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This article presents outcomes from a Workshop entitled "Bioarchaeology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward," which was held at Arizona State University (ASU) on March 6–8, 2020. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (ASU), and the Center for Bioarchaeological Research (CBR, ASU), the Workshop's overall goal was to explore reasons why research proposals submitted by bioarchaeologists, both graduate students and established scholars, fared disproportionately poorly within recent NSF Anthropology Program competitions and to offer advice for increasing success. Therefore, this Workshop comprised 43 international scholars and four advanced graduate students with a history of successful grant acquisition, primarily from the United States. Ultimately, we focused on two related aims: (1) best practices for improving research designs and training and (2) evaluating topics of contemporary significance that reverberate through history and beyond as promising trajectories for bioarchaeological research. Among the former were contextual grounding, research question/hypothesis generation, statistical procedures appropriate for small samples and mixed qualitative/quantitative data, the salience of Bayesian methods, and training program content. Topical foci included ethics, social inequality, identity (including intersectionality), climate change, migration, violence, epidemic disease, adaptability/plasticity, the osteological paradox, and the developmental origins of health and disease. Given the profound changes required globally to address decolonization in the 21st century, this concern also entered many formal and informal discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bioarchaeological record of human remains viewed in the context of ecology, subsistence, and living circumstances provides a fundamental source for documenting and interpreting the impact of plant and animal domestication in the late Pleistocene and early to middle Holocene. For Western Asia, Çatalhöyük (7100-5950 cal BC) in central Anatolia, presents a comprehensive and contextualized setting for interpreting living circumstances in this highly dynamic period of human history. This article provides an overview of the bioarchaeology of Çatalhöyük in order to characterize patterns of life conditions at the community level, addressing the question, What were the implications of domestication and agricultural intensification, increasing sedentism, and population growth for health and lifestyle in this early farming community? This study employs demography, biogeochemistry, biodistance analysis, biomechanics, growth and development, and paleopathology in order to identify and interpret spatial and temporal patterns of health and lifestyle under circumstances of rapid population growth and aggregation and changing patterns of acquiring food and other resources. The record suggests that the rapid growth in population size was fueled by increased fertility and birthrate. Although the household was likely the focus of economic activity, our analysis suggests that individuals interred in houses were not necessarily biologically related. Predictably, the community employed resource extraction practices involving increased mobility. Although oral and skeletal indicators suggest some evidence of compromised health (e.g. elevated subadult infection, dental caries), growth and development of juveniles and adult body size and stature indicate adjustments to local circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The Bang and Ramm method uses root dentine translucency (RDT) length in sectioned or unsectioned teeth as a sole indicator of chronological age at death in adult human remains. The formulae have been tested on modern remains of known age and on modern and archaeological remains of unknown age. This is the first published study of the method on known-age archaeological specimens and tests whether RDT is a good indicator of chronological age in buried human remains. We applied the Bang and Ramm equations to two 18th and 19th century assemblages excavated from the crypt of Christ Church, Spitalfields, and the cemetery of All Hallows by the Tower. Translucency was defined by shining a light through the external unsectioned root surface and was measured from digital images of 583 and 83 nonmolar roots from 126 Spitalfields and 12 All Hallows individuals, respectively, aged 21-81 years. Average absolute difference between real age and estimated age was 10.7 years and 8.4 years for Spitalfields and All Hallows individuals, respectively, with 58% and 75% estimated within 10 years of known age, and 29% and 33% estimated within five years of known age. These estimations are comparable to results from other ageing methods applied to the Spitalfields collection. Ages from both populations were estimated largely to the middle ranges, with younger individuals overestimated and older individuals underestimated. This is a common occurrence when using inverse calibration, where age is treated as the dependent variable and the ageing feature as the independent variable. Am J Phys Anthropol 155:332-351, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The earliest anatomically modern humans in Europe are thought to have appeared around 43,000-42,000 calendar years before present (43-42?kyr cal bp), by association with Aurignacian sites and lithic assemblages assumed to have been made by modern humans rather than by Neanderthals. However, the actual physical evidence for modern humans is extremely rare, and direct dates reach no farther back than about 41-39?kyr cal bp, leaving a gap. Here we show, using stratigraphic, chronological and archaeological data, that a fragment of human maxilla from the Kent's Cavern site, UK, dates to the earlier period. The maxilla (KC4), which was excavated in 1927, was initially diagnosed as Upper Palaeolithic modern human. In 1989, it was directly radiocarbon dated by accelerator mass spectrometry to 36.4-34.7?kyr cal bp. Using a Bayesian analysis of new ultrafiltered bone collagen dates in an ordered stratigraphic sequence at the site, we show that this date is a considerable underestimate. Instead, KC4 dates to 44.2-41.5?kyr cal bp. This makes it older than any other equivalently dated modern human specimen and directly contemporary with the latest European Neanderthals, thus making its taxonomic attribution crucial. We also show that in 13 dental traits KC4 possesses modern human rather than Neanderthal characteristics; three other traits show Neanderthal affinities and a further seven are ambiguous. KC4 therefore represents the oldest known anatomically modern human fossil in northwestern Europe, fills a key gap between the earliest dated Aurignacian remains and the earliest human skeletal remains, and demonstrates the wide and rapid dispersal of early modern humans across Europe more than 40?kyr ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most archaeological and fossil teeth are heavily worn, and this greatly limits the usefulness of tooth crown diameter measurements, as they are usually defined at the widest points of the crown. There are alter- natives, particularly measurements at the cervix of the tooth, where the crown joints the root, and measurements along a diagonal axis in molars, that are much less affected by wear. These would allow a wider range of specimens to be included, e.g., in the study of dental reduction in Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Homo sapiens. In addition, they would allow the little-worn teeth of children to be compared directly with well-worn teeth in adults. These alternatives, however, have been little used, and as yet there have not been any studies of the repeatability with which they can be measured, or of the extent to which they are related to the more usual crown diameters. The present study is based on a group of unworn teeth, where direct comparisons could be made between the alternative measurements, which are not much affected by wear, with the usual crown diameters, which are very much affected. In an interobserver-error study of this material, cervical and diagonal measurements could be recorded as reliably as the usual crown diameters. The buccolingual cervical measurement was strongly correlated with the normal bucclingual crown diameter in all teeth, whereas the me- siodistal cervical measurement was highly correlated with the normal mesiodistal crown diameter in incisors and canines, but less so in premolars and molars. The molar diagonal measurements showed high correlations with all other measurements. Crown areas (robustness index) calculated from the usual diameters were strongly correlated with crown areas calculated from cervical measurements, and crown areas calculated from molar diagonals were strongly correlated with both other areas. Despite the long usage of the more usual maximum crown diameters, the alternative dental measurements could be measured just as reliably, could record similar information about tooth crown size, and would be better measures for the worn dentitions seen in archaeological and fossil material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the biological effects of the Great Famine in London, England, by analyzing the teeth of individuals who survived the famine but died during the Black Death. Overview of the two catastrophes; Hypoplastic defects on the surface of an anterior tooth; Comparison between the timing of growth disturbances provided by the tooth record and the chronology of the Great Famine.