Presented in this thesis is the human osteological analysis of the cremation burials from ten Early Archaic features excavated at the McCullough's Run Site (12-B-1036) located in the eastern portion of Columbus, Bartholemew County, Indiana. The analysis of burials excavated from the McCullough's Run Site, one of the few Early Archaic Cemeteries found in the United States to date, add data that serve to clarify and expand our understanding of the Early Archaic in Indiana. / Department of Anthropology

The Kellis 2 cemetery site within the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt provides a unique study opportunity due to the large number of infant, perinatal, and fetal individuals that have been recovered. Several of the infant and fetal remains have undiagnosed circular defects on the temporal bone, and others have undiagnosed lesions on the zygomatic bone. Of the 268 individuals under one year of age that have been analyzed from the Kellis 2 cemetery, twentysix individuals have the temporal bone defect and six have the zygomatic bone lesions. A survey of clinical and paleopathological research provided possible pathological conditions that could cause abnormalities such as defects or lesions on the temporal bones or zygomatic bones in the fetal and infant population. For this study, the temporal bone defects and zygomatic bone lesions were macroscopically observed and a descriptive analysis was created. The information garnered from the literature survey was then compared to the individuals from the Kellis 2 cemetery that had the temporal bone defects and zygomatic bone lesions to create a differential diagnosis. A differential diagnosis of the temporal bone defects includes mastoid emissary vein defects and petrosquamous sinus anomalies. A differential diagnosis of the zygomatic bone lesions includes scurvy. Contributing factors may also have been present in order for these defects and lesions to occur. Creating a differential diagnosis of the defects and lesions can provide information on the health, growth, and morbidity of the youngest members of the society related to the Kellis 2 cemetery.

Due to the nature of war, persons are killed with various types of weapons. Throughout the history of humanity, weapons were used in this regard and these weapons left injuries on the victims that are distinguishable. The type of force conveyed by the ancient weapons effected injuries that enable modern-day bioarchaeologists to extrapolate which weapons caused which injuries. The Assyrians depicted their wars and battles on reliefs. An analysis of these depictions, with an extrapolation of the lesions expected in skeletal remains, could contribute to better understanding of the strategies of war in ancient times. This dissertation will discuss how the evaluation of human remains in comparison to Assyrian reliefs may contribute to the chronological knowledge of war and warfare in the Iron Age Ancient Near East – especially at Lachish. A discourse of the approaches available to researchers regarding access to data in the forensic bioarchaeological field will be presented. / Biblical and Ancient Studies / M.A. (Biblical Archaeology)

The repatriation of the human remains of Indigenous peoples collected within a colonial context has been the subject of debate within UK museums over the last 30 years, with many museums now having returned human remains to their countries of origin. Although the repatriation of human remains is often characterised as the 'journey home', there has been a lack of consideration of the physical presence and mobility of the remains and the meanings created as they move through different spaces. This study uses the repatriations from The Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS) to Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii as case studies to consider three key areas: (i) the impact of repatriation on museum landscapes; (ii) the journey of the repatriated remains and how this mobility intersects with wider discussions about restitution, sovereignty, identity, relatedness, memory and memorialisation; and (iii) the repatriation archives, how they are thought about by the institutions that hold them and their future potential and meaning within a post-colonial context. Taking a more-than-representational approach and engaging with the materiality, mobility and agency of the repatriated remains and the documentation that relates to them, this study bridges the gap between research considering the approach of museums to repatriation, and ethnographic studies on the meanings of the return of ancestral remains to individual communities. Combining work on museum geographies, deathscapes and absence opens up new ways of theorising and discussing repatriation through understanding the process in terms of the tension between absence and presence, and human remains as being in or out of place. Through engaging with the materiality and agency of the remains and viewing repatriation through a spatial lens, this thesis deals with aspects of the process that have received little attention in previous studies, foregrounding the challenging nature of repatriation for communities, the issues around unprovenanced remains, and discussions about the control, management and meaning of information and data, identifying that a significant legacy of repatriation for RCS is the documentation the museum continues to hold. What the journey of the ancestral remains repatriated by RCS illustrates is the emotive materiality of the remains, and agency that they and the distributed repatriation archive have as actors within social networks. It is therefore proposed that the concept of repatriation as having problematised human remains collections within UK museums is replaced with a nuanced and contextually sensitive understanding that recognises the role of the human remains in social interactions that impact on the emotional geographies of museum practice, and that rather than framing repatriation as post-colonial act that is either political or therapeutic, the return of ancestral remains be understood as part of a process of decolonisation in which there is space for discussion, disagreement and debate amongst all stakeholders.

The focus of this thesis is an analysis of a sample of dentition collected from the Postclassic Maya site of Santa Rita Corozal in Northern Belize. The goal of this study is to determine what the presence (or absence) of Linear Enamel Hypoplasia (LEH) can demonstrate about the general health (i.e. stress, disease, nutrition, and weaning age) and social status of a single subset of the Late Postclassic (900-1500 CE) Maya living at Santa Rita Corozal. Specifically, this thesis focuses on dentition of thirteen individuals from a large Postclassic platform group. The sample consists of sub-adult and adult female dentition from individuals that are associated with the same relative time period (Late Postclassic). The question being addressed in this thesis is: why has LEH presented in these individuals? These samples will also be compared to other studies involving LEH throughout the Maya area, in both similar and dissimilar environments. The preponderance of female and sub-adult remains also makes this platform group a very interesting topic of study for LEH in the Maya area, as it is unusual to find a concentrated area of individuals such as these. iv Importantly, the results of this study show that there is no significant relationship between general levels of stress and the overall status of an individual. Measurements collected from the LEH affected teeth demonstrate that all of the LEH episodes occurred before the age of 6. The mean age for the teeth sampled that show signs of LEH is 3.5 years, which is consistent with theories pertaining to the weaning age of the Maya during concomitant time periods. However, the size of this sample precludes any concrete conclusions about weaning ages and stress in general among the Maya at Santa Rita Corozal. It is also possible that these events are related to larger issues such as regional droughts or water-born disease.

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degenerative pathological condition of the appendicular joints which affects the cartilage and underlying bone. OA is relatively common in both the archaeological and clinical context, and a significant amount of research has been conducted on this osteological condition. The purpose of this thesis is to assess the incidence, demographic prevalence, and general severity of hip and knee OA in a Roman-Christian period (50 A.D – 450 A.D) population sample from the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt. The bioarchaeological sample originates from the Kellis 2 cemetery which is associated with the ancient town of Kellis. The town of Kellis is believed to have been a prosperous economic hub in Egypt, located in the Western Sahara Desert approximately 250 kilometers west of the Nile. The skeletal samples (n=135, 83 females and 51 males) was visually assessed for the osteological characteristics of OA in the hips and the knees. Joint surfaces of the hip include the acetabulum and femoral head. Joint surfaces of the knee include lateral/medial tibio-femoral compartments and the patellofemoral compartment. The ages of the individuals assessed in this study range from 19-72 years, and have been divided into five age categories which were then cross-tabulated with sex and OA incidence in order to determine demographic prevalence of OA. Findings indicate that age is a significant etiological factor of OA prevalence for both males and females. Males are afflicted by the disease significantly more than females in the hips (F: [L] 3.6%, [R] 5.9% and M: [L] 13.7%,[R] 13.7%) and also slightly more affected in the knees(F: [L] 17.5%,[R] 18.3% and M: [L] 22.9%,[R]21.3%). The acetabulum tends to be more arthritic than the femoral head for both males and females. Femoral condyles tend to be more arthritic than tibial condyles for both males and females. The patello-femoral compartment tends iv to be the most arthritic part of the knee while the medial condyles of both tibiae exhibit virtually no OA (with the exception of one individual). The joint surface observed with the highest OA prevalence is the femoral surface of the patella (F: [L] 17.5%,[R] 15.9% and M: [L] 21.3%,[R] 21.3%). The highest prevalence of OA by joint complex is observed on the left knee in males (22.9%), and the lowest prevalence of OA is observed on the left hip of females (3.6%). Both hip and knee joints have higher prevalence of unilateral OA manifestation than bilateral. Isotopic and archaeological evidence indicates that the individuals at Kellis maintained an agricultural subsistence regime, and that the males within the population may have been highly mobile migrating to and from the Dakhleh Oasis. Subsistence agriculture has its necessary physical demands which may have been a contributory factor to OA rates. Males show higher OA rates than females throughout the joints of the legs. Sexual dimorphism of OA for the hips is suggestive of sexual divisions of labor. OA of the knees lacks sexual dimorphism therefore the knee joint complex of males and females were likely subjected to similar levels of mechanical loading. It can be concluded based on the OA data that males and females exhibit similar activity, or biomechanical stress levels in the knee joint complexes. Males exhibit significantly higher pathological manifestation of OA in the hip joint complexes, indicative of higher levels of mechanical loading in the hip joint complex which can theoretically be attributed to sexual divisions of labor or perhaps terrestrial mobility

The purpose of this thesis is to show that stable isotope analysis can be used to predict K’inich Yax K’uk Mo’s stable isotope measures based on Stuart’s (2007) hypothesis that K’inich Yax K’uk Mo’, the dynastic founder of the Copan royal lineage, was a Caracol lord. There is significant and convincing evidence that K’inich Yak K’uk Mo’ had a non-Copanec origin. Stable isotope analysis is a tested and reliable method for detailing diets and migratory paths of ancient humans and this theory is applied as a predictor of the stable isotope measures of K’inich Yax K’uk Mo’, if he did in fact originate in Caracol. The literature is rich with explanations of stable isotopes and the writings of a few stalwarts in the field were utilized to gain an understanding of the associated technologies and techniques utilized in its analysis. Data from the Copan (Whittington and Reed 1997) and Caracol (Chase and Chase 2001) stable isotope studies were utilized to show the application of stable isotope analysis in areas “associated” with K’inich Yax K’uk Mo’ and to illustrate how the palace diet identified by Chase and Chase (2001; Chase et al. 2001) could be aligned with the Stuart hypothesis to predict the stable isotope ranges for K’inich Yax K’uk Mo’.