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International audience; Rome saw its number of foreign individuals increase considerably as the empire expanded. These foreigners arrived as either free persons or slaves from the newly conquered provinces and nearfrontier zones and came to influence the whole life of the city. Yet relatively little is known about their life histories. In this study, we bring direct evidence for the first example of an African-born migrant, with an origin beyond the southern imperial border, discovered in Rome. Based on a multi-tissue sampling strategy including molar teeth and mandibular cortical bone, a multi-analytical approach including isotopic (δ 13 C, δ 15 N, δ 18 O, δ 34 S, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr), dental morphology (geometric morphometrics, nonmetric traits) and ancient DNA (mitochondrial DNA, Y chromosome) analyses allows reconstructing the journey and lifeway patterns of the individual US215/Mand1 buried in the mass grave from the catacombs of Saints Peter and Marcellinus. The successful isotopic and dental morphology analyses suggest that the individual was probably born in the vicinity of the Nile Valley or within the central Sahara Desert. Results also suggest a diachronic change of residence in the area during their early life. The way US215/Mand1 reached Rome is still hypothetical, although it seems likely that the individual could have undergone forced migration as a slave to the capital.

Fremont societies of the Uinta Basin incorporated domesticates into a foraging lifeway over a 1,000-year period from AD 300 to 1300. Fremont research provides a unique opportunity to critically examine the social and ecological processes behind the adoption and abandonment of domesticates by hunter-gatherers. We develop and integrate a 2,115-year precipitation reconstruction with a Bayesian chronological model for the growth of Fremont societies in the Cub Creek reach of Dinosaur National Monument. Comparison of the archaeological chronology with the precipitation record suggests that the florescence of Fremont societies was an adaptation to multidecadal precipitation variability with an approximately 30-plus-year periodicity over most, but not all, of the last 2,115 years. Fremont societies adopted domesticates to enhance their resilience to periodic droughts. We propose that reduced precipitation variability from AD 750 to AD 1050, superimposed over consistent mean precipitation availability, was the tipping point that increased maize production, initiated agricultural intensification, and resulted in increased population and development of pithouse communities. Our study develops a multidecadal/multigenerational model within which to evaluate the strategies underwriting the adoption of domesticates by foragers, the formation of Fremont communities, and the inherent vulnerabilities to resource intensification that implicate the eventual dissolution of those communities. Las sociedades de Fremont de la cuenca de Uinta incorporaron a los domesticados en una forma de vida de alimentación durante un período de 1.000 años desde 300–1300 dC. La investigación de Fremont brinda una oportunidad única para examinar críticamente los procesos sociales y ecológicos detrás de la adopción y el abandono de los domésticos por parte de los cazadores-recolectores. Desarrollamos e integramos una reconstrucción de precipitación de 2.115 años con un modelo cronológico Bayesiano para el crecimiento de las sociedades de Fremont en el alcance de Cub Creek del Dinosaur National Monument. La comparación de la cronología arqueológica con el registro de precipitación sugiere que la floración de las sociedades de Fremont fue una adaptación a la variabilidad de precipitación multidecadal con una periodicidad de aproximadamente 30 años en la mayoría, pero no en todos, de los últimos 2.115 años. Las sociedades de Fremont adoptaron domesticados para mejorar su resistencia a las sequías periódicas. Proponemos que la variabilidad reducida de la precipitación desde 750–1050 dC, superpuesta sobre la disponibilidad de precipitación media constante, fue el punto de inflexión que aumentó la producción de maíz, inició la intensificación agrícola y dio como resultado un aumento de la población y el desarrollo de las comunidades de médulas. Nuestro estudio desarrolla un modelo multidecadal/multigeneracional dentro del cual evaluar las estrategias que sustentan la adopción de domesticados por parte de los recolectores, la formación de comunidades de Fremont y las vulnerabilidades inherentes a la intensificación de recursos que implican la eventual disolución de esas comunidades.

The dynamic relationship between horses and nomadic peoples has a long history of study within pastoralist research worldwide. In the Plains of North America, however, the story of the horse is not often considered within these discussions. This article focuses on the story of the Blackfoot people in order to move beyond description of observed impacts of the horse and toward a discussion of what these impacts mean in terms of culture change, continuity, and Indigenous resistance. Recognizing Blackfoot horse culture as a true mode of pastoralism acknowledges the complexity of Indigenous responses to Euroamerican contact while also expanding our understanding of the global development of pastoralism as a lifeway.

The concept of the “rural” may, for the ancient Maya, need “recentering,” an acknowledgement that “rurality” as a lifeway insufficiently describes the integrated landscapes with high pedestrian “vagility” that were dominated by dynastic centers. Large-scale lidar captures reveal special-purpose facilities for defense, surveillance, possible chocolate plantations under close supervision, orderly if defensible landscapes, agricultural works of landesque scope, and overall regional articulations with variable intensity of settlement. If there were “rural” zones, they existed in coordination with centers. There was no exclusive dichotomy between inner and outer zones nor were there distinct populations, one acutely centered, the other dispersed. A conurban pattern applies to the evidence, with multiple, overlapping foci, gradients of drop-off, complex interactions over time, and a continuous use-surface.

The Late Archaic in northeastern North America (4500-2800 B.P.) pre-dates reliance on pottery and domesticated plants. It is thought to reflect a highly mobile, seasonal migratory foraging/hunting regimen. A juvenile skeleton with pervasive bone wasting and fragile jaws from the Hind Site (AdHk-1), ca. 3000 B.P., southwestern Ontario, provides evidence of the social context of her family group, including aspects of mobility and food management. The well-preserved bones and teeth are considered in bioarchaeological context. Radiographic, osteometric and cross-sectional geometric approaches to assessing musculoskeletal function are presented, plus differential diagnosis of the bone wasting condition. All bones of the probable female (aged approx. 16 yr) show stunting and wasting. Wedged lower vertebral bodies, porous trabeculae, undeveloped bicondylar angles (femur) and abnormally low cortical long bone mass are consistent with chronically reduced ambulation. Few teeth remain in the dramatically resorbed alveoli; slight tooth wear and substantial calculus suggest a modified (soft) diet. Osteogenesis imperfecta type IV is the most probable etiology. The extended survival of this juvenile who may never have walked reflects collective care. The case provides evidence of a past lifeway that appears to have been organized around logistic mobility, including occupational stability and food storage.

Author(s): Becker, SK; Goldstein, PS | Abstract: The Tiwanaku (AD 500–1100) colonized ecologically diverse, lower elevation areas to produce goods not easily grown in the high altitude heartland (3,800nm a.s.l.). One colony near present-day Moquegua, Peru (900–1,500nm a.s.l.) was composed of multiple Tiwanaku settlements. Colonists farmed products like maize and coca and transported goods via llama caravan between the colony and heartland. Two subsistence groups emerged in terms of settlement, those of “Chen Chen-style” affiliation associated with an agrarian lifestyle and those of “Omo-style” representing more of a pastoralist lifeway. Considering Tiwanaku people likely began light chores around 5nyears of age (e.g., babysitting siblings), with heavier labour beginning at approximately 8nyears of age, we questioned if these social and occupational differences translated into skeletal changes associated with osteoarthritis (i.e., porosity, lipping, osteophyte formation, and/or eburnation). Individuals from 5 sites, 2 that represent the Omo-style (M16 and M70) and 3 that are in the Chen Chen-style (M1, M10, and M43), were evaluated for osteoarthritis while controlling for age-at-death and sex using 25 total joint surfaces in the shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, ankle, and sacroiliac. Overall, our comparisons show no combined significant differences between the Omo-style and Chen Chen-style groups. Instead, distinctions in osteoarthritis evidence by age-at-death and sex emerged, reflecting the likelihood of specific age- or sex-related tasks. Arthropathy evidence among children in elbow and ankle joints also supported the cultural legacy in the Andes that work begins at a relatively young age and would show up in patterns of adult osteoarthritis.

Conventional interpretations of architecture and artifacts have concluded that the Ancestral Puebloans of the Upper San Juan (or uplands of the Eastern Mesa Verde) region were slow to respond to cultural changes that were occurring in the Central Mesa Verde region to the west and Chaco/Cibola region to the South. Rather than being a “cultural backwater,” this paper examines the idea that these groups practiced an orthodox form of the Puebloan lifeway, rejecting the changes that were occurring elsewhere in the northern Southwest. During the Pueblo II period (A.D. 900–1150), this orthodoxy is evident in the retention of material culture and architecture that is reminiscent of earlier time periods, such as plain gray ceramics and pit structures. The rejection of change in the Upper San Juan region is significant because it argues for a socially diverse landscape inhabited by both progressive groups accepting of change and groups that had a more conservative attitude toward change over time.

[EN] The study of the Bom Santo Cave (central Portugal), a Neolithic cemetery, indicates a complex social, palaeoeconomic, and population scenario. With isotope, aDNA, and provenance, analyses of raw materials coupled with stylistic variability of material culture items and palaeogeographical data, light is shed on the territory and social organization of a population dated to 3800–3400 cal BC, i.e. the Middle Neolithic. Results indicate an itinerant farming, segmentary society, where exogamic practices were the norm. Its lifeway may be that of the earliest megalithic builders of the region, but further research is needed to correctly evaluate the degree of this community's participation in such a phenomenon., [FR] L’étude de la nécropole néolithique découverte dans la grotte de Bom Santo (Portugal central) révèle un scénario social, économique et démographique complexe. Les analyses des isotopes, de l'ADN ancien et de la provenance des matières premières ainsi que l'examen des variations stylistiques du mobilier et des données de la paléogéographie donnent un aperçu du territoire et de l'organisation sociale d'une population datant du Néolithique moyen, soit entre 3800 et 3400 cal BC. Nos résultats indiquent la présence d'une communauté agricole itinérante et segmentée où les pratiques de l'exogamie étaient en vigueur. Ce mode de vie était peut-être aussi celui des premiers constructeurs de mégalithes de la région mais cette hypothèse devra être testée par des études ultérieures ayant pour but d’évaluer le degré de participation de notre communauté au phénomène mégalithique., [DE] Die Untersuchung der Betsattungsstätte in der Höhle von Bom Santo (Zentralportugal) ergibt ein komplexes soziales, wirtschaftliches und demografisches Bild. Die Auswertung der Isotopen, der alten DNA (aDNA), der Herkunft der Rohstoffe, sowie auch der stilistischen Variationen in der materiellen Kultur und der paläogeografischen Angaben verdeutlicht wie eine mittelneolithische Gemeinschaft wischen 3800 und 3400 cal BC räumlich und sozial organisiert war. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass es sich um eine wandernde, segmentierte Bauerngesellschaft handelte, die wahrscheinlich Exogamie ausübte. Die ersten Megalithbauer der Gegend haben vielleicht auch solch eine Lebensweise gefolgt, aber weitere Untersuchungen müssen noch unternommen werden, um das Ausmaß der Beteiligung der Bom Santo Bevölkerung am megalithischen Phänomen richtig zu bewerten., This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the project Bom Santo Cave and the Neolithic societies of Portuguese Estremadura, 6th–4th millennia BC (PTDC/HIS-ARQ/098633/2008), directed by AFC in 2010–2013.

From ca. 1500 B.C. through A.D. 300, small indigenous communities in southeastern Ohio incrementally increased their population size, adopted a more sedentary lifeway within recognized territories, formalized the burial of select individuals in mounds, and supplemented their hunting and gathering economy with gardening. Data from the Taber Well site (33HO611) are presented, from which we infer that surplus lithic production was taking place at the site. We suggest that surplus production of utilitarian goods was part of the economy of this and other local communities, especially within an environment of uneven resource distribution. This observation is contextualized within models of Middle Woodland exchange and specialization.

Mark Mitchell's analysis of the legacy of the Missouri Basin Project (MBP) identified the direct historical approach as one discourse that shaped the MBP legacy. While that identification is certainly correct, the discussion is too limited in two ways. First, the use of the direct historical approach for tracing ethnicity was more limited than is generally recognized. Second, and more seriously, the rich documentary and ethnographic record of the Plains Village lifeway became a too readily used source of specific analogies for reading the archaeological record. Theory became irrelevant. Some of the numerous inaccuracies this produced are only recently being corrected.

The adoption of sedentary lifeways is increasingly recognized as an independent development which has taken place in all regions and time periods across the globe. The papers in this volume argue that sedentism is not tied into a ‘Neolithic package’ in which a set of elements such as pottery, agriculture, sedentism and social complexity emerge together, each facilitated by and necessary to the others. Instead, it is argued that sedentism must be investigated as a process in its own right. This paper reviews how far we have come in developing such a perspective. It examines how we identify sedentism in the archaeological record, and suggests sedentism can be usefully understood as a process in which adoption and abandonment are equal possibilities. Finally, it considers how our changing views of where and why sedentism was adopted are leading to new ways of thinking about processes of social change.

The early nineteenth century was a time of vast cultural change for the Potawatomi of southeastern Wisconsin. Historic accounts provide significant detail on many aspects of Potawatomi culture. An abundance of archaeological sites of all types define in material terms the diversity of their activities, their cultural identity, and their widespread presence throughout the region. The waning of the fur trade, the Black Hawk War, and the encroachment of Euro-Americans impacted the Potawatomi lifeway in irreversible ways. In this article, the authors present an overview of Potawatomi life in southeastern Wisconsin around the period of their removal, as it is presently understood.

This preliminary study uses a gross measure of potential nutritional adequacy as a starting point from which to examine the interplay of the dietary impact of corn agriculture and the complexity of...

This article demonstrates how the cosmological metaphors in ritual song texts are an important but unrecognized resource in the repertoire of oral tradition that can be used to reconstruct past lifeways. We test this proposition with a study of 125 Hopi katsina song texts from the 20th century and show how the cosmological principles underlying the Hopi lifeway are embedded in special song word and phrase metaphors. Through the transcription and translation of the content of these song metaphors we reveal a consistency of thought and prescribed social action that has sustained the Hopi people as they have followed a lifeway of corn agriculture done by hand. We then show how these same principles for living expressed metaphorically in words are visually repeated in the same metaphors in mural images on 15th- and 16th-century kiva murals from the Hopi sites of Awatovi and Kawaika'a as well as on associated Jeddito and Sikyatki yellow ware ceramic design.

Human skeletal remains from a burial site in southern India excavated in the 1960s by the Department of Archaeology and Museums of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad, have been analyzed. The burials were recovered from three megalithic graves containing iron weapons and horse trappings, pottery and terracotta figurines, stone blades, pieces of copper, and faunal remains of domesticated species. These assemblages are hallmarks of the southern Indian Iron Age (Megalithic period) of the last three centuries B.C. Laboratory examination of the human skeletal and dental remains provide new information concerning the phenotypic heterogeneity of Iron Age populations, their physical changes in stature and tooth size, reduction of muscular-skeletal robusticity and sexual dimorphism, and other biological features reflecting evolutionary adaptations from an ancestral hunting-foraging lifeway to settlement in sedentary villages. The data from the study of the skeletal-dental biology of the inhabitants of Pochampad offer new insights into the health status and profiles of growth and development of these and other Iron Age populations in this part of the world. It is concluded that there was considerable phenotypic heterogeneity among these Iron Age communities of southern India and Sri Lanka, and that there was a continuity of populations over time rather than any abrupt demographic displacement of earlier Neolithic populations by invasions of some foreign, early iron-using peoples. Similarly, the biological data suggest that there was continuity of populations and gradual emergence of these last representatives of South Asian prehistory with their Early Historic period successors.

The mortar and pestle, technologically linked to intensive acorn economies, appeared initially in low frequencies over a large portion of California ca. 4000-3500 B.C. Three sites on the Big Sur coast of central California illuminate the circumstances surrounding the advent of this new technology, which initially supplemented hand stones and milling slabs. Excavation results suggest that ca. 3500 B.C. production of hunting-related flaked-stone tools increased relative to ground stone, and hunted resources became more important, as part of a transition from a highly mobile, selective use of the coastal resources, heavily focused on gathering, to a less mobile, more intensified lifeway. Obsidian hydration profiles indicate that interregional exchange increased at the same time. Evaluation of alternative mussel collection techniques further indicates that shellfish-harvesting strategies became less efficient at this juncture, promoting the emergence of a processing specialization, concomitant with increased hunting intensity. These transitions apparently mark the appearance of lineal descent organization and the system of gender-specific task appropriation observed at European contact.

The focus of this paper is on a diachronic analysis of settlement and subsistence patterns in an arid ecotone setting located between two forest zones in central Chile. Extensive survey and limited excavation show that the majority of sites of all culture historical periods are centrally located in the ecotone, suggesting that prehispanic societies concentrated on the exploitation of plant foods in all zones, particularly the seeds and fruit of the carob tree, and processed them at tacita (cup stone) sites. Hunting seems to have been a secondary economic activity. Although local indigenous populations eventually developed an incipient agricultural lifeway dependent on corn, beans, squash, and other domesticates, they continued to rely heavily on the carob as a primary food staple unitl the late historic period. The general prehistory of the region is discussed in terms of culture ecology and specifically subsistence and settlement patterns. The importance of the prehistory of this region to Chile is also considered as well as the attempt by archeologists to save the sites from destruction by modern development.

Hunter-gatherer adaptations to long-term fluctuations in regional resource structure require mechanisms to cope with periodic subsistence stresses. Among documented groups, a common response to such stress is temporary movement into adjacent occupied areas-moving in with "relatives" when things go wrong. However, in the case of early (ca. 12,000-10,000 B.P.) Paleoindian groups in the Americas, the availability of neighboring groups with a detailed knowledge of local resource geography could not be relied upon. Post-Pleistocene environmental changes and the low initial population of the New World are important factors conditioning a lifeway characterized by a dependence on hunting (though not exclusively of megafauna), and by high residential, logistical, and range (territorial) mobility. Early Paleoindian groups had to adopt a subsistence technology that could be employed regardless of the specific resource microstructure. In some regards, Paleoindians seem to have behaved like tropical foragers while in others like arctic collectors. Use of high quality lithic raw materials from large quarry sources, reliance on a bifacial technology, limited use of caves and rockshelters, and a low level of processing of food products for storage all may be indicative of such a subsistence technology, which would have been unlike that of any modern hunter-gatherers.

The practice of seasonal transhumance was a central feature of the Desert culture of the western Great Basin. Ethnographic studies have provided us with considerable knowledge of the land-use and seasonal rounds of protohistoric groups such as the Kuzedika Paiute of Mono Lake, California. Archaeology carries ethnography backward in time, indicating that Paiute sites were formerly utilized by a long succession of predecessors, most of whom were generalized Desert culture gatherers who hunted on the side.An analysis of projectile points from the Sierra piedmont indicates that Desert culture peoples ranged very high and were upland hunters at certain seasons. On the other hand, the earliest people were valley and grassland hunters. Recent discoveries of both Clovis and Folsom artifacts in the stream valleys of Nevada and California point to a pre-Desert culture way of life, with an emphasis on big meat rather than on seeds, roots, insects, and rodents. The transition from this early hunting of large, grassland herbivores to later general collecting and to seasonal transhumance appears to represent an unbroken evolution. These changes are shown by intergrading point types which constitute part of the data in this study.