J. Alyssa White

• DPhil Archaeology
• Research Affiliate at Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan

The Lake Baikal region of southern Siberia has a rich mortuary record that has provided the most comprehensive isotopic database for palaeodietary studies of north-temperate hunter-gatherers in the world, permitting more detailed reconstructions and finer-grained research questions than are usually possible. Building on previous work, this study co...

Modern shark attacks are uncommon and archaeological examples are even rarer, with the oldest previously known case dating to ca. AD 1000. Here we report a shark attack on an adult male radiocarbon dated to 1370–1010 cal BC during the fisher-hunter-gatherer Jo ̄mon period of the Japanese archipelago. The individual was buried at the Tsukumo site ne...

From northern China, millet agriculture spread to Korea and the Maritime Russian Far East by 3500–2700 BC. While the expansion of agricultural societies across the Sea of Japan did not occur until around 900 BC, the intervening period saw major transformations in the Japanese archipelago. The cultural florescence of Middle Jōmon central Honshu unde...

A considerable amount of bioarchaeological research – including AMS 14C dating and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses (δ13C and δ15N) – has been undertaken on the hunter-gatherers from the area west of Lake Baikal, known as Cis-Baikal. No such work has previously been reported for the east side of the lake, Trans-Baikal. Here, we present n...

In the global literature on violence and warfare, the Jōmon period of the prehistoric Japanese archipelago is renowned as an example of a complex hunter-gatherer culture with little evidence of violent conflict through its duration, whereas the subsequent agricultural Yayoi period is marked by numerous indicators of violence, including formalised w...

This study compares skeletal evidence of adult height across populations from six different archaeological sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) and ten sites from the central Tombigbee River Valley that date to the Late Woodland and Mississippian periods to better predictions surrounding local population health in association with maize agri...

The ability to properly assess body size from skeletal material is instrumental in the study of populations, but there is still much that is not understood about body composition and its effects. Body size can be tied to social and environmental conditions, such as climate, nutrition, activity, and stress. In order to facilitate a more accurate und...