Jane Buikstra

Arizona State University | ASU · School of Human Evolution and Social Change

This chapter will explore the lives and deaths of men interred in a cemetery located in the Phalero delta, beyond the walls of Athens, where Attica meets the sea. Sources indicate that Attic Greece at this time was struggling overall with the shift from aristocratic monopoly over power (and violence) and the assumption of democratic control, which...

Genetic assessment of highly incinerated and/or degraded human skeletal material is a persistent challenge in forensic DNA analysis, including identifying victims of mass disasters. Few studies have investigated the impact of thermal degradation on whole‐genome single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) quality and quantity using next‐generation sequenci...

Human evolution is defined by a multifaceted interplay of biological and cultural factors, which comprise the focus of a diverse spectrum of scientific fields. This edited volume aims to establish interdisciplinary links through a series of nine studies that critically discuss the current methods, hypotheses frameworks, and future perspectives for...

The Many Hosts of Mycobacteria (MHM) meeting series brings together basic scientists, clinicians and veterinarians to promote robust discussion and dissemination of recent advances in our knowledge of numerous mycobacterial diseases, including human and bovine tuberculosis (TB), nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) infection, Hansen's disease (leprosy...

Abstract Objectives: Porous lesions of the orbit (cribra orbitalia [CO]) and cranial vault (porotic hyperostosis [PH]) are used as skeletal indicators of childhood stress. Because they are understudied in contemporary populations, their relationship to disease experience is poorly understood. This paper examines the relationship between length of c...

This chapter emphasizes primary sources, while also including products of human alimentary processes and ancient organisms associated with remains. The term “ancient” might imply that paleopathology focuses exclusively upon archaeological and historical contexts. Archaeological skeletons have been studied to assess whether abnormal bone loss and bo...

The fundamental subject matter of biological (formerly physical) anthropology focuses on human origins and human variation. Physical anthropology or “anthropology,” as it was known on the Continent in the mid‐ to late‐1800s, was most highly developed in France and Germany, where most of the physical anthropologists were trained through medical stud...

Climate change is a significant 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 climate and environmental change provide a source of evidence about the potential challenges we face an...

Joint disease is one of the most common bone changes identified in skeletal populations. This paper presents a methodological discussion of the medical and bioarchaeological grading systems for describing intervertebral disc disease (IDD). A comparison of the bioarchaeological and medical grading systems helps to estimate the impact of IDD in the s...

Objectives Previous research has shown that while missing data are common in bioarchaeological studies, they are seldom handled using statistically rigorous methods. The primary objective of this article is to evaluate the ability of imputation to manage missing data and encourage the use of advanced statistical methods in bioarchaeology and paleop...

Objectives Missing data are a frequent and unavoidable challenge in bioarchaeological research, yet researchers seldom make explicit statements about the bias and inferential limitations that missing data introduce into their studies. There are no guidelines for best practices for the treatment or reporting of missing data. As an initial step in ta...

Previous ancient DNA research has shown that Mycobacterium pinnipedii, which today causes tuberculosis (TB) primarily in pinnipeds, infected human populations living in the coastal areas of Peru prior to European colonization. Skeletal evidence indicates the presence of TB in several pre-colonial South and North American populations with minimal ac...

Tooth enamel and dentin are the most studied hard tissues used to explore hominin evolution, life history, diet, health, and culture. Surprisingly, cementum (the interface between the alveolar bone and the root dentin) remains the least studied dental tissue even though its unique growth, which is continuous throughout life, has been acknowledged s...

Tooth enamel and dentin are the most studied hard tissues used to explore hominin evolution, life history, diet, health, and culture. Surprisingly, cementum (the interface between the alveolar bone and the root dentin) remains the least studied dental tissue even though its unique growth, which is continuous throughout life, has been acknowledged s...

Until the early 5th century BC, Phaleron Bay was the main port of ancient Athens (Greece). On its shore, archaeologists have discovered one of the largest known cemeteries in ancient Greece, including a range of burial forms, simple pits, cremations, larnaces (clay tubs), and series of burials of male individuals who appear to have died violent dea...

Objective The article reviews the study of rare diseases and their nomenclature, emerging government policies and initiatives, and the concerns voiced by the modern rare disease communities. An interpretive model is then presented for the bioarchaeological interpretations of individuals with paleopathological evidence of rare diseases. Materials I...

Biomolecular sex estimation promises to fill a major gap in the bioarchaeological record by providing estimates of biological sex for skeletal remains with degraded or ambiguous osteological sex-specific markers. Genomic and proteomic sex estimation, like all analytical methods, have limitations and require frameworks to address the problems of low...

Bioarchaeological studies are highly successful in accessing multivalent past social identities. This study applies social identity theory to contexts of violence, developing a theoretical framework to investigate identity-based violence at the Epiclassic (600-900 CE) central Mexican shrine site of Non-Grid 4, where at least 180 individuals were ri...

Objective Was cancer a rare disease in the past? Our objective is to consider the various terminological, theoretical, and methodological biases that may affect perceptions of the rarity of cancer in the past. Materials and methods We discuss relevant malignant neoplastic biomedical and paleopathological literature and evaluate skeletal data. We s...

Estimation of the age-at-death in adults is essential when the identification of deceased persons with unknown identity is required in both humanitarian and judicial contexts. However, the methodologies and the results obtained can be questioned. Various efforts have been developed to adjust procedures to specific populations, always seeking the pr...

This chapter considers a humanitarian approach to mitigate the disruption in continuity of identity that may lead to social death of the unidentified deceased persons. It argues that an adjustment in the forensic approach is required, and that this adjustment implies prioritizing the rescue of bodies and their belongings from those places where the...

Andean paleopathological research has significantly enhanced knowledge about the geographical distribution and evolution of tuberculosis (TB) in pre-Columbian South America. In this paper, we review the history and progress of research on ancient tuberculosis (TB) in the Andean region, focusing on the strengths and limitations of current approaches...

Objective: To carefully assess skeletal lesions in close environment context in order to evaluate whether skeletal fluorosis was present in individuals living in the prehistoric Midwest, USA. Materials: Skeletal remains from minimally 117 individuals recovered from the Ray Site, located in western Illinois (USA) and dated to the Middle/early Late...

In order to effectively “speak out” as bioarchaeologists, practitioners must be aware of their audiences, both intended and unintended and academic and public. Audience reactions to and perceptions of bioarchaeological research are shaped in large part by a long and shifting history of cultural perceptions of death and the human body. Further, legi...

Through the contextualized study of archaeological human remains, bioarchaeologists have the opportunity to speak out on many current, pressing global issues uniquely equipped with a rich knowledge of the diverse past. This volume brings together scholars specializing in such issues as migration, health and diet, epidemic diseases, global warming,...

Paleo diets have been characterized as having foods that we “were born to eat,” and the justification for their healthful nature is based upon the assumption that they reflect the foods our Stone Age ancestors ate: low in sugar and cereals and high in meat and “healthy fats.” Here we critique this assumption by drawing on direct evidence of hominin...

In the field of archaeological parasitology, researchers have long documented the distribution of parasites in archaeological time and space through the analysis of coprolites and human remains. This area of research defined the origin and migration of parasites through presence/absence studies. By the end of the 20th century, the field of pathoeco...

This introductory chapter to the Special Issue on "Scientific Rigor in Paleopathology" serves to orient and introduce the chapters that follow through a detailed consideration of paleopathology as a 21st century intellectual field. In this vein, we first make the significant point that paleopathology is a profoundly interdisciplinary endeavor, enco...

A rare case of pre-Columbian skeletal dysplasia from the Middle Woodland period provides a vehicle for exploring the complexities of interpreting impairment and disability from bioarchaeological remains and archaeological contexts. The skeletal remains of an adult woman and an associated fetus were excavated from an intrusive pit burial within Moun...

The Lower Illinois River Valley (LIV) has an extensive record of human habitation extending back over twelve millennia and has been extensively researched by archaeologists to gain insights into indigenous cultural complexity during the Woodland and Mississippian phases. A critical but relatively unexplored aspect of this history is the role of hum...

Studies of interacting/overlapping genetic skeletal disorders are rare for populations today, but even more so for archaeological contexts. The skeletal remains of an adult female (EZ 3-7-1) were excavated in the 1980s from the Middle Woodland (50BC–AD400) context of the Elizabeth site (11PK512) in the lower Illinois Valley (LIV), USA. Reported her...

Chapter 19 situates the development of the bioarchaeology of care approach, and the contents of this book in particular, within the wider discipline of bioarchaeology. It reviews the history of the bioarchaeology of care model and its implications for current and future research practice, then discusses the diverse chapters that make up New Develop...

Mirazón Lahr et al.(1) present the earliest evidence of inter-group warfare at the East African site of Nataruk. Their evidence of warfare is based on three inferences: that the skeletons were all contemporaneous, that the bodies were left unburied, and that most individuals exhibited perimortem trauma consistent with interpersonal violence. We bel...

This article addresses the use of high-density topographic mapping and geomagnetic fieldwork as part of an ongoing research program focused on evaluating the role of monumental architecture in the construction and maintenance of differing scales of community during Middle (ca. 50 cal B.C.–cal A.D. 400) and Late (ca. cal A.D. 400–1000) Woodland peri...

This article addresses the use of high-density topographic mapping and geomagnetic fieldwork as part of an ongoing research program focused on evaluating the role of monumental architecture in the construction and maintenance of differing scales of community during Middle (ca. 50 cal B.C.–cal A.D. 400) and Late (ca. cal A.D. 400–1000) Woodland peri...

Biological distance, or biodistance, analysis employs data derived from skeletal remains to reflect population relatedness (similarity/dissimilarity) through the application of multivariate statistical methods. The approaches used in biodistance studies have changed markedly over recent centuries, exploring phenotypic expressions assumed to be info...

Diet is a key factor in the health of individuals and of communities, both ancient and modern. In studies of ancient health, termed paleopathology, most paleodiet researchers have focused on estimates of the nutritional quality of diet across distinctive menus, comparatively evaluating quality of life across space and time. Health, however, can als...

This work contributes to ongoing discussions about the nature of tuberculosis in the Western Hemisphere prior to the time of European contact. Our example, from the extreme south of South America was, at the time of our study, without firm temporal association or molecular characterization. In Tierra del Fuego, Constantinescu (1999) briefly describ...

The present chapter on strontium isotopes from human dental enamel aims at presenting four archaeological case studies to illustrate the anthropological significance and range of applications of this technique: a northern Maya origin for the founder of Copan, a local king from Tikal, and the regional origin of two of Palenque’s rulers. The results...

Paleopathological reporting is hampered by a lack of precision in the confidence levels of diagnosis. In this article, we recommend the application of a slightly modified system of nomenclature ratified by the UN and widely used in forensic medicine for the identification of torture. The application of this terminological framework within paleopath...

The field of ancient DNA (aDNA) has rapidly accelerated in recent years as a result of new methods in next-generation sequencing, library preparation and targeted enrichment. Such research is restricted, however, by the highly variable DNA preservation within different tissues, especially when isolating ancient pathogens from human remains. Identif...

Modern strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from the Americas are closely related to those from Europe, supporting the assumption that human tuberculosis was introduced post-contact. This notion, however, is incompatible with archaeological evidence of pre-contact tuberculosis in the New World. Comparative genomics of modern isolates suggests that...

Archaeologists from the Center for American Archeology (CAA) in Kampsville, Illinois, are engaged in a program to test the potential for ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical resistance tomography (ERT) to effectively document the internal structure of a variety of Middle (ca.2200–1550 B.P.) and Late Woodland (ca.1550–950 B.P.) mounds in th...

As anthropologists, archaeologists, and biologists, and as members of the National Academy of Sciences, we were startled to read J. C. Chatters' statement that the cranial morphology of early Native Americans “represented a human ‘wild type,’” whereas more recent Native American cranial

Dog Domestication The precise details of the domestication and origins of domestic dogs are unclear. Thalmann et al. (p. 871 ; see the cover) analyzed complete mitochondrial genomes from present-day dogs and wolves, as well as 18 fossil canids dating from 1000 to 36,000 years ago from the Old and New Worlds. The data suggest that an ancient, now ex...

Determination of how the underlying cause(s) of variation in metric and nonmetric skeletal traits compare has remained elusive despite active research (Bennett 1965 ; Berry and Berry 1967 ; Kellock and Parsons 1970; Rightmire 1972 ; Corruccini 1976 ; Cheverud et al. 1979 ; Cheverud and Buikstra 1982 ; Richtsmeier et al. 1984 ; Hartl et al. 1995 )....

The soft tissue preservation system (STPS) is emerging as a method of expressing the degree of soft tissue present on an ancient human body (mummy). In this system the intact body is divided into five anatomic segments (head, thorax, pelvis, arms and legs). Each of these segments is assigned a maximal potential number of five “points.” In use, the...

The issue of time remains a crucial one in Lower Illinois Valley archaeology, and key problems remain unresolved. In this paper, new radiocarbon assays and published dates are used to test hypotheses concerning intra-site bluff top mound chronologies, timing and structure of valley settlement, and the emergence of regional symbolic communities duri...

The Chachapoya region of northern Perú is characterized by a remarkable range of mortuary customs whose nature is incompletely defined and interpreted. The focus of this paper is to consider a single aspect of Chachapoya mortuary behavior: the presence/absence and method of mummification. Complex, anthropogenic mummy bundles have been recovered fro...

This paper examines skeletal and ancient DNA evidence in the study of suspected tuberculosis infection in the late pre-Hispanic and Colonial-era Lambayeque Valley Complex, north coast Peru (A.D. 900–1750). We integrate information on macroscopic lesion characteristics and distribution, radiographic and CT scan imagery, and analysis of Mycobacterium...

Isotopic methods are widely used in archaeology to investigate paleodiet. Here, we present a new method to identify trophic level in archaeological human populations and to investigate paleodiet. We demonstrate that strontium isotope compositions (reported as δ88/86Sr) vary in a mass-dependent manner with increasing trophic level and can elucidate...

The Chachapoya region of northern Peru is characterized by a remarkable range of mortuary customs whose nature is incompletely defined and interpreted The focus of this paper is to consider a single aspect of Chachapoya mortuary behavior the presence/absence and method of mummification Complex anthropogenic mummy bundles have been recovered from th...

Excavations at Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona (northern Spain) revealed a large Islamic necropolis dating to the eighth century A.D., including the skeleton of an adult female showing intentional dental modification (PLA-159). While the practice of dental decoration was virtually absent in Medieval Spain, it is common in Africa and suggests that th...

IntroductionHistoryStriking a Balance: Case Studies, Disease Diagnosis, and Population Health in Comparative PerspectiveAssumptions and MethodologiesInfectious Disease and Human Host–Pathogen RelationshipsIron Deficiency Anemia ReconsideredGlobal HealthPaleopathology, Mummy Studies, and Mummy SciencePaleoparasitologyAnimal PaleopathologyDisability...

Eight human interments were excavated in the 1990s beneath the Acropolis at the Classic Maya site of Copan in Honduras, which was the capital of a Maya kingdom from ca. AD 400 to 800. These human remains come from both royal tombs and less elaborate burials dating to the early part of this period and lie deep in the accumulated architectural layers...

The Chachapoya region of northern Perú is characterized by a remarkable range of mortuary customs whose nature is incompletely defined and interpreted. The focus of this paper is to consider a single aspect of Chachapoya mortuary behavior: the presence/ absence and method of mummification. Complex, anthropogenic mummy bundles have been recovered fr...

Two of humankind's most socially and psychologically devastating diseases, tuberculosis and leprosy, have been the subject of intensive paleopathological research due to their antiquity, a presumed association with human settlement and subsistence patterns, and their propensity to leave characteristic lesions on skeletal and mummified remains. Desp...

We explore the standards of research and reporting needed to justify the destructive analysis of archaeological human bone for biomolecular studies of ancient tuberculosis (TB). Acceptable standards in osteological interpretation have been met in some biomolecular papers, but there are also cases where insufficient care has been taken in distinguis...

En las excavaciones arqueológicas realizadas en la Plaza del Castillo (Pamplona, Navarra) (PZC), se identificó un conjunto funerario con ritual islámico de más de 150 individuos estando represen- tados ambos sexos y todas las edades. La ocupación islámica de Pamplona se desarrolló a la largo del siglo VIII dC, iniciándose en el siglo IX dC la monar...

Osseous manifestation of infectious disease is of paramount importance to paleopathologists seeking to interpret ancient health, but the relationships among infectious agent exposure, development of disease, and skeletal involvement are complex. The outcome of an exposure strongly depends on multiple factors, including ecology, diet, nutrition, imm...

We analyzed strontium isotopes in more than 500 samples of shell, bone, and dental enamel from modern and archaeological contexts throughout Mesoamerica. The results correspond closely with expectations based upon the local geology and earlier measurements of geological materials. The results show that isotopic variation is significant across Mesoa...

We analyzed strontium isotopes in more than 500 samples of shell, bone, and dental enamel from modern and archaeological contexts throughout Mesoamerica. The results correspond closely with expectations based upon the local geology and earlier measurements of geological materials. The results show that isotopic variation is significant across Mesoa...

How wrong can one be? In the late 1980s, we thought that tuberculosis (TB) was an infection that had been controlled and almost eradicated from the developed world. However, emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases plague the developed and the developing world today, and the medical profession struggles to cope [2]. In 2010, there were 8.8...

This article explores forensic anthropological and bioarchaeological publishing patterns in the American Anthropologist (n.s.). Early contributions by Harris Hawthorne Wilder on both subjects are considered in detail, including previously unrecognized discussions of taphonomic variables. Articles on forensic anthropology in the American Anthropolog...

Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru. Elizabeth P. Benson and Anita G. Cook. eds. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. 211pp.

Tuberculosis has plagued humans and animals for thousands of years. Though apparently in decline with the advent of effective chemotherapy and improved living conditions, sanitation, and diet during the first half of the 20th century, TB has reawakened in both developed and developing countries, particularly among susceptible populations with immun...

The Chiribaya were a complex polity during the Andean Late Intermediate Period (c. AD 1000–1300) in the Ilo and Moquegua Valleys of southern Peru. Recent research has demonstrated that the Chiribaya polity was a señorío, a confederacy of economically specialised parcialidades. Here we test hypotheses regarding the movement of individuals and resour...