Both human and animal remains are held in a variety of museum collections including, but not limited to: art, archaeological, anthropological, ethnographic, biological, zoological, palaeontological, geological, anatomical and medical collections. Little is known about the effects of chemical preparation and conservation treatments, administered either in the field or in the museum, on DNA in skeletal and soft tissues. Treatments administered within different disciplines are known to vary, but little comparative research has been carried out to date. A literature review was undertaken to document and compare preparation and conservation approaches within these different fields. A database was compiled of published past treatments used for the following purposes: acid preparation, adhesive, adhesive for spirit collections, barrier coat, bleaching agent, chelating agent, cleaning agent, consolidant, degreasing agent, dry soft tissue preservative, drying agent, finishing material, fungicide, moulding/casting material, packing material, pesticide, photographic aid, sealant, skeleton preparation, solvent, and wet soft tissue preservative. Some of the most commonly and best documented of these materials were then used to assess their effects on DNA by treating DNA fragments of known length in vitro. A case study was also carried out on ancient and recent Egyptian animal mummies to assess the effects of the mummification process on DNA. It was found that the majority of treatments tested in this study were damaging to DNA, but a few, primarily organic solvents, were not. Basic mummification consisting of an ethanol wash and desiccation using natron was also found neither to be damaging to DNA in the short-term nor to inhibit amplification by PCR. The results of this research will be useful both in determining collection materials likely to be more or less suitable for DNA analysis and in suggesting preparation and conservation materials and methods suitable for DNA preservation.

This thesis is concerned with the estimation of group sizes, range areas, and land-use patterns of prehistoric hominins and the nature of change in these variables over evolutionary time and at an inter-continental scale.

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No description available.

This thesis explores form variation in the adult tarsal skeleton of extant and fossil hominoids. Three dimensional coordinate data were obtained from five bones of the foot: the calcaneus, talus, cuboid, navicular and medial cuneiform. The comparative sample was made up of Homo sapiens, Pan troglodytes troglodytes, Pan paniscus, Gorilla gorilla gorilla and Pongo pygmaeus. The fossil sample consisted of tarsal remains assigned to a number of Late Pliocene taxa: Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, Paranthropus robustus and Homo habilis. Statistical shape analysis was conducted using geometric morphometric techniques. The first section of analysis explores sexual dimorphism in the extant hominoid foot. It is found that there is no shape dimorphism in the forefoot, and a marginal amount in the hindfoot of Gorilla and Pongo only. Such differences are likely to be linked to high degrees of body mass dimorphism in those taxa. The section concludes that shape dimorphism is unlikely to be an important factor in explaining differences between fossil hominin pedal remains. The second section explores the inter-specific relationship between the tarsals of the extant hominoids. It is found that shape differences between taxa closely mirror those differences already described in the literature. However, it is found that the phenetic relationship between the taxa varies from bone to bone, and, furthermore, does not match the consensus molecular phylogeny. The section concludes that some tarsals are more specialised and remodelled than others, and thus great caution should be taken when considering isolated fossil pedal specimens. The third section incorporates the fossil specimens into the study. It is found that the morphology of the A. africanus and H. habilis tarsals are very similar, and fall within extant hominoid intra-specific ranges of variation. However, the morphology of the A. afarensis tarsals are considerably distinct, and show a different overall pattern to those of A. africanus and H. habilis. The section concludes that all taxa were mosaic in their affinities, but were mosaic in different ways. This thesis concludes that it is likely that there were at least two distinct ways in which the tarsals of different hominin taxa had adapted to bipedal locomotion. This finding supports recent new discoveries suggesting a far wider degree of taxonomic diversity in the African fossil hominin record than had previously been thought.

Neanderthals were reliant upon the landscape to meet vital resource needs, including lithic raw materials; however, these resources were neither ubiquitously distributed nor of equal quality or abundance. Raw material economy studies are particularly effective in assessing Neanderthal behavioural ecology, as lithic artefacts represent a constant feature of Middle Palaeolithic archaeological assemblages that can also be reconstructed and linked to their past distributions and character in palaeolandscapes. Therefore, lithic assemblages yield significant informational potential on Neanderthal technological adaptations to environmental constraints. However, while such studies have repeatedly demonstrated evidence for lithic raw material management and maintenance in response to procurement distances, methodologies must go further to consider not only distance, but terrain as well. This can be demonstrated by delineating economic zonation over modelled three-dimensional landscapes rather than planar space, and utilising these to determining the energetic and time constraints on mobility. Additional costs and constraints can be indicated by palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, including the distribution and character of lithic raw materials as well as climate conditions, faunal, and vegetative distributions,which would have influenced site placement and subsistence and mobility strategies as well as technological provisioning strategies. To address these issues, this research employed an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Neanderthal raw material economy in three late Middle Palaeolithic sites in northeast Italy: Grotta di Fumane, Grotta Maggiore di San Bernardino, and Grotta del Broion. Lithic prospection determined the uneven distribution and variable quality and abundance of lithic raw materials around each site. Palaeoenvironmental reconstructions demonstrated that biomes were variably distributed and productive. Terrain modelling generated least-cost paths and energetic and temporal costs surfaces based on terrain difficulty. Linking these in terms of mobility to the techno-economic assemblages of the study sites, the results of this research showed that technological provisioning strategies reflect Neanderthal ecological adaptations to the costs and constraints imposed by their landscapes. Inter-site comparisons demonstrated that the environmental variability specific to each site played a role in determining its use and function within a regional system of residential mobility. In conclusion, this research demonstrates that Neanderthal technological behaviours can be perceived within the ecological contexts of settlements systems.

No description available.

No description available.

The human-nonhuman animal boundary marks the interchange between human and animal, culture and nature, the social and the natural. This powerfully symbolic site has traditionally been structured via religion-based ideas of humanity's origins, that in the West have been used to maintain a strictly impermeable boundary: humans, created in God's own image and blessed with a soul on one side, on the other the senseless, soulless beast. This image is one which has come under threat from work in multiples branches of the natural and social sciences; in the humanities; and from animal rights activists and other social movements. Such culturally contested territory makes fertile ground for the study of interactions between science and popular culture, framed via Gieryn’s concept of 'boundary-work' (1983), and Bowker & Star’s sociology of classification (2000). Using the fossilised figures of palaeoanthropological research as a prominent site at which the aforementioned boundary is constructed, the thesis considers both how such “missing links” are positioned within the popular human-nonhuman animal dichotomy, and how the boundaries between science and nonscience culture are negotiated during this process. The project makes use of two case studies - the infamous Piltdown Man (discovered 1912) and the recent Flores ‘hobbit’ (2004). Both received huge scientific and popular attention at the time of their respective discoveries, and it is a critical discourse analysis of relevant scientific and popular news media that provides the research data. The thesis addresses how missing links create connections far beyond simply their antecedents and descendants. Indeed, their emblematic position sees them use to explore fundamental notions of humanness, becoming tied to all manner of socio-political ideologies in the process. It is through this process that their ‘natural’ position is made culturally meaningful. Such actions requires repeated transgression of the science-nonscience boundary, a lesson which is used to critique ‘canonical’ and ‘continuum’ models of science communication, and to suggest a more complex, multi-directional ‘hydrological’ model in their place. The thesis concludes by drawing attention to the gaps between formally recognised categories, and how these are utilised by scientists and journalists alike, both in the translation of these missing links between different systems of meaning, and in their role as a creative space for all parties to think with.

This thesis tests models on the dispersal of hominin populations in the Upper Pleistocene, specifically in relation to the Arabian Peninsula. It does so by conducting a quantified comparison of lithic assemblages from northeast Africa and southwest Asia. Lithic data from new excavations at the Jubbah Palaeolake in northern Saudi Arabia is compared to assemblages from Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Oman and other localities in Saudi Arabia. This is the first detailed inter-regional study of this area for Marine Isotope Stages 5 to 3, a critical spatial and temporal context in debates on both early modern human and Neanderthal demography and dispersal. The spatial and temporal character of the rich Arabian archaeological record correlate with emerging evidence for environmental change in Arabia; in particular the repeated dating of archaeological contexts to periods of climatic amelioration suggests that demographic growth was associated with periods of increased precipitation. The various factors influencing lithic variability and the methodologies by which they can be elucidated are reviewed. In particular this highlights the need for quantified and comparative analyses. A variety of analytical approaches are applied in this thesis, including the use of Correspondence and Principal Components Analyses to develop a nuanced view of lithic variability. Variability in cores is shown to largely reflect the related factors of size and reduction intensity. With analyses of debitage and retouched lithics a broadly similar picture emerges: assemblages which are heavily reduced have small cores and blanks and higher levels of retouch, and elements of shape variation also change in relation to reduction intensity. Elements of residual variability may reflect cultural differences. While it is felt that the evidence presented broadly orientates the Upper Pleistocene Middle Palaeolithic of Arabia to dispersals from Africa, this suggestion is subsumed with a problematization of using lithic evidence to understand dispersals. Aside from the need for further dated archaeological material from Arabia and surrounding countries, lithic analyses need to more thoroughly consider factors such as reduction intensity if we are to make robust inferences on population dispersals.