Discovered over 150 years ago, the early Upper Paleolithic human remains from the Cro-Magnon rock shelter have an iconic status, but because of skeletal commingling after discovery, their ...bio-profiles remain incomplete and contentious. The defect on the frontal bone of the cranium known as Cro-Magnon 2 has been interpreted as both an antemortem injury and a postmortem (i.e., taphonomic) artifact previously. This contribution considers the cranium in order to clarify the status of the defect on the frontal bone and to situate these remains among others of Pleistocene date with similar types of lesions. The diagnostic criteria used to assess the cranium are drawn from recent publications of actualistic experimental studies of cranial trauma and from those associated with cranial trauma due to violence in forensic anthropological and bioarchaeological contexts. The appearance of the defect and comparison with more recent documented cases from the preantibiotic era suggest that the defect is a result of antemortem trauma with survival for a short period. The location of the lesion on the cranium provides growing evidence for interpersonal aggression in these early modern human groups, and the place of burial also provides insight into related mortuary behavior.
The transition from a human diet based exclusively on wild plants and animals to one involving dependence on domesticated plants and animals beginning 10,000 to 11,000 y ago in Southwest Asia set ...into motion a series of profound health, lifestyle, social, and economic changes affecting human populations throughout most of the world. However, the social, cultural, behavioral, and other factors surrounding health and lifestyle associated with the foraging-to-farming transition are vague, owing to an incomplete or poorly understood contextual archaeological record of living conditions. Bioarchaeological investigation of the extraordinary record of human remains and their context from Neolithic Çatalhöyük (7100–5950 cal BCE), a massive archaeological site in south-central Anatolia (Turkey), provides important perspectives on population dynamics, health outcomes, behavioral adaptations, interpersonal conflict, and a record of community resilience over the life of this single early farming settlement having the attributes of a protocity. Study of Çatalhöyük human biology reveals increasing costs to members of the settlement, including elevated exposure to disease and labor demands in response to community dependence on and production of domesticated plant carbohydrates, growing population size and density fueled by elevated fertility, and increasing stresses due to heightened workload and greater mobility required for caprine herding and other resource acquisition activities over the nearly 12 centuries of settlement occupation. These changes in life conditions foreshadow developments that would take place worldwide over the millennia following the abandonment of Neolithic Çatalhöyük, including health challenges, adaptive patterns, physical activity, and emerging social behaviors involving interpersonal violence.
Irregular burials (IB--burials showing features that contrast with the majority of others in their geographic and chronological context) have been the focus of archaeological study because of their ...relative rarity and enigmatic appearance. Interpretations of IB often refer to supposed fear of the dead or to social processes taking place in time-specific contexts. However, a comprehensive and quantitative analysis of IB for various geographical contexts is still lacking, a fact that hampers any discussion of these burials on a larger scale.
Here, we collected a bibliographic dataset of 375 IB from both Britain and Continental Europe, altogether spanning a time period from the 1st to the 5th century AD. Each burial has been coded according to ten dichotomous variables, further analyzed by means of chi-squared tests on absolute frequencies, non-metric multidimensional scaling, and cluster analysis.
Even acknowledging the limits of this study, and in particular the bias represented by the available literature, our results point to interesting patterns. Geographically, IB show a contrast between Britain and Continental Europe, possibly related to historical processes specific to these regions. Different types of IB (especially prone depositions and depositions with the cephalic extremity displaced) present a series of characteristics and associations between features that permit a more detailed conceptualization of these occurrences from a socio-cultural perspective that aids to elucidate their funerary meaning.
Altogether, the present work stresses the variability of IB, and the need to contextualize them in a proper archaeological and historical context. It contributes to the discussion of IB by providing a specific geographic and chronological frame of reference that supports a series of hypotheses about the cultural processes possibly underlying their occurrence.
Sexual division of labour in European prehistory is usually inferred by indirect means: ethnographic analogy, pictorial representation, or from grave inclusions. The study of skeletal ...activity-related morphology seems the most direct means by which to interrogate the question of sexual division of labour in past societies. In this paper we present the results of an analysis of enthesopathies (i.e. lesions of the tendon attachments) of the elbow in three time-successive population samples spanning the prehistoric, pre-industrial historic, and modern European eras. We employ an innovative analytical procedure, the lateral to medial epicondylar ratio (L/M ratio) to assess limb use. Results indicate a tendency for lateral epicondylosis in all samples, except for prehistoric males, who possess medial epicondylosis more frequently, and for the right side only. The increased prevalence of pathological changes of the right medial epicondyle suggests lateralized limb use that corresponds with “thrower's elbow”. This indicates that males, but not females, preferentially employed movements involving throwing motions in these hunter-gatherer and early farming groups. Based on this evidence we postulate the existence of a persistent sexual division of labour in these prehistoric European populations involving one or several strenuous activities linked to unilateral limb use.
•Thrower's elbow (medial epicondylosis) is a rare occupational syndrome today.•The lateral to medial (L/M) epicondylar ratio is greater than 1 in living populations.•The L/M ratio permits comparisons in past populations.•European prehistoric males display a specific pattern of lesions for the right elbow.•Right upper limb use in throwing motions is a long-term status-linked male proclivity.
To reveal the presence and activities of healers from funerary contexts.
Ethnohistoric and ethnographic textual descriptions and the bioarchaeological record.
A synthesis of human remains, grave ...contexts, and funerary objects.
The capacity to act as a “healer” forms part of the social identity of a diverse range of uniquely specialized individuals cross-culturally who also perform a variety of other roles associated with transcendent ideologies, beliefs, and religion. They are ambivalent, capable of doing both good and ill. They defend the health and well-being of the individual and the community but, using the same knowledge, are also implicated in attacks on individuals and groups within and outside their communities. This ambivalence, combined with a lack of defined institutional organization and the great diversity of medico-religious healers in the recent ethnographic past and historically, makes the identification of such individuals in the archaeological record controversial, but they are present.
Not only are healers identifiable in the archaeological record, but their practices disproportionately influence it, acting as a powerful complement to historical sources for the development of medicine and medical knowledge.
Published literature is of variable detail, which means that healing practices and healers are under-appreciated and under-represented in reconstructions of past societies.
Application of archaeothanatological approaches to recording and synthesis of the funerary context with the remains of the deceased can be used to identify objects and practices used in healing that have been more recently superseded by scientific approaches to health.
Around 10,000 y ago in southwest Asia, the cessation of a mobile lifestyle and the emergence of the first village communities during the Neolithic marked a fundamental change in human history. The ...first communities were small (tens to hundreds of individuals) but remained semisedentary. So-called megasites appeared soon after, occupied by thousands of more sedentary inhabitants. Accompanying this shift, the material culture and ancient ecological data indicate profound changes in economic and social behavior. A shift from residential to logistical mobility and increasing population size are clear and can be explained by either changes in fertility and/or aggregation of local groups. However, as sedentism increased, small early communities likely risked inbreeding without maintaining or establishing exogamous relationships typical of hunter-gatherers. Megasites, where large populations would have made endogamy sustainable, could have avoided this risk. To examine the role of kinship practices in the rise of megasites, we measured strontium and oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel from 99 individuals buried at Pınarbaşı, Boncuklu, and Çatalhöyük (Turkey) over 7,000 y. These sites are geographically proximate and, critically, span both early sedentary behaviors (Pınarbaşı and Boncuklu) and the rise of a local megasite (Çatalhöyük). Our data are consistent with the presence of only local individuals at Pınarbaşı and Boncuklu, whereas at Çatalhöyük, several nonlocals are present. The Çatalhöyük data stand in contrast to other megasites where bioarchaeological evidence has pointed to strict endogamy. These different kinship behaviors suggest that megasites may have arisen by employing unique, community-specific kinship practices.
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