ANT-2100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Paleodemography, C3 Carbon Fixation, Natural Trumpet
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10/31
•Bioarchaeology: the study of the human biological component of the archaeological
record
•analyze ancient human skeletal remains
•understand health, life, and death of people in the past
•what do bioarchs do?
•human vs. non-human bone
•take classes in human anatomy & osteology
•osteology - study of bone
•identify complete, near-complete, and fragments of bones
•more often than not, bones are fragmentary
•burial population
•what is a burial population?
•a group of human burials restricted to a certain time period and region
•usually in a well-defined cemetery
•well-defined interments
•individual burials, not mass graves/jumbles of bones
•exceptions - bundle burials (result from charnel house)
•body placed in charnel house after death to de-flesh naturally, looked over by
caretakers, eventually gathered up, bundled together and buried together
•collecting the data
•identify element - femur, humerus, ribs, etc
•identify side - right or left
•identify sex of adults (when possible)
•don’t identify sex of subadults because skeleton has not fully developed
•pelvic area - sciatic notch is wider in women than in men
•skulls - males more robust than females
•identify age at death (all estimates/ranges, no exact age)
•tooth eruption
•all humans cut their first teeth 6-9 months, get adult teeth 6-7 yrs old, wisdom
teeth 18-21 yrs old
• tooth wear and loss
•the longer you live, the more your permanent teeth are worn down
•bone fusion
•growth plates
•suture fusion
•bone wear - especially after age 30
•Paleopathology: the study of ancient patterns of disease and disorders
•common diseases identifiable on bone
•syphilis
•venereal and nonvenereal
•cracks in bones
•tuberculosis
•holes in bones
•leprosy
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