AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Sarah K. Muno for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Anthropology, presented on September 26, 2018 at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: LABOR AND SOCIAL IDENTITY IN ANCIENT PERU: A BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Izumi Shimada This dissertation presents a bioarchaeological study of labor and social identity in coastal Peru during the Late Intermediate Period (900 – 1470 CE), using data from contemporaneous Middle Sicán (Sicán Precinct and El Brujo, north coast) and Ychsma (Pachacamac, central coast) mortuary contexts. I combine information about funerary treatment with skeletal evidence of trauma, degenerative joint disease, and muscle attachment site morphology (enthesial changes or EC) to test whether inferred commoners were “over-worked” relative to their elite counterparts, as often assumed based on western, Marxist notions of social class. Much of what has been inferred about socio-economic organization in coastal Peru during the Late Intermediate Period is modeled after the parcialidades described in early Spanish chronicles and colonial documents. In this system, occupation, social status, and ethnicity were intimately intertwined, with common fishers and farmers serving as the “productive base” for privileged members of society, including full-time artisans and their elite patrons. Archaeological evidence of elite sponsored large-scale labor projects, including specialized craft production, in pre-Hispanic coastal Peru accords well with the parcialidad model, but assumptions about the social identities of laborers often go untested. Human skeletal data offer a unique opportunity to redress this situation, providing information about life experience – including patterns of physical activity – that are not typically accessible with other kinds of archaeological data. Bioarchaeological studies of physical activity hold great promise for testing hypotheses about social identity and life experience in ancient societies, but they are not without some limitation. People who engage in strenuous physical activity tend to have more degenerative joint disease and enthesial changes than those who do not, but the precise mechanisms behind this are not well understood. Age and body size are known to influence these skeletal markers, although some researchers have suggested certain entheses may be less sensitive to size and thus more informative about activity, than others. In my sample, there were no discernible differences in skeletal trauma, degenerative joint disease, or ECs between elites and non-elites, or between males and females, when statistically controlling for the influence of age and/or size. These results do not support the hypotheses that non-elites were over-burdened by arduous labor tasks or that exemption from such tasks was part of the social privileges afforded to elites. Therefore, conventional perspectives that tend to conflate elite and non-elite identities with oppressor/oppressed or manager/laborer roles appear to have little relevance for characterizing the social dynamics of labor organization in Middle Sicán and Ychsma socities. My study supports, at least in part, previous research that argues some entheses are less prone to the influence of size than others, and may therefore be more reliable indicators of activity. In this sample, strong statistical correlations between EC scores, age, and size as determined from three humeral measurements were found for fibrous entheses, but humeral size did not correlate to scores for the fibrocartilaginous type. However, current uncertainties about the precise etiology of enthesial changes makes it difficult to interpret variation in EC scores with a high degree of certainty, and thus my study also highlights some of the drawbacks associated with using EC scores to infer patterns of activity. Experimental research to better understand how the timing, duration, and severity of muscle stress and strain influence enthesial development and technological innovations to quantify enthesial size and shape will be key to resolving these issues in the future.

This project was an inventory and analysis of human remains from the Aklis archaeological site (12VAm1-42), located in the Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. The human remains inventoried during this project were collected by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and MSU during surface collection and emergency salvage excavations at Aklis. The statistical analysis of the data focused on the minimum number of individuals (MNI) per square meter, the degree of long bone completion, skeletal element counts across excavated features, and the degree of weathering. Results indicate that the assemblage curated at MSU includes a minimum of 14 individuals, and the remains are heavily weathered and highly fragmented. The data reflects increased fragmentation and weathering in human remains recovered from erosional features as opposed to correlation with geographic area, and that there are differences in skeletal element counts across excavated areas of the site.

This work identifies and describes pathological skeletal changes associated with and attributable to acquired syphilis and which potentially caused functional impairment within eleven skeletal individuals recovered from five industrial-era London cemeteries. In eight (72.73%), functional impairment was likely or very likely, based on type and distribution of lesions across their skeleton. These impairments likely impacted the individuals’ ability to engage in various forms of physical activity, potentially limiting their economic potential. These results expand our still highly limited understanding of syphilis’s functional impacts within past populations, especially within industrial-era societies, querying longstanding characterizations of tertiary gummatous involvement as benign, while encouraging paleopathological investigations of the functional impacts of syphilis in past populations in which the disease was endemic, such as industrial-era England. Further, with syphilis rates on the rise globally, this information may be informative prognostically for present-day clinical cases of primary to tertiary stage undiagnosed and/or untreated syphilis.

Sex determination in human skeletal remains is difficult under the most ideal circumstances; however, in juvenile skeletal remains it is nearly impossible. Currently no accepted techniques exist to identify the biological sex of the juvenile skeleton, other than, when possible, DNA. Thus, developing an accessible and non-destructive technique would benefit both the field of Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology. The ability to provide a quick and accurate determination of sex would greatly expedite the identification process in any case where juvenile skeletal remains are involved. This project aims to establish an accessible and non-destructive method for determining the sex of juvenile skeletal remains using deciduous (primary/baby) dentition. This research is focused on the deciduous dentition as they form early during growth and development, and previous research has demonstrated that secondary (adult) dentition exhibit sexual dimorphism. Samples of known sex individuals (n= 12: 7 female, 5 male, 45 total teeth) have been collected by donation. Using a novel approach, physical and radiograph, measurements of overall tooth and internal structure dimensions were completed on all samples. Comparative statistical analyses are used to determine if significant sexual dimorphism exists. Results indicate that marked (4-10%) sexual dimorphism does exist in the overall size of deciduous dentition; however, it cannot be assumed that males are larger in all tooth structures. Results suggest that while males do have larger central incisors and canines, their lateral incisors have smaller measurements than females. The variance in tooth structure dimensions will allow the creation of methodology to determine the sex when the majority of dentition is present.

The Baltic region was a vibrant center of power and economic prosperity in medieval Europe; Lithuania in particular. Until now, little stable isotopic analysis has been utilized to assess diet in this region during this time period. The aim of this study was to undertake a preliminary assessment of the composition of diet at late medieval Alytus (late 14th to early 18th centuries) from bone (N=35) and dentin (N=38) collagen samples. The stable carbon isotopic data suggest a diet primarily comprised of C3 plants such as barley, rye, wheat, and flax, and animals consuming C3 plants. The stable nitrogen isotopic data indicate the use of aquatic resources, and reflects the protein portion of the diet as including mainly terrestrial non-legumes. There are no significant differences in the pattern of resource consumption between juvenile males and females. There is a significant difference between adult males and adult females; the more depleted bone collagen ?15N values indicates that adult females were consuming less protein resources, or protein resources of a lower trophic level, compared to their male counterparts. This difference could also be affected by physiological factors such as pregnancy or disease. A difference between juvenile and adult stable nitrogen isotope values might indicate latter weaning of juvenile males, the incorporation of more terrestrial or aquatic protein into juvenile male diet, the incorporation of less terrestrial or aquatic protein into adult female diet, or a combination of the three.

The inclusion of human fetal skeletons in the archaeological record can reveal much about past cultures' perception of life and death. The preservation of fetal remains in the archaeological record is a rarity, and the discovery of pathological skeletons is even rarer. A fetal skeleton from a Roman period cemetery (c. 31BC - 303AD) in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, displays what are thought to be classic skeletal indicators of the neural tube defect, anencephaly. The published literature concerning the skeletal diagnosis of anencephaly is scant so in order to diagnose this individual it is pertinent to create a diagnostic standard. The purpose of this thesis is twofold - first to create a quantitative standard from which researchers can determine the presence of anencephaly in the archaeological record, thus ruling out trauma or taphonomic processes as reasons for missing cranial elements. The second objective of this research is to conduct a qualitative comparison in order to diagnose the individual from the Dakhleh Oasis. A comparative analysis of nine documented anencephalic skeletal remains housed at the Smithsonian Institute was conducted to create a diagnostic standard for the skeletal characteristics of anencephaly. The comparative analysis of the Dakhleh specimen supports the diagnosis of anencephaly.

In paleopathology, few other diseases have received more attention than leprosy and studies of skeletal remains from medieval Denmark have primarily focused on urban and leprosarium cemeteries in order to construct diagnostic criteria and disease frequencies of past communities. This project presents data from the rural monastic site of Øm Kloster in the Central Jutland region of Denmark in order to establish disease frequencies between demographic subgroups and general disease prevalence in a regionally representative site. With a sample of 311 adult individuals, cranial and postcranial diagnostic criteria were utilized in order to determine the presence or absence of leprosy on individual skeletons. Each individual was analyzed and categorized by sex, age group, and social status based on burial location and this data was used to yield results on the demographic makeup of the sample and disease frequencies. Lastly, chi-square tests of independence were conducted to determine if there were statistically significant relationships between sex, age, social status, and leprosy. The results indicated that there were no statically strong relationships between these variables; however, it was evident that disease prevalence did increase with age and that there were significantly more males and lay people with leprotic lesions than females and high status individuals. The results suggested that each individual had most likely carried the bacterium, but that there were no significant numbers of individuals affected at any one time. Lastly, the results from the Øm Kloster analysis were compared to those of the rural village cemetery at Tirup and were found to be compatible. Ultimately, this study reflects that disease may have been much more prevalent than was osteologically visible and that this rural community illustrated comparable data with other regional sites. This study shows that lesion frequencies do present evidence to determine general disease prevalence in past populations and to gain data on the overall health of a regionally representative, non-leprosarium cemetery site.

No / Despite an increasing literature on the decomposition of human remains, whether buried or exposed, it is important to recognise the role of specific microenvironments which can either trigger or delay the rate of decomposition. Recent casework in Northern England involving buried and partially buried human remains has demonstrated a need for a more detailed understanding of the effect of contrasting site conditions on cadaver decomposition and on the microenvironment created within the grave itself. Pigs (Sus scrofa) were used as body analogues in three inter-related taphonomy experiments to examine differential decomposition of buried human remains. They were buried at three contrasting field sites (pasture, moorland, and deciduous woodland) within a 15km radius of the University of Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK. Changes to the buried body and the effect of these changes on hair and associated death-scene textile materials were monitored as was the microenvironment of the grave. At recovery, 6, 12 and 24 months post-burial, the extent of soft tissue decomposition was recorded and samples of fat and soil were collected for gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS) analysis. The results of these studies demonstrated that (1) soil conditions at these three burial sites has a marked effect on the condition of the buried body but even within a single site variation can occur; (2) the process of soft tissue decomposition modifies the localised burial microenvironment in terms of microbiological load, pH, moisture and changes in redox status. These observations have widespread application for the investigation of clandestine burial and time since deposition, and in understanding changes within the burial microenvironment that may impact on biomaterials such as hair and other associated death scene materials.

No / The auricular surface is located on the os coxae (pelvis) and forms part of the sacro-iliac joint. Changes in appearance of the auricular surface have been used to estimate adult age-at-death. Two main methods are used in bioarcheology: the Lovejoy method and the Buckberry-Chamberlain (revised auricular surface) method. As with many age estimation methods, neither auricular surface method reaches the gold standard of being both accurate and precise, however the age-related changes of the auricular surface do extend into the later decades of life.

This thesis explores identity in early mediaeval Scotland (ca 800-1300AD) using biological and burial deposition data. During this period Scotland was developing as a unified kingdom. The Norse, Scots, and Anglo-Saxons battled for political power. The Saxon and Irish Churches were pressuring for superiority over each other and over local beliefs. Many research areas in bioarchaeology have moved away from the more simplistic processual approach after a renewed understanding of the complexities of human existence. However, this newer methodology has not been sufficiently applied to early mediaeval Scottish studies. Common doxa still permeates the discipline despite the lack of critical assessment. Doxa tends to separate the early mediaeval Scottish world into the circumscribed categories of Norse (or ‘Viking’) and native, Christian and pagan. These commonly accepted site designations regarding ethnicity and religion were used to assess three hundred and twenty-one individuals from 21 sites. These individuals were analysed macroscopically for age, sex, stature and limb ratios, craniometrics, joint degeneration and disease, musculo-skeletal stress markers, dental pathologies, and overall health and disease. This data was compared to the available documentation for the sites considering site location, body position, cemetery type, grave enclosures, and grave furnishings. Statistical and qualitative methods were used to compare the data. Results suggest that there are slight differences within the population that may suggest some legitimacy for common site designations; however, the overall conclusion implies caution in the use of oversimplified categorising and a generally egalitarian view of identity for the early mediaeval people in Scotland.