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This paper considers skeletal and dental lesions to assess the effects of aridification on two skeletal samples from the Bronze Age in what is now the United Arab Emirates (UAE), located on the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. This paper hypothesized that the sample from Qarn al-Harf (QAH) Tomb 6 would show a greater prevalence of skeletal and dental lesions in comparison with that from QAH Tomb 5, because QAH Tomb 6 dates to a period of aridification when compared with the wetter Wadi Suq period (~2000 B.C.). The skeletal remains from two tombs from QAH cemetery are studied: one dated to the transition period from the Umm an-Nar to Wadi Suq period (~2000 B.C.) (Tomb 6, n = 141) and one Wadi Suq period tomb (Tomb 5, n = 44; 2000–1600 B.C.). Skeletal and dental lesions, including carious lesions, antemortem tooth loss, dental enamel hypoplasia, periosteal new bone formation, cribra orbitalia, and porotic hyperostosis, were recorded and used to assess differential lived experience. Findings from the two tombs are compared with five contemporary sites of the Umm an-Nar and Wadi Suq periods. Fisher's exact tests found more statistically significant differences in the prevalence of cribra orbitalia (p = 0.0050) and non-adult mortality (p = 0.0118) for the QAH Tomb 6 skeletal sample than that from QAH Tomb 5. No other skeletal or dental lesions were significantly different according to Fisher's exact tests. While not significant, periosteal new bone formation rates in QAH 6 in conjunction with cribra orbitalia rates suggest individuals were experiencing stressors that were not impacting QAH Tomb 5 individuals. Skeletal and dental lesion rates are not directly attributable to climate change; however, we argue that intense aridification around 2000 B.C. caused desiccated crops and an increased reliance on marine sources for QAH Tomb 6. This reliance likely promoted nutritionally deficient diets manifesting as observed higher rates of cribra orbitalia and periosteal new bone formation.

La excavación, análisis, conservación y restitución de restos humanos procedentes de sitios arqueológicos conllevan desafíos éticos que los profesionales de la arqueología y patrimonio deben conocer. Sin embargo, en las publicaciones, éstos se suelen soslayar. Este trabajo examina la aprobación ética requerida en publicaciones sobre restos humanos en catorce revistas de Argentina y Chile. Se examinaron catorce revistas que aceptan trabajos de investigación bioarqueológica. De los 119 trabajos de bioarqueología publicados entre enero de 2016 y septiembre de 2021, solo dos (1,7%) reconocieron haber seguido pautas éticas. Ninguno de los artículos hacía referencia a la aprobación ética para llevar a cabo la investigación. Si bien es posible que no existan comités de ética en algunas universidades o instituciones de conservación, los editores de revistas tienen una responsabilidad cada vez mayor de garantizar que la investigación sobre restos humanos arqueológicos se realice de manera ética. A la luz de los resultados de este estudio, se recomiendan formas en las que los autores pueden abordar esta cuestión y cómo los editores también pueden reforzar los requisitos éticos en las publicacions.

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.

Objectives: This study examines the biological sex and geographical origins of adolescents buried at the St Mary Magdalen leprosarium (Winchester, UK). The data are combined with archaeological and palaeopathological evidence to broaden the understanding of mobility and its relationship to leprosy and leprosaria in Medieval England. Materials and Methods: Nineteen individuals (~10–25 at death) with skeletal lesions diagnostic of leprosy were analyzed using standard osteological methods. Amelogenin peptides were extracted from five individuals whose biological sex could not be assessed from macroscopic methods. Enamel samples were analyzed to produce 87Sr/86Sr and δ18O values to explore mobility histories. Results: Amelogenin peptides revealed three males and two females. Tooth enamel samples provided an 87Sr/86Sr ratio range from 0.7084 to 0.7103 (mean 0.7090, ±0.0012, 2σ). δ18OP values show a wide range of 15.6‰–19.3‰ (mean 17.8 ± 1.6‰ 2σ), with corresponding δ18ODW values ranging from −9.7‰ to −4.1‰ (mean −6.3 ± 2.4‰ 2σ). Discussion Amelogenin peptide data reveal the presence of adolescent females with bone changes of leprosy, making them the youngest confirmed females with leprosy in the archaeological record. Results also show at least 12 adolescents were local, and seven were from further afield, including outside Britain. Since St. Mary Magdalen was a leprosarium, it is possible that these people traveled there specifically for care. Archaeological and palaeopathological data support the notion that care was provided at this facility and that leprosy stigma, as we understand it today, may not have existed in this time and place.

Climate change is an indisputable threat to human health, especially for societies already confronted with rising social inequality, political and economic uncertainty, and a cascade of concurrent environmental challenges. Archaeological data about past climate and environment provide an important source of evidence about the potential challenges humans face and the long-term outcomes of alternative short-term adaptive strategies. Evidence from well-dated archaeological human skeletons and mummified remains speaks directly to patterns of human health over time through changing circumstances. Here, we describe variation in human epidemiological patterns in the context of past rapid climate change (RCC) events and other periods of past environmental change. Case studies confirm that human communities responded to environmental changes in diverse ways depending on historical, sociocultural, and biological contingencies. Certain factors, such as social inequality and disproportionate access to resources in large, complex societies may influence the probability of major sociopolitical disruptions and reorganizations—commonly known as “collapse.” This survey of Holocene human–environmental relations demonstrates how flexibility, variation, and maintenance of Indigenous knowledge can be mitigating factors in the face of environmental challenges. Although contemporary climate change is more rapid and of greater magnitude than the RCC events and other environmental changes we discuss here, these lessons from the past provide clarity about potential priorities for equitable, sustainable development and the constraints of modernity we must address.

Leprosy is one of the most notorious diseases in history, widely associated with social stigma and exclusion. This study builds on previous work to reevaluate the medicohistorical evidence for social stigma in relation to leprosy. This is achieved by isotopic and palaeopathological analyses of adolescent skeletons (10–25 years old) from the Anglo-Scandinavian (10th–11th centuries AD) parish cemetery of St. John at the Castle Gate in Norwich (Eastern England/East Anglia). Core enamel samples from premolar and molar teeth from 10 young individuals with diagnostic lesions for leprosy were selected for radiogenic strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (δ18O) stable isotope analyses. Isotope data did not exclude anyone from the regional range. Palaeopathological data and archaeological contexts suggest that those with visible signs of leprosy were buried with their local community and in a normative manner, thus challenging the notion of social exclusion experienced by people with leprosy throughout the Medieval Period. This study underscores the importance of bioarchaeological data in challenging broad medicohistorical and archaeological narratives.

This book aims to encourage more co-produced research addressing questions about human health, past and present, by scholars working in evolutionary medicine (EM) and palaeopathology. It highlights future research that may promote that collaboration between palaeopathology and EM. This chapter starts with the premise that EM and palaeopathology have clear synergies in that they take a deep time perspective as they explore health in both the past and the present. It introduces the volume and first provides a background to EM from its first appearance in the early 1990s, including discussions about ultimate and proximate explanations for disease. It then highlights that the field of palaeopathology was initially established much earlier than EM and it is argued that practitioners before the 1990s, often physicians, were simply not exposed to evolutionary theory in relation to the diseases they were seeing both in the living and in the dead. However, the stage now looks set for more productive collaborations. A thematic overview of the volume and its individual chapters follows within the framework of the suggested categories for study within EM. The chapter finishes with some discussion about the One Health Initiative—considered an essential area of study now and into the future—and how it relates to EM and palaeopathology.

Prior to this volume, the principles and practices of evolutionary medicine (EM) and palaeopathology have rarely been considered together in research. This is surprising considering that both fields study evidence for the evolution of disease, as well as think about deep time and how long-term perspectives benefit interpretations of past and present health and well-being. While publications in both fields are prolific, they have typically remained separate in trying to address health problems. Researchers have worked for many years on successfully integrating the archaeological record with palaeopathological evidence, which has contributed considerably to the now-vibrant field of bioarchaeology. This focus may have distracted people from having productive debates and discussions about the integration of evolutionary theory within palaeopathology. The advantages to both EM and palaeopathology of working with each other should, however, be much clearer for those readers who have digested the contents of this book, or even skimmed lightly through its pages. There is much that each discipline can teach the other to the mutual benefit of both.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), principally coronary artery disease and stroke, are the leading cause of death throughout the globe. Atherosclerosis (hardening and narrowing) of the coronary arteries results in blockages that cause myocardial infarction (i.e. necrosis of heart muscle). The majority of strokes are also caused by obstructive atherosclerosis in the arteries leading to and within the brain. Atherosclerosis is considered by many to be a modern-day disease secondary to contemporary lifestyles. However, in recent years it has been confirmed as a much older disease with a longer evolutionary history. This conclusion has been reached by the discovery of evidence found in naturally mummified individuals living 3000 years ago in what is now modern-day Sudan. This evidence demonstrates vascular calcifications which, based on morphology, anatomic location and scanning electron microscopy, are atherosclerotic in origin. Confirmatory computed tomography (CT) scans by the HORUS team and other research groups of the mummified remains of people from Egypt, Peru, North America, Europe and Asia dating back over 5000 years also demonstrate arterial calcification. These CT findings have the same radiographic characteristics and appear in the same anatomic locations as modern-day patients with atherosclerosis, which is the underlying cause of myocardial infarction and most deaths from cardiac disease. These findings of vascular calcification in mummified individuals from cultures across the globe not only demonstrate that atherosclerosis cannot solely be attributed to modern-day lifestyles, but also raise questions as to the evolutionary and cultural factors that may have predisposed humans to atherosclerosis.

This book aims to encourage more co-produced research by scholars working in evolutionary medicine (EM) and palaeopathology that addresses questions about human health, past and present. It highlights future research that may promote that collaboration between palaeopathology and EM. This chapter begins with the premise that EM and palaeopathology have clear synergies in that they take a deep time perspective as they explore health in the past and in the present. It introduces the volume and first provides a background to EM from its first appearance in the early 1990s, including discussions about ultimate and proximate explanations for disease. It then highlights that the field of palaeopathology was initially established much earlier than EM and argues that practitioners before the 1990s, often physicians, were simply not exposed to evolutionary theory in relation to the diseases they were seeing both in the living and in the dead. However, the stage now looks set for more productive collaborations. A thematic overview of the volume and its individual chapters follows within the framework of the suggested categories for study within EM (Williams and Nesse, 1990). The chapter finishes with some discussion about the One Health Initiative, EM and palaeopathology, an initiative that is considered an essential area of study now and for the future.

The aims of this study were to explore the origins of 19 children buried in two mass graves and the general cemetery at the post-medieval St Gertrude Church cemetery in Riga, Latvia, using strontium isotope analysis (87Sr/86Sr), and to establish local soil Sr biosphere ranges from faunal samples from two areas of Latvia. The results confirmed the presence of one clear outlier in the population and one child who may have had originated from the region of Vidzeme. The lack of significant differences in 87Sr/86Sr between the other individuals analysed suggested that they were representative of one population. A strong correlation between 87Sr/86Sr ratios and previously obtained mean δ13C and δ15N values in children from mass graves suggested possible short-term dietary changes with increased proportion of marine resources and food sources subject to sea spray. The study has yielded the first comparative 87Sr/86Sr data from archaeological skeletons in Latvia, which will be essential for future research addressing comparative mobility studies in the region.

Childbirth is commonly viewed as difficult in human females, encompassed by the ‘Obstetrical Dilemma’ (OD) described by early palaeoanthropologists as an evolved trade-off between a narrow pelvis necessitated by bipedalism and a large-brained fetal head. The OD has been challenged on several grounds. We add to these challenges by suggesting humans likely squatted regularly during routine tasks prior to the advent of farming societies and use of seats. We suggest that habitual squatting, together with taller stature and better nutrition of ancestral hunter-gatherers compared with later Neolithic and industrial counterparts, obviated an OD. Instead, difficulties with parturition may have arisen much later in our history, accompanying permanent settlements, poorer nutrition, greater infectious disease loads and negligible squatting in daily life. We discuss bioarchaeological and contemporary data that support these viewpoints, suggest ways in which this hypothesis might be tested further and consider its implications for obstetrical practice. Lay Summary Human childbirth is viewed as universally difficult. Evidence from physical therapies/engineering and studies of living and ancestral humans illustrates habitual squatting widens the pelvis and could improve childbirth outcomes. Obstetrical difficulties emerged late in prehistory accompanying settled agriculture, poorer nutrition and less squatting. Specific physical exercises could improve obstetrical practice.