, 2006, with J. Reuther, J. Lowenstein, S. Gerlach, D. Hood, and G. Scheuenstuhl; “Identification of animal species by protein radioimmunoassay of bone fragments and bloodstained stone tools,” Forensic Science International, 2006, with J. Lowenstein, J. Reuther, D. Hood, G. Scheuenstuhl, and S. Gerlach; and “Analysis of artificial radiocarbon in different skeletal and dental tissue types to evaluate date of death,” The Journal of Forensic Science, 2006, with B.A. Buchholz and J.E.B. Stewart. PHILLIP L. WALKER, received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1973. He is currently a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His interests include bioarchaeology, paleopathology, forensic anthropology, and human evolution. Professor Walker is currently working on several bioarchaeological projects involving human skeletal remains from various parts of the world, including North America, Asia, and Europe. He is the co-director of an archaeological project in Iceland that includes the excavation of a settlement period cemetery and church. Walker is a principle investigator on a large NSF-funded collaborative project entitled “A History of Health in Europe from the Late Paleolithic Era to the Present.” This project involves researchers from many different European countries. Its goal is to measure and analyze the evolution of skeletal health by combining data from human remains with information

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gathered from sources in archaeology, climate history, geography, and history. Some of his recent publications include the co-authored “The evolution of treponemal disease in the Santa Barbara Channel Area of Southern California,” in New World Treponemal Disease, edited by M.L. Powell and D.C. Cook (University of Florida Press, 2005); “Greater sciatic notch morphology: Sex, age, and population differences,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2005; and “Bioarchaeological evidence for trophy taking in prehistoric Central California,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 2005, with V.A. Andrushko, K. Latham, D. Grady, and A. Pastron. JAMES W. WOOD, received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1980. He is currently professor of biological anthropology and demography at Pennsylvania State University. His research spans several areas of human population biology, including biodemography, historical demography, population ecology, paleodemography, reproductive biology, and infectious disease dynamics. He has carried out extensive research on fertility and reproductive physiology and has conducted fieldwork in Papua New Guinea on birth-spacing patterns, the contraceptive effects of breastfeeding, fecundability, and pregnancy loss. He was also involved in a long-term prospective study of the endocrinology of menopause in a large cohort of U.S. women. Dr. Wood’s more recent interests include paleodemography, where he has made important statistical and analytical contributions and has collaborated with several colleagues working on a large collection of medieval Danish skeletons. He also has a long-standing interest in the demographic effects of infectious diseases and is currently directing a large multidisciplinary study of the fourteenth-century Black Death. His other current research interests focus on the historical demography and

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landscape ecology of the northern Orkney Islands in Scotland. His publications include “A theory of preindustrial population dynamics: demography, economy, and well-being in Malthusian systems” Current Anthropology, 1998; “The osteological paradox: problems of inferring prehistoric health from skeletal samples” Current Anthropology, 1992, with G.R. Milner, H.C. Harpending, and K.M. Weiss; and Dynamics of Human Reproduction: Biology, Biometry, Demography (Aldine de Gruyter, 1994). NATHAN M. YOUNG, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (2003). He is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the School of Medicine at Stanford University. His research interests include the developmental basis of phenotypic variation and variability; geometric morphometrics and multivariate analysis, human and ape evolution, and phylogenetic analysis. Recent publications include “Function, ontogeny and canalization of shape variance in the primate scapula,” Journal of Anatomy, 2006, and “Primate genomic divergence dates and their paleontological context,” Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 2006, with M.E. Steiper. Dr. Young is also the author of “Estimating hominoid phylogeny from morphological data: Character choice, phylogenetic signal and postcranial data,” in Interpreting the Past: Essays on Human, Primate and Mammal Evolution in Honor

of David Pilbeam, edited by D.E. Lieberman, R.J. Smith, and J. Kelley (Brill Academic Publishers, Inc., Boston). He is a member of the American Association of Physical Anthropology, Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, Paleoanthropology Society, and the Society for the Study of Evolution. MIRIAM LEAH ZELDITCH, received her Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Zoology. She is an associate research Scientist at the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include the developmental basis of phenotypic variation, especially the processes that suppress it, morphological integration, and the long-term consequences of variability. She is co-author of Geometric Morphometrics for Biologists, with D. Swiderski, D. Sheets, and W. Fink (Elsevier Press, 2004). Recent articles include: “Developmental regulation of skull morphology. I. Ontogenetic dynamics of variance,” 2004, and “Developmental regulation of skull morphology II: ontogenetic dynamics of covariance,” 2006, both in Evolution & Development, with B.L. Lundrigan, H.D. Sheets, and T. Garland, and “Multivariate stasis in the dental morphology of the Paleocene-Eocene condylarth Ectocion,” Paleobiology, 2007, with A.R. Wood, A.N. Rountrey, T.P. Eiting, H.D. Sheets, and P.D. Gingerich.

FOREWORD

In 1953, Lucile E. Hoyme published an article entitled “Physical anthropology and its instruments: An historical study.” She asserted, “Measurement is the oldest and most distinctive hallmark of the physical anthropologist” (Hoyme, 1953: 409). By this she meant absolute and relative size measurements of the human body, which she argued was core methodology within physical anthropological investigations. The roots of this core methodology, when applied systematically to human remains, can be traced to comparative studies that began at the turn of the eighteenth century at the University of Edinburgh. Following such early precursors, scholarship associated with the influential Socie´te´ d’ Anthropologic de Paris (1859) included Paul Broca’s prolific descriptions of new instruments and techniques for studying living and skeletonized humans. After Broca’s death, methodological innovation shifted to Germany where von To¨ro¨k, for example, developed a composite instrument that combined calipers, a goniometer, and a craniometer to facilitate recording the 5300 measurements he advocated (Hoyme, 1953). Thus, the technical ancestry of contemporary physical

anthropological investigations of humans and their remains includes measurement via a remarkable range of instruments. Most nineteenth century applications of these techniques were simply descriptive and comparative craniology, although some research questions extended, for example, to the estimation of stature (Rollet, 1888). Some workers used measurements for the estimation of sex, including Matthews et al. (1893), whose methods followed those of European scholars. A second persistent theme in physical anthropology’s methodological heritage is visual observation, without direct measurement, of human and skeletal morphology to describe and interpret variation. Systematic cranial shape comparisons and constructing typologies generated through such methods have a history as long as that of cranial measurement, extending into the eighteenth century (Cook, 2006). During the nineteenth century, careful observations without measurement also characterize reports by medical doctors and anatomists of osseous cultural modifications and evidence of ancient disease. As Cook and Powell (2006) emphasize, early nineteenth-century xxxiii

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scholars such as Warren and Morton, focused on cranial morphology rather than on disease per se, but as the century matured, so did an interest in pathological conditions. Other types of nineteenthcentury observations used to infer ancient life ways through the direct observation of human osseous and dental tissues include the use of nonmetric traits, such as the Inca bone, to estimate population relationships. Tibial flattening served as a basis for inferring load bearing and movement across landscapes (Matthews et al. 1893). In dental studies, associations among wear, dental disease, and diet were well established during the nineteenth century (Rose and Burke, 2006), with early American applications, including comparative studies by Matthews et al. (1893). Morphological dental variation was overshadowed by the study of cranial morphology during the nineteenth century, but it assumed prominence during the early twentieth century (Rose and Burke, 2006). During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new methods, some invasive, supplemented those traditionally employed by researchers who studied skeletonized remains (Buikstra, 2006). Joseph Jones (1876), for example, used histological techiniques to examine the internal structure of diseased bones recovered from Tennessee’s stone box graves. He also experimented with hydrochloric acid as a means of assessing antiquity and relative age of these remains. Ancient teeth had been studied as early as 1892 (Tomes, cited in Rose and Burke, 2006). Within a year of Wilhelm Ro¨ntgen’s discovery (1895), X-rays were used to investigate mummies of a cat and human child (Aufderheide, 2003). Thus, by the early years of the twentieth century, basic techniques included direct measurement and morphological observations, which were frequently applied to the reconstruction of population histories. Less commonly were they directed toward issues

such as estimating sex, diet, and behavior. Technically complex methods, such as radiography and histology, had been applied to ancient materials, but studies were limited in scope and number. Another important observation made by Hoyme during the mid-twentieth century involved the degree to which physical anthropologists were themselves creating the instruments used within the discipline or borrowing them from other fields. Prior to 1900, instrumentation was commonly generated internally, a pattern that changed within the twentieth centery. Among the instruments and methods introduced by mid-century, Hoyme mentioned the anthropological use of stereographic technology adapted from orthodontics, as well as X-rays and chemical tests used in studies of physiology. In addition, she asserted, “Like an individual, a science comes of age when it is in a position to contribute to society” (Hoyme, 1953: 423). Fast forward a century to the twentieth/twentyfirst-century transition and we see that many of the same topics that were of at least passing interest by the close of the nineteenth century remained highly visible: genetic relationships, diet, disease, and behavior. A distinctive twentieth-century development was paleodemography. With roots in Hooton’s studies, interest in a demography of the past largely post-dates 1960 (Frankenberg and Konigsberg, 2006). Although distinguishing juvenile from adult remains had resolved “pigmy race” allegations by mid-nineteenth century (Morton, 1841), systematic study of agerelated changes developed within the twentieth century, beginning with the landmark contributions of the anatomist T. Wingate Todd (1920). Methods for estimating both age-at-death and sex have been refined over the twentieth century, influenced by the increasing sophistication of forensic anthropologists.

FOREWORD

Although many of the questions addressed by those studying ancient skeletal material have nineteenth-century roots, the pace of methodological advancement has increased markedly in recent years. Within the 40 years that I have been studying remains from archaeological and forensic contexts, increasingly sophisticated biochemical, bimolecular, and quantitative methods have virtually revolutionized the manner in which we can measure, for example, genetic relatedness and diet. As expected, some false starts have occurred, as in the enthusiastic over-interpretations of trace elements as dietary indicators, but there are doubtless many significant advances on the horizon for many approaches, especially those involving biomolecules. The rapid tempo of such changes is illustrated by a comparison of the three volumes edited by Katzenberg and Saunders: Saunders and Katzenberg (1992), Katzenberg and Saunders (2000), and the current book. The preface to Katzenberg and Saunders (2000) recognizes this phenomenon, as the editors comment: “The original plan for the book was to be a second edition of our earlier edited book, Skeletal Biology of Past People: Research Methods. However, as work progressed it seemed that with five additional chapters and many new contributors, it is really something different. The differences are directly related to changes that have occurred in the analysis of human skeletal and dental remains over the past few years.” The Saunders and Katzenberg (1992) edited volume clearly illustrated the fact that skeletal biological and dental studies frequently used techniques developed in other fields. Bone and tooth histology, biomechanical analyses, light or optical spectrometry and X-ray fluorescence for trace element analysis, mass spectrometry for isotopes studies, electron microscopy, computerized tomography scans and other imaging techniques, immunological and molecular methods in

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the study of disease, and complex quantitative methods amply illustrated the use of innovative methods and state-of-the-art instrumentation developed elsewhere. By 2000, Katzenberg and Saunders had added a full chapter on DNA analysis of archaeological remains, a discussion of paleohistology in the study of paleopathology, and contributions defining increasingly sophisticated methodological and quantitative approaches to paleodemography. In this contribution, the chapter entitled “Morphometrics and biological anthropology in the post-genomic age” explicitly addresses the startling opportunities that technological advances in computer and molecular methods offer for phenotypic analyses. These new developments are revolutionary and they are applied to the core problem of physical anthropology, the measurement of human morphological variation, as Hoyme emphasized in 1953. Although such technological advancement anchors many current research trajectories, the direct observation of remains continues to be an essential aspect of our craft, complementing complex methods, as it did in the nineteenth century. Although the subjective cranial typologies of that period have fallen away, rigorous and replicable assessments of dental morphology and disease, evaluated through visual inspection, remain significant venues within physical anthropology. Analyses of bone pathology, for example, are also grounded in careful observations that differentiate healthy from diseased bones. Other changes noted in comparison of the three volumes included a shift away from the exclusive focus on the methods and topics appropriate to the study of archaeological samples that dominated Saunders and Katzenberg (1992). As emphasized in the preface to Katzenberg and Saunders (2000), these include chapters added to reflect influences both internal and external to physical anthropology. Increasingly,

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ethical concerns about the excavation and study of human remains now influence the manner in which excavation and analysis of mortuary contexts is performed. These approaches are explicitly addressed in the first chapter of the two more recent Katzenberg and Saunders volumes. The second chapter in each describes the growth of forensic anthropology and its important contributions to, and synergism with, skeletal biology. Forensic anthropology clearly influences the range of topics presented in the current volume, including the addition of chapters on taphonomy and skeletal trauma. Returning to Hoyme’s remarks about societal contributions as a measure of the maturation of a discipline, the growth of forensic anthropology would suggest that our field is mature indeed. Katzenberg and Saunders, in their three volumes, have masterfully represented both the maturity and the methodologies of biological anthropology. Thus, they have both enriched our science and advanced our field.

REFERENCES Aufderheide A. 2003. The Scientific Study of Mummies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Buikstra JE. 2006 An historical introduction. In: Buikstra JE, Beck LA, editors. Bioarchaeology, The Contextual Study of Human Remains. Burlington, Mass.: Academic Press. pp. 1–25. Cook DC. 2006. The old physical anthropology and the New World: a look at the accomplishments of an antiquated paradigm. In: Buikstra JE, Beck LA, editors. Bioarchaeology, The Contextual Study of Human Remains. Burlington, Mass.: Academic Press. pp. 27 –71.

Cook DC, Powell ML. 2006. The evolution of American paleopathology. In: Buikstra JE, Beck LA, editors. Bioarchaeology, The Contextual Study of Human Remains. Burlington, Mass.: Academic Press. pp. 281–322. Frankenberg SR, Konigsberg LW. 2006. A brief history of paleodemography from Hooton to Hazards analysis. In: Buikstra JE, Beck LA, editors. Bioarchaeology, The Contextual Study of Human Remains. Burlington, Mass.: Academic Press. pp. 227–261. Hoyme LE. 1953. Physical anthropology and its instruments: An historical study. Southwestern J Anthropol 9:408–430. Jones J. 1876. Explorations of the Aboriginal Remains of Tennessee. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. Volume 22. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. Katzenberg MA, Saunders SR, editors. 2000. Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton. New York: Wiley-Liss. Matthews W, Worthman JL, Billings JS. 1893. Human bones of the Hemenway Collection in the United States Army Medical Musem. Memoirs Nat Acad Sci 6:139–286. Morton SG. 1841. Remarks on the so called pigmy race of the valley of the Mississippi. J Acad, Nat Sci Philadelphia 8:205– 207. Rollet E. 1888. De la mensuration des os longs des membres. Theses pour le doctorat en medicine, 1st series, 43:1 –128. Rose JC, Burke D. 2006. The Dentist and the Archaeologists: the role of dental anthropology in North American bioarchaeology. In: Buikstra JE, Beck LA, editors. Bioarchaeology, The Contextual Study of Human Remains. Burlington, Mass.: Academic Press. pp. 323–346. Saunders SR, Katzenberg MA, editors. 1992. Skeletal Biology of Past Peoples: Research Methods. New York: Wiley-Liss Todd TW. 1920. Age changes in the pubic bone: I. The male white pubis. Am J Phys Anthropol 3: 285–334.

Figure 7.10 (a) shows images of mean shapes for 20 C57BL/6J and 20 A/WySnJ mouse skulls. (b) shows shape variation represented as a color map of the magnitude of the image gradient for both strains. Areas of high shape variation within each group are confined to the incisors of both strains as well as to the lateral mandibular body of the A/WySnJ strain.

Figure 7.11 A comparison of shape between the C57BL/6J and the A/WySnJ mouse skulls is determined by calculating the surface-to-surface distances between the group average images (GSIs). The magnitude of the shape differences is displayed on the C57BL/6J mouse skull GSI by a scalar color map representing the relative differences to the A/WySnJ group.

PART I

THEORY AND APPLICATION IN STUDIES OF PAST PEOPLES

CHAPTER 1

BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL ETHICS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE VALUE OF HUMAN REMAINS PHILLIP L. WALKER

INTRODUCTION The rapidity of technological and cultural change in current times is forcing us to confront a myriad of moral dilemmas over issues as wide ranging as the ethics of cloning humans, the ownership of our genetic material, and the rights of animals relative to those of humans. These ethical issues concern the very nature of what it means to be human and our relationships, not only to other people, but also to the plants and animals that sustain us. The enormous strides we have taken toward human equality during this century mean that formerly disenfranchised and enslaved members of minority groups are beginning to gain power and control over their lives. In many countries there has been a decline in the political dominance and moral authority of organized religions. Notions of multiculturalism and a growing acceptance of the moral principle of not discriminating against people based on gender, ethnicity, or religious beliefs mean that there is no longer a shared set of cultural values we can use for guidance in dealing with moral issues (Cottingham, 1994).

This increased tolerance of cultural diversity poses ethical dilemmas because, as the range of value systems and religious beliefs that are considered socially acceptable increases, so does the probability of social conflict. To deal with these issues, many scientific associations are beginning to reconsider ethical principles that underlie their research activities. The field of bioarchaeology is especially problematic in this respect, positioned as it is between medicine with its ethical focus on generating scientific knowledge for use in helping individual patients and anthropology with its ethical principles that stem from deep belief in the power of cultural relativism to overcome ethnocentrism and encourage tolerance. It is in this context that skeletal biologists are increasingly being forced to adapt their activities to the value systems of the descendants of the people they study. Human skeletal remains are more than utilitarian objects of value for scientific research. For many people, they also are objects of religious veneration of great symbolic and cultural significance (Sadongei and Cash Cash, 2007). Over the past 30 years, formerly disenfranchised groups such as Native Americans

Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton, Second Edition. Edited by M. Anne Katzenberg and Shelley R. Saunders Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL ETHICS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE VALUE OF HUMAN REMAINS

and Australian Aborigines have increasingly been able to assert their claims of moral authority to control the disposition of both the remains of their ancestors and the land their ancestors occupied (Howitt, 1998; Scott, 1996; Walker, 2004). This trend toward repatriating museum collections and granting land rights to indigenous people can only be understood within a broader social and historical context. To provide this historical perspective, I will describe the evolution of religious beliefs about the proper treatment of the dead and conflicts that have arisen over the centuries between these beliefs and the value scientists place on the empirical information that can be gained through research on human remains. It is followed by a discussion of the generally accepted ethical principles that are beginning to emerge in the field of bioarchaeology. Finally, some practical suggestions are offered for dealing with conflicts that arise when these ethical principles conflict with those of descendant groups.

THE HISTORY OF BELIEFS ABOUT THE DEAD Early in our evolutionary history people began to develop a keen interest in the remains of their dead comrades. At first this was undoubtedly simply a response to the practical considerations of removing the decaying remains of a dead relative from one’s domicile or preventing scavengers from consuming their body. More elaborate patterns of mortuary behavior soon began to develop. Cut marks on the crania of some of the earliest members of our species show that as early as 600,000 years ago people living at the Bodo site in Ethiopia were defleshing the heads of the dead (White, 1986). It has been suggested that such practices reflect a widespread belief among our ancestors concerning the role of the brain in reproduction (La Barre, 1984). By 50,000 to 100,000 years ago mortuary practices had evolved into elaborate rituals that

involved painting bodies with red ochre and including food or animal remains with the body as offerings. Through time these cultural practices became associated with increasingly complex religious beliefs that helped people cope with the uncertainties of death. Depositing utilitarian items and valuables such as ornaments in graves became commonplace in the Upper Paleolithic period. Such practices suggest continued use of these items was anticipated in the afterlife. Expressions of such beliefs can be found in some of the earliest surviving religious texts. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, for instance, provides spells and elaborate directions for use by the souls of the deceased during their journeys in the land of the dead (Allen, 1960; Ellis, 1996b). The belief that the soul persists in an afterworld has deep roots in Western religious traditions. The ancient Greeks held elaborate funeral rituals to help a dead person’s soul find its way across the River Styx to a community of souls in the underworld. Once in the underworld there was continued communion between the living and the dead. For example, the soul of a dead person could be reborn in a new body if their living family members continued to attend to their needs by bringing them honey cakes and other special foods on ceremonial occasions (Barber, 1988). By medieval times most people continued to view death as a semi-permanent state in which the living and the spirit of the dead person could maintain contact with each other. Folktales about ghosts and corpses coming to life were widespread and contributed to the idea of the dead functioning in society with the living (Barber, 1988; Caciola, 1996). The issue of integrity of the corpse and the relationship of this to the afterlife dominated medieval discussions of the body: Salvation became equated with wholeness, and hell with decay and partition of the body (Bynum, 1995:114). After the Reformation, conservative Protestant groups continued to emphasize the profound significance of a person’s physical remains after death. In fact, one of the more troublesome issues facing Protestant reformers after the

THE HISTORY OF RESEARCH ON HUMAN REMAINS

abolition of purgatory in the early sixteenth century was the need to provide a rational explanation for the status of body and soul in the period intervening between death and resurrection (Spellman, 1994). One strategy for dealing with this vexing problem is provided by the constitution for the Old School Presbyterian Church, published in 1822, which asserts that the bodies of deceased members of the church “even in death continue united in Christ, and rest in the graves as in their beds, till at the last day they be again united with their souls . . . the self same bodies of the dead which were laid in the grave, being then again raised up by the power of Christ (Laderman, 1996:54).” Such beliefs in the continuance of life after death remain prevalent in modern Western societies (Cohen, 1992). Recent surveys show that 25% of European adults report having contact with the dead (Haraldsson and Houtkooper, 1991), and a significant number of Americans believe in reincarnation (Donahue, 1993; Walter, 1993). About half of the people in the United States believe that hell is a real place in which people suffer eternal damination (Marty, 1997). In another survey, 80% of the North American population believes in some kind of an afterlife (Goldhaber, 1996; Tonne, 1996). Among Canadians, 40% believe in the Devil and 43% in Hell (Belief in the Devil, 1995). Surveys also show that, despite speculation about the secularizing effects of education and academia, most highly educated people including professors and scientists are about as religious as other Americans. Anthropologists are one of the few groups that deviate significantly from the majority view that individual human beings continue to exist in some kind of an afterlife. Compared with faculty in the physical sciences, anthropologists are almost twice as likely to be irreligious and to never attend church, and one in five actually declare themselves “opposed” to religion (Iannaccone et al., 1998). This is significant in the context of the ethical issues considered in this chapter because it means that the values of the

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anthropologists who do skeletal research will often differ dramatically from those of the descendants of the people they study. Although the prevalence of conviction in an afterlife seems to have changed relatively little during the twentieth century, the cultural context in which it occurs has been dramatically transformed. The familiarity with death that characterized earlier societies in which people were forced to confront the dead directly on a daily basis has been replaced by avoidance of the dead. With the commercialization of the burial process by the “death-care” industry in wealthy countries, traditions such as wakes and ritual preparation of the dead for burial by family members have been replaced by the processing of the dead in remote settings (Badone, 1987; Horn, 1998; Rundblad, 1995). This cultural trend toward lack of contact with the dead has greatly increased the cultural gulf between a public that has little familiarity with death and skeletal researchers, such as bioarchaeologists, who confront the dead on a daily basis.

THE HISTORY OF RESEARCH ON HUMAN REMAINS Ambivalence toward scientific research on human remains has deep roots in Western societies. From its onset, scientific research on the dead has been the domain of physicians who were often forced to work under clandestine conditions on the bodies of social outcasts. The earliest recorded systematic dissections of a human body were conducted in the first half of the third century B.C., by two Greeks, Herophilus of Chalcedon and Erasistratus of Ceosc. These studies were performed in Alexandria, a city where traditional Greek values were weakened by Ptolemic influences, and probably involved vivisection and the use of condemned criminals (Von Staden, 1989:52–53; Von Staden, 1992). In the ancient world, scientific research of this kind was extremely problematic because it violated Greco-Roman, Arabic, and early

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BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL ETHICS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE VALUE OF HUMAN REMAINS