ANT-1430 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Rickets, Syphilis, Osteoarthritis
Document Summary
Fieldwork - find fossils and traces of behavior (stone tools, footprints, etc. ) Interpretive work - place finds in an environmental and chronological context. Process by which organic material is replaced with inorganic materials often preserving the shape of the original organic material. Can vary in speed, but often takes 10"s of thousands of years. Most bones do not fossilize - scavenger damage, exposure to elements, soil chemistry, etc. Seriation - relative position based on the frequency of certain artifacts or features. Only works on organic matter (most fossils have lost datable organic matter) and it"s limited to 80,000 yrs. Based incomplete datasets from bones and artifacts. Hands, feet, long bones, pelvis, spinal cord. Must be long-lasting to have an impact on skeletal morphology. Some examples - tb, syphilis, rickets, iron. Things people do that leaves impact on skeleton, i. e. cranial modification, dental inlays. Splitter - emphasize morphological differences and separates our lineage into many different species.
