Gabriel WrobelMichigan State University | MSU · Department of Anthropology
Gabriel Wrobel
PhD
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42
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Introduction
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August 2002 - December 2011
Publications
Publications (42)
Previous archaeological and anthropological studies have demonstrated the myriad ways that cultural and political systems shape access to and preferences for food. However, few studies have carried out biocultural analysis linking specific genotypic/phenotypic traits as evidence of cultural selection in ancient contexts. Here, we address this issue...
This study expands upon previous bioarchaeological research in Central Belize, focusing on broadening the current understanding of the region’s population history through a comparative analysis of nonmetric dental traits. Estimates of biological distance were calculated using several statistical methods to identify consistent relationships between...
This article presents a review of the earliest Maya skeletal remains thus far found, including a list of 398 burials dating to the Early (1800–900 b.c. ) and Middle Preclassic periods (900–300 b.c. ) and adjacent regions. These sites are spread throughout the Maya region and the data allow basic descriptive syntheses about early mortuary behavior a...
This article presents a review of the earliest known skeletal remains in the Maya area, which are found in submerged caves in Mexico and rock shelters in Belize and date to the Paleoindian and Archaic periods. While few in number, several of these individuals have been the focus of intensive analyses, providing an emerging picture of life in the re...
Ethnohistoric accounts indicate that the people of Australia's Channel Country engaged in activities rarely recorded elsewhere on the continent, including food storage, aquaculture and possible cultivation, yet there has been little archaeological fieldwork to verify these accounts. Here, the authors report on a collaborative research project initi...
It has long been accepted that the Indigenous groups of Australia's Cape York Peninsula have numerous cultural traits that were adopted from people in New Guinea and/or the Torres Strait Islands after the formation of the Torres Strait around 8000 years ago. However, opinions differ on whether the movement of the traits in question was accompanied...
In this paper we outline a worked example of the combined use of genetic data and archaeological evidence. The project focuses on Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula and has two goals. One is to shed new light on the population history of the region. The other is to develop a methodology to facilitate repatriation of the remains of Aboriginal Australi...
Two modified skulls from Pacbitun, Belize, one with a glyphic text, match ancient Maya depictions of trophies fashioned from war captives and worn by elite warriors.
The creation of digital repositories of human skeletal remains offers bioarchaeologists a variety of potential means of aiding efforts related to curation and analysis. We present a discussion of how issues of preservation and access can affect research and argue that digital repositories not only maintain a record of objects but that the digital f...
Bioarchaeology frequently investigates dental health in burial populations to make inferences about mortuary variability within and between ancient groups. In this chapter, micro- and macroscopic dental defects were examined in a series of ancient Maya mortuary cave and rockshelter burials in Central Belize. The nature of mortuary cave ritual use a...
Human bones from the Maya mortuary cave of Je’reftheel in west‐central Belize show evidence of taphonomic modifications attributed to insects, with termites and dermestid beetles being the most likely culprits. This study represents the first detailed exploration of the effects of osteophageous insects on bones from the Maya area, and thus expands...
In the original publication of this article, the title was printed as “Four Preceramic Points Newly Discovered in Belize: A Comment on Stemp et al. (1996:279–299).” The article has been updated to the correct title. The authors apologize for this error.
Stemp et al. (2016) published data on 81 preceramic (Archaic) points from Belize, Central America. In this comment, we report four more chipped chert bifaces recently recovered in Belize (Figure 1). Based on metrics (Table 1), technology, and style, three are classified as Lowe and one as a Sawmill point (Kelly 1993; Lohse et al. 2006; Stemp et al....
Recent archaeological investigations at Tipan Chen Uitz, Belize, yielded two remarkable Classic Maya ballplayer panels. Iconographic and glyphic analysis of these panels within a regional context provides new insights into large-scale socio-political relationships, demonstrating that the ballgame was an important means and mechanism for macro-polit...
The Central Belize Archaeological Survey (CBAS) was initiated in 2005 as a sub-project of the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance project (BVAR; directed by Jaime Awe) to investigate the prehistoric Maya cemetery site of Caves Branch Rockshelter. Subsequently, we began to survey other nearby cave and rockshelter sites (Hardy 2009) and to ex...
Bioarchaeological investigations at Actun Uayazba Kab (AUK), in west-central Belize, sought to characterize the nature of the site’s mortuary use by reconstructing aspects of social identity. Skeletal analyses provided data related to the age, sex, health, diet, and geographic origins of individuals buried within the rockshelter-like entrance to AU...
This paper discusses the technological and microscopic use-wear analyses of the chert debitage excavated from Deep Valley Rockshelter. This rockshelter, located in the Caves Branch River Valley of central Belize, was primarily used by the ancient Maya from the Late Preclassic to Terminal Classic periods (AD 80–950) and may demonstrate a pattern of...
A Maya burial of a late adolescent (Burial 98-3) found in the rockshelter entrance of Actun Uayazba Kab (AUK), Belize, displays a combination of lesions that is consistent with scurvy. Signs include large, active lesions on the posterior surfaces of maxilla; relatively mild porotic hyperostosis along the midline of the skull on the parietals and oc...
Bioarchaeological analysis of mortuary deposits from Je'reftheel, a small cave located in the Roaring Creek Works of central Belize, focused on characterizing the nature of mortuary activities conducted in the cave to determine whether the site was used for funerary or sacrificial purposes. In contrasting caves and cenotes, ethnographic, ethnohisto...
The 2011 investigations of the Caves Branch Archaeological Survey at the large and recently documented Maya site of Tipan Chen Uitz resulted in the discovery of the site's first monument with a glyphic inscription. Prior to this discovery, the site's glyphic corpus was limited to a
small collection of texts rendered on fragmentary ceramics. In this...
The Bioarchaeology of Space and Place investigates variations in social identity among the ancient Maya by focusing on individuals and small groups identified archaeologically by their inclusion in specific, discrete mortuary contexts or by unusual mortuary treatments. Utilizing archaeological, biological and taphonomic data from these contexts, th...
Archaeological investigations of the Overlook Rockshelter in the Caves Branch River Valley of central Belize offer a unique view of ancient Maya cave ritual through the complete recovery and analysis of all artifacts within the site's two small activity areas. In general, the assemblage contains many of the same types of objects documented from oth...
A single right fifth metatarsal found in Tomb 1 at Peligroso, Belize exhibited a small deformity in the form of a small (7 mm) accessory digit emanating from the plantar surface at mid-shaft. This Type A postaxial polydactyly is the first archaeological example of polydactyly reported for Mesoamerica. Polydactyly is one of the more commonly reporte...
This book is a compilation of osteobiographies: life histories of individuals whose remains were recovered from archaeological sites all over the world. The essays include contributions by some forty individuals and provide richly textured accounts of life in the past and of the process of bioarchaeological inquiry. Skeletal and dental analysis is...
The stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values (δ 13C, δ 15N) of collagen and the carbon isotope value of structural carbonate in bioapatite were measured in the bones and teeth of Early Classic to Historic period Maya buried at Chau Hiix, Belize. Diet at Chau Hiix comprised a mixture of resources but contained an unusual amount of protein from high...
Standards for diaphyseal lengths of the femur, humerus, and tibia that can be used in juvenile age estimation for the ancient Maya are presented. It is argued that these new standards are necessary given differences in stature and limb proportion in Mesoamerican groups compared to the prehistoric North American groups upon whom the current availabl...
Fluoride percentage of bone is often used to determine relative dates of burials in archaeological contexts. An analysis of prehistoric Maya burials at Chau Hiix, Belize, identifies taphonomic factors, including soil composition, grave depth, soil disturbance, age at death and cortical bone thickness, that cause variations in the rate of fluoride a...
Discriminant functions were developed using long-bone robusticity
measurements of 82 individuals from the protohistoric Maya site
of Tipu, Belize. All individuals were sexed using nonmetric
morphological indicators, particularly those of the pelvis.
These functions are designed to provide a means of determining
the sex of fragmentary prehistor...
Projects
Projects (2)
This dissertation project examines the causative forces of global human craniofacial variation by combining global craniofacial morphological, climatic, and genetic datasets to measure the magnitude and directionality of several climate variables while controlling for population structure. Craniofacial information will be obtained from a newly developed dataset of Macromorphoscopic (MMS) Traits, a series of seventeen quasi-continuous morphological traits, known as the Macromorphoscopic Databank (MaMD).This project will provide an understanding of evolutionary forces controlling systematic patterns of global craniofacial variation in the Macromorphoscopic Databank (MaMD). While population variation in MMS trait expression has been demonstrated, we have no empirical evidence for why these patterns exist, if they are meaningful, and if the traits we use in ancestry estimation have evolutionary significance. Consequently, this project is critical for establishing validity and reliability for future MMS research.
The Central Belize Archaeological Survey (CBAS) Project is focussed on the rich cultural history of Maya populations who once inhabited the Caves Branch River and Roaring Creek Valleys, as well as the heavily dissected karst uplands separating these. Located approximately 20 miles southeast of the city of Belmopan in Central Belize, the lush river valleys are framed by jungle growing on the steep karst foothills of the Maya mountains. The strongest evidence of early human activity in the area dates to the Middle-Late Preclassic periods (around 300 BC) and is in the form of ritual offerings found in the many caves riddling the limestone cliffs. Our recent work in the Caves Branch Rockshelter uncovered an Archaic spearpoint dating to 2500 - 1900 BC, which is the first evidence that the arrival of humans in the valley may have been even earlier. Rituals were performed in many of the caves in the area through the Preclassic and Classic periods, though at present there is little other evidence of settlement until, quite suddenly, during the Middle Classic period (around AD 500) the monumental centers of Yaxbe, Deep Valley, and Tipan Chen Uitz were built, complete with elite residential compounds and large ceremonial structures around open public plazas. Surveys of the surrounding countryside show increased settlement at this time as well as the integration of multiple sites – Tipan, Yaxbe, and Cahal Uitz Na – via a network of ancient roads (sacbeob). But, soon after this florescence, the area was abandoned. By the end of the Classic period (AD 900), there is a startling absence of activity in these centres, in the countryside, and in the caves.
