Anthropology Archive

Preface To The First Edition

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What's Bred in the Bone, a novel by Robertson Davies, begins with the proverb, "What's bred in the bone will not out in the flesh." The story is about a man who supposedly reflects his "breeding" since his behavior and characteristics are direct reflections of what he has inherited from his family. Although biological determinism may work in fiction, it is anathema to the biological anthropologist. The cornerstone of biological anthropology is the interaction of culture and human biology. What is manifested in the physical and behavioral characteristics of any living being is a result of the intertwining of an inherited genome with environmental factors. Human osteologists have struggled with this concept from the earliest beginnings of skeletal studies and continue to struggle with it today. Ancient DNA studies suggest that we ultimately want to know the "inherent" properties coming out of the bones. If we could read the genome, we would "know" the person. But of course, we understand that, as living tissues, bones and teeth are influenced by environmental forces. Bones respond to mechanical forces, and thus, they alter in response to activities and stresses. Craniometric studies attempt to study population relationships, assuming that cranial shape and size reflect inherited features, but

we know that cranial shape and size can be altered purposefully (head binding) or unintentionally (chewing stresses). It is the job of the human osteologist to study the interactions between inherited characteristics and their modification by the environment in order to understand, not just what is "bred" in the bone but also what bones can tell us about the flesh, that is, the lives of earlier peoples.

Each of the following chapters deals with a specific type of advanced analysis of bones and teeth. The original plan for the book was to be a second edition of our earlier edited book, Skeletal Biology of Past People: Research Methods. However, as work progressed, it seemed that with five additional chapters and many new contributors, it is really something different. The differences are directly related to changes that have occurred in the analysis of human skeletal and dental remains over the past few years. Most notably these changes include heightened ethical concerns about studying the Forensic Anthropologist Can Do Forensic Anthropology" href="/forensic-4/what-the-forensic-anthropologist-can-do.html">skeletal remains of aboriginal peoples in many countries where those people are no longer the dominant culture. These concerns and the resulting legislation in some jurisdictions have radically changed the way physical anthropologists and archaeologists carry out their work. A second change is the rise of forensic anthropology and the fact that research in forensic anthropology, while still overlapping with more traditional approaches, now includes topics not central to studies of archaeological skeletons. We begin this book with chapters on the ethics of studying human remains and forensic anthropology.

An important theme that is found throughout the book is the progress of new methods. We were training to become anthropologists in the 1970s when many new research areas were emerging in physical anthropology. The earlier practice of providing descriptive osteological reports either as stand-alone works or, more commonly, as appendices to archaeological site reports was fading out and more problem-oriented research was emerging. Biological distance studies using both metric and non-metric traits on human bones and teeth were carried out in order to investigate prehistoric migration and relatedness through time and space. Paleopathology was emerging as a means of addressing questions about prehistoric adaptations in contrast to the earlier emphasis on unusual cases of specific diseases. Paleodemography, similarly, addressed questions of adaptation of earlier populations. Since the initial enthusiastic studies all of these topics have undergone criticism and have emerged as, perhaps, humbled, but also strengthened, by the critiques. The same is true of the more recently introduced methods involving biochemical analyses of bones and teeth. These methods include analyses of trace elements, stable isotopes, and ancient DNA.

Each of these methods has undergone a series of stages that may be characterized as follows:

• Discovery—either entirely new or new to physical anthropology, a new method is discovered and the potential applications are explored.
• Applications to questions of interest regarding reconstructing past peoples.
• Critique, introspection, experimentation.
• Emergence in a stronger, more reasoned form.

NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) and similar legislation in other countries have led to a reconfiguring of how skeletal studies of past peoples are carried out. Some of these changes can be viewed in a positive light. For example, standards have been developed in the expectation that collections will not be curated indefinitely. These standards were needed even before the prospect of reburial emerged. In addition, an interesting configuration of events happened in the 1990s. As some Native Americans voiced their disapproval of skeletal studies, expanding urban development led to archaeological excavations of several large, historic cemeteries dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These cemeteries contained the remains of Euro-americans and African Americans as well as other groups. At the same time, the growing number of students trained in human osteology provided a pool of individuals to excavate and study these remains. Debates about excavation and study continued but in many cases some period of time was allowed for proper scientific study. One special example of the cooperation between scientists and concerned descendants is the work being conducted at Howard University on a large African-American slave cemetery discovered in New York City. In Europe, there is a long history of excavating historic cemeteries and the increasing number of trained human osteologists has led to larger scale studies (the St. Brides' skeletal collection in London, England is a good example). The increased scientific study of skeletons from historic cemeteries has also provided opportunities for testing methods. In many cases, the identities of at least some individuals are known from legible coffin inscriptions or detailed cemetery maps. It has been possible to investigate the accuracy of methods of determining sex and age at death and to detect biases in mortality samples that are directly related to causes of death.

This book is organized into five parts. Part I, theory and application, features two chapters that describe recent shifts in skeletal studies. Walker's chapter provides information on how humans have regarded the dead over time and across cultures. He grapples with the issues surrounding the ethics of skeletal research, the clash with cultural beliefs about treatment of the dead, and the politics of communities. Taking a clearly anthropological approach to these questions, he shows us that there is a tremendous diversity of attitudes about the physical remains of the dead. He makes a strong case for the value of and the justification of scientific research. Ubelaker focuses on the development of forensic anthropology with its roots in descriptive osteology and its current form as an applied specialization of human osteology. He discusses the major comparative collections used for establishing standards, including the recently developed forensic data bank. He then takes the reader through the various steps in forensic anthropology, including recovery, identification, sex and age determination, stature estimation, and positive identification. He concludes with information on training opportunities and professional organizations dedicated to forensic anthropology.

Part II includes chapters on morphological analyses of bones and teeth and age changes. Four of these contributors prepared chapters for our earlier book, and although the topics are similar, each chapter includes contributions and advances that have occurred throughout the 1990s. Ruff describes biomechanical analyses of bones and the applications of such studies to understanding past human behavior ranging from fossil hominids through to early historic human groups. He draws from his own extensive research to provide examples of how biomechanical studies have improved our understanding of past activity patterns. Examples include changes in robusticity throughout human evolution, the relationship between subsistence and bone strength, and the relationship between gender roles and their biological manifestation in bone structure. Mayhall covers dental morphology highlighting newer methods of characterizing tooth size and shape, and the applications of such studies to biological and behavioral characteristics of past peoples. He emphasizes the importance of achieving precision of observations of both dental measures and dental morphological traits. He also argues for maintaining simplicity in our methodological approaches. Both of these aspects of the research process are absolutely necessary for us to make meaningful comparisons of the results obtained by different observers. Mayhall shows that knowledge in the field of dental morphology remains limited because the precision necessary for properly evaluating population variability has still not been achieved. Saunders covers the various types of studies that are specific to subadults, focusing on age determination but also considering sex determination and variations in growth and development. One problem with proceeding to studies of growth and development is that of sampling. Differential burial practices, differential preservation, and biases related to cause of death can all cause problems in assessing past growth patterns from subadult burials. Some of these problems have been addressed in studies of a large historic cemetery where parish records are available for comparison. This cemetery has also provided opportunities for assessing historic variation in growth and development as well as for testing methods of age determination. Saunders and her students have demonstrated how careful study of historic samples can not only tell us more about those particular people but also can help us to evaluate methods used on prehistoric samples. FitzGerald and Rose present information on age determination for subadult remains through dental microstructure analysis. The use of newer image analysis techniques (which are now easy to install in most anthropology laboratories) improves precision and relieves the tedium of collecting these data. This research shows great promise. If we can get a clearer picture of the amount of inter-and intrapopulation variation in dental development, we will know more about how tissue growth is buffered from stress and whether meaningful population differences really do exist. As these authors explain, it is only very recently that the investigation of microstructural growth markers in dental tissues has become accepted as appropriate for estimating tooth crown formation times. Robling and Stout provide details as well as examples of adult age determination based on bone histomorpho-metry. They review the principles of bone modeling and remodeling as a prelude to explaining how cortical bone microstructure is used in age determination. Variations caused by activity, sex, disease, and population affinity are discussed. Appendices to their chapter allow one to practice the methods of histological age determination on photomicrographs from a femur and a rib.

Part III is titled "Prehistoric Health and Disease" and includes three chapters. As in Part II, the sequence of chapters is as follows: studies based on gross observations of bones, gross observations of teeth, and microscopic studies. Lovell focuses on paleopathology and diagnosis of bony lesions. She provides detailed information on various diagnostic methods, including radiology and microscopy. Steps toward diagnosis are discussed with emphasis on accurate description and consideration of the distribution of lesions within an individual skeleton as well as the distribution within skeletal samples. Hillson presents methods for analyzing and describing dental pathology, with detailed information on the underlying causes of various conditions. He stresses the importance of careful observation, demonstrating how different ways of scoring pathological changes can dramatically alter determinations of disease prevalence. If care is taken with observations, so that the surviving jaws and teeth in skeletal collections really do represent what was buried, then the distribution of dental disease can tell us a lot about the diets and activities of past populations. Then we can seek correspondence between dental data and data from stable isotopes, faunal and botanical assemblages, and artifacts used in daily life. Pfeiffer covers the subject of bone histology with respect to healthy bone turnover and various disease states. This chapter ties in nicely with those of Ruff and Robling and Stout in that it covers information on bone structure at the histological level and the factors that account for variation. Her work includes variation in bone histology over recent human evolution with examples drawn from Neandertals to recent European immigrants to Canada. Procedures for preparing bones in thin sections are reviewed with cautions regarding diagenetic alteration.

Part IV, "Chemical and Genetic Analyses of Hard Tissues," includes chapters on stable isotope analysis, trace element analysis, and ancient DNA. Katzenberg provides background information on stable isotope studies and examples of applications to questions regarding paleodiet, migration, and life history. She demonstrates how isotopic analysis of archaeological tissues has advanced dramatically over a relatively short time span. Rather than simply confirming information that was already available from other sources, she shows how this field has called into question various archaeolo-gically hypotheses about subsistence adaptations as well as adding to our understanding of human ecology. She discusses three areas of research that are particularly promising because of their implications for a more detailed reading of the past. These areas include reconstructing infant feeding practices, detecting pathological changes in bones, and the management of animal and plant species by earlier human populations. Sandford and Weaver provide information on the current status of trace element studies. These studies include attempts to control for postmortem changes. They focus their discussion on the dietary indicators, strontium and barium, and the toxic element, lead. This chapter nicely illustrates the stages of new methods, discussed early in the preface. Sandford and Weaver have labeled these "Inaugural" (discovery and early applications), "Intermediate" (reevaluation and testing), and "Modern" (emphasis on experimental and simulation studies). The chapters on stable isotope analysis and trace element analysis both emphasize the importance of training in the physical sciences. Stone discusses advances in the isolation and analysis of ancient DNA. A great wave of excitement was ushered in with the first developments in the extraction and amplification of ancient DNA. If we can retrieve fragments of genes from long deceased humans, surely we can reconstruct the evolutionary and population history of past human groups. But the early claims for the retrieval of ancient DNA from dinosaurs and other fossils were cast aside when it was shown that the amplified DNA came from modern contaminants. The promise of ancient DNA research lost some of its luster. Yet, more recently, Stone was part of the research team able to offer clear evidence for the sequencing of Neanderthal DNA. Nevertheless, she cautions us about the difficulties of proving positive results and warns us that the promise is there, but the road ahead is still difficult.

Part V, "Quantitative Methods and Population Studies," includes three chapters. Pietrusewsky discusses metric techniques and their applications to biological distance studies. He takes the reader through the various statistical procedures used to visualize biological relationships. These procedures include a range of multivariate statistics such as clustering techniques, multidimensional scaling, and Mahalanobis's generalized distance. Craniometric analysis has been one of the transitional realms of osteological research. Pietrusewsky shows how this approach is still appropriate for the investigation of widespread museum collections, where destructive analyses are prohibited. Furthermore he demonstrates by using examples from his own extensive research in the Pacific, that multiple lines of evidence, including craniometric, dental, linguistic, and molecular data are all necessary to contribute to our understanding of human population history. Jackes tackles the problem of adult age determination and evaluates recent attempts to circumvent some problems. She surveys and evaluates all of the different approaches to age-at-death estimation, including single methods, such as metamorphosis of the pubic symphysis and cranial suture closure, as well as complex methods. She emphasizes the difficulties of dealing with the biases of reference samples and the effects of skeletal preservation on efforts to produce age distributions for archaeological samples. She takes the position that statistical investigation and manipulation cannot substitute for the necessity of having accurate biological age estimates. Finally, Milner, Wood, and Boldsen evaluate the current status of paleodemography by focusing on some questions that have fueled past debates within the field. They address problems of sampling, age and sex estimation, nonstatio-narity, heterogeneous risk, and selective mortality. Paleodemography draws from many of the types of studies covered in previous chapters and attempts to tie together the success of populations based on factors such as diet, disease experience, activity patterns, growth and development, and population interactions. Milner and colleagues provide a frank view of the potential and the limitations of achieving the goal of being able to determine the level of adaptation of past populations.

All of these chapters have the common theme of determining information about past peoples from their skeletal and dental remains. Adult age determination is an important theme that appears in many chapters. Similarly, postmortem change, sampling, and the relationship between cemetery samples and living populations recurs throughout the book. Ethical considerations have had a major impact on all topics discussed. It is our hope that this information will provide both breadth and depth for advanced studies in human osteology and will serve as a guide to more intensive study.

M. Anne Katzenberg

Shelley R. Saunders

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