Presented in the Latin American Studies Speakers’ Series

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.

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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.

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.

Sex estimation of unknown individuals is one of the primary goals of biological anthropologists. The adult skull is often used in sex estimation, due to its marked traits of sexual dimorphism. However, estimating skeletal sex from juvenile remains is controversial due to the uncertainty surrounding the presence of sexual dimorphism prior to sexual maturity. The aim of this study was to apply geometric morphometric shape analysis to non-adult skulls to explore patterns of sexual dimorphism during ontogeny and to identify the most dimorphic region(s) of the skull. Computed tomographic (CT) scans were acquired from the New Mexico Decedent Image Database comprising 101 male and 99 female skulls ranging in age between birth and 21 years. Three-dimensional coordinates (42 landmarks and 290 curve semilandmarks) were placed on surface models generated from the CT scan and four landmark configurations were evaluated: the anterior cranium, mandible, supraorbital margin and glabella, and mastoids. Generalized Procrustes superimposition, principal component analysis, and discriminant function analysis were applied to all four configurations independently. In line with previous studies, results demonstrated a low degree of sexual dimorphism and poor cross-validated classification accuracy in individuals less than 13 years of age, with the highest accuracy in the mandible and the anterior cranium. The shape similarities found between the sexes prior to 13 years of age prevent consideration of the craniofacial bones as a sex indicator in the early stages of development but support its use in adolescent individuals, especially when using multiple regions of the face.

Evidence of dental manipulation dates back several centuries and is identifiable through modification of human skeletal remains and the remnants of ancient tools. The act of caring for dental patients, on the other hand, is much more abstract and not as explicitly documented throughout history. Through the analysis of skeletal dentition of individuals from Pre-Hispanic Peru, this research aims to understand possible early forms of dental care practices. Specifically, by calculating the frequency of common dental pathology, I evaluated the possible presence of dental care in Túcume, Peru, during the Late Intermediate Period (1000 to 1500 AD) and what this could mean for those who once lived there. For this investigation, I used observations of the presence of antemortem tooth loss and caries to score the dentition of 57 skeletonized adult individuals. Descriptive and analytical statistics were performed based on the scores to determine the frequency of pathology and the patterns associated with age, sex, and burial context variables. Research on dental paleopathology has been done before; however, it is rarely interpreted using the bioarchaeology of care model. This research could elicit conversation and further investigation into how past civilizations may have cared for individuals in the form of tooth ablation. Additionally, it could demonstrate how current dental care has changed over time and how care is still an important aspect of humanity.

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.