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The Early Bronze Age in Western Anatolia represents a period of social transition, associated with hierarchical social stratification. Evidence for stratification at Karataş-Semayük (i.e., Karataş) (2700 to 2300 BCE) is present through architectural composition and size, privatized storage, and differential mortuary treatment. However, previous research has not interpreted paleopathological conditions with considerations of intersectionality to interpret the lived experiences of individuals and assess the presence of marginalization embodied by the inhabitants of Karataş. Estimated females (n=39) and estimated males (n=60) were observed from a total sample of 170 individuals. Through observations of cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, and periosteal reactions, the ways in which the interactions of age, sex, and socioeconomic status contribute to differential levels of frailty and risk of mortality were explored. Fisher's exact and Kendall's tau-b correlations, ordered probit regression, hierarchical loglinear, Kaplan-Meier, and Cox proportional hazard analysis were employed to address these goals. Females are no more stressed than males in terms of quantity of stress markers or severity when present, which suggests that Karataş may be more reflective of a heterarchical social system. Statistical analyses reveal the interaction between sex and socioeconomic status to be the most influential in predicting frailty and risk of mortality. Hazard analysis results indicate that females of low status are least likely to experience increased frailty and risk of mortality, which rejects the hypothesis that females would exhibit more stress due to previous research indicating Karataş was likely virilocal and that higher ranked individuals generally exhibit greater buffers to stress. Beyond establishing a way to implement intersectionality into bioarchaeological studies of marginalization, this research contributes to the reassessment of past perspectives that hierarchical social systems were well-established and rigid in Western Anatolia during the Early Bronze Age.

The Llanos de Mojos is a tropical savanna in the Bolivian Amazon with strong seasonality. Abundant earthworks and anthropogenically shaped landscapes suggest that precolumbian inhabitants had a much larger impact on the region than previously believed. This study examines changes in the hydrological landscapes of the savanna as a proxy for precolumbian land-use practices over time in West Central Mojos. A sediment core from the Quinato Wetland was sampled for diatom analysis. Although diatoms were poorly preserved, they were present and had changing species compositions at different depths. Comparison to other diatom assemblages reported in the Quinato Wetland suggests that the diatom taxa present in individual sediment cores are distinctly shaped by the hydrological conditions at that location rather than the larger scale conditions of the entire wetland. Further diatom analysis could help identify location specific changes in water levels over time to reconstruct the timing of earthwork construction and maintenance. The application of diatom analysis methods to archaeological questions about land-use practices in West Central Mojos has the potential to demonstrate how large-scale human settlements in parts of the Amazon were made possible through the management of landscapes once thought of as untouched by human influence.

This study seeks to distinguish the presence of secular change in contemporary nonmetric trait expression and explores the efficacy of morphological ancestry estimation with regards to North American indigenous groups. The study was conducted using cranial and mandibular trait data collected from two indigenous samples originating from the American Southwest: a pre-Contact sample from the American Museum of Natural History (n=150) and a modern sample from the New Mexico Decedent Image Database (n=100). To observe the modern sample, the RadiAnt DICOM viewer program was used to transform CT scan stacks into 3D models. Pearson’s chi-square analyses were used to assess the presence of statistically significant difference between nonmetric trait expression between the two samples. The analyses produced significant p-values (≤0.05) in 22 of the 24 observed traits. Using binary logistic regression equations, four models were developed to assess which traits contributed significantly to predicting group membership: Model 1 combined cranial and mandibular traits, Model 2 used seven of Hefner’s (2009) 11 macromorphoscopic traits, Model 3 used only cranial traits, and Model 4 used only mandibular traits. To evaluate the efficacy of an extant ancestry estimation method on indigenous sample, data from both the pre-Contact and modern samples were entered into the hefneR decision support system. The results indicate that the hefneR algorithm does not produce reliable ancestry estimates for either pre-Contact or modern indigenous samples; the samples received 14% and 11% correct classification, respectively. This study demonstrates that secular change has affected nonmetric trait expression in indigenous groups and that pre-Contact samples should not be used as proxies for modern populations.