C. Wilczak

In search of consensus: Terminology for entheseal changes (EC)

This article presents a consensus terminology for entheseal changes that was developed in English by an international team of scholars and then translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and German. Use of a standard, neutral terminology to describe entheseal morphology will reduce misunderstandings between researchers, improve the reliability of comparisons between studies, and eliminate unwarranted etiological assumptions inherent in some of the descriptive terms presently used in the literature.

Test of the relationship between sutural ossicles and cultural cranial deformation: Results from Hawikuh, New Mexico

A number of researchers have hypothesized that the biomechanical forces associated with cultural cranial deformation can influence the formation of sutural ossicles. However, it is still difficult to make definitive conclusions about this relationship because the effects appear to be quite weak, and contradictory results have been obtained when specific sutures and deformation types are compared across studies. This research retests the hypothesis using a single archeological sample of lamdoidally deformed, occipitally deformed, and undeformed crania from Hawikuh, New Mexico (AD 1300-1680). Our results show no significant difference in either the prevalence or number of ossicles between deformed and undeformed crania, suggesting that the abnormal strains generated by cranial shape modification during infancy are not a factor in ossicle development for this population. One significant relationship was detected at the right lambdoid suture in crania with asymmetrical occipital deformation. Crania that were more deformed on the left side showed greater numbers of ossicles on the right side, but the effect was small. Furthermore, the relationship may well reflect a sampling error, due to the small number of crania with greater left side deformation and scorable right side lambdoid ossicles (n = 11). Although it is possible that forms of cranial deformation other than the posterior tabular types examined here may affect ossicle expression, our review of the literature suggests that the relationship in humans is complex and incompletely understood at this time.

The new Coimbra method for recording entheseal changes and the effect of age-at-death

Entheseal changes have been widely used in anthropology to study activity patterns, but there is an increasing awareness that ageing is associated with these changes. The aim of this study was to test each feature of the new Coimbra method for its variability, side asymmetry and its relationship with age. In addition to this, an overall relationship with age was tested for a larger sample. Males 16 and over from the Coimbra skeletal collection of historically identified individuals were recorded using the new method (N = 260). To reduce the impact of occupation, side variability in asymmetry and age were only tested in the labourers (N = 51). All occupation groups were included to test the overall relationship with age using a random forest test. The results show that scores lack variability for many of the features and entheses. Where there is side asymmetry this is typically in favour of higher scores in the right side, excepting the biceps brachii insertion. Most of the features scored show a relationship with ageing, but this is not uniform for all features or entheses. Some features are associated with an increase in age (bone formation and erosions), while others generally occur in younger individuals (fine porosity and textural change). Logistic regression showed that ageing explains at most 44% of the variability. This alongside the side asymmetry may indicate that biomechanics has an explanatory role.RésuméLes changements au niveau des enthèses ont été largement utilisés en anthropologie biologique pour discuter des patterns d’activités, malgré les études de plus en plus fréquentes associant ces changements principalement au vieillissement. L’objectif de cette étude est d’illustrer, pour chacune des modifications enregistrées avec la nouvelle méthode de Coimbra, la distribution générale des scores, l’asymétrie et leur relation à l’âge. Une étude plus globale sur l’effet du vieillissement a également été menée. L’analyse porte sur un échantillon de squelettes de sujets masculins décédés à 16 ans ou plus issus de la collection de squelettes identifiés de Coimbra (n = 260). Pour réduire l’influence de l’activité physique, seuls les sujets avec la profession de « trabalhador » (travailleur) ont été utilisés dans les tests sur l’asymétrie et l’âge (n = 51). Pour l’étude globale sur l’effet du vieillissement, toutes les professions ont été incluses dans une analyse utilisant les forêts aléatoires. Les résultats montrent que la variabilité des scores est faible pour la plupart des changements et des enthèses. Il existe une asymétrie assez claire avec des scores plus élevés du côté droit, sauf pour l’insertion du biceps brachii. La plupart des changements enregistrés présentent une corrélation positive avec l’âge au décès, sans toutefois être systématiques pour tous les changements ou toutes les enthèses considérées. Certains changements sont plus fréquents chez les sujets âgés (formation osseuse, érosion), alors que d’autres se retrouvent plus souvent chez les jeunes sujets (porosité fine et changement mineur de surface). Une régression logistique montre que le vieillissement explique au mieux 44 % de la variabilité perçue. Cela, ainsi que l’asymétrie directionnelle observée, pourrait indiquer que les phénomènes biomécaniques jouent un rôle dans l’apparition de ces changements.

The Bioarchaeology of Artificial Cranial Modifications: New Approaches to Head Shaping and Its Meaning in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Beyond

cing: by positioning itself as an alternative family, and by promoting its benefits as forms of symbolic capital, asceticism became – discursively at least – one of the possible options for the future of late Roman families’ offspring. Even though I remain sceptical about the social and demographic breadth of the phenomenon, it certainly dominates textual production, and it clearly had become status-enhancing among elite families to have such a story to tell. The author shows very well how ambivalent parents could be towards such choices, making them only for some of their children so as to keep their options open, and how the development of ascetic prestige and memorialisation became ways of channelling the urge for family continuity that could be as efficient as transmitting one’s name to biological descendants. He also carefully discusses gender differences, visible both in the attitudes of parents and in the destinies of children. Mothers were generally less interested in family name continuity and thus more sympathetic towards ascetic choices, while fathers tended to favour marriage and childbirth. For Vuolanto, the overrepresentation of girls can be explained largely by their early marriage age, since the choice of becoming an ascetic, in other words remaining a virgin, had to be made before that, while boys often waited till they were independent before getting married, which left them more time and freedom to make their own decisions. The many examples brought forth by the author show very clearly that the choice to enter an ascetic lifestyle –which did not mean a monastic community –was made by the parents for their children, and was not, as some idealised monastic biographies might describe, a decision made by the child against the will of the parents. This was because the parents in late Roman elite families had understood the symbolic power and prestige that asceticism could bring to the family and lineage, and had been convinced that the forms of family and individual continuity offered by asceticism were valid and made it worth renouncing biological continuity. This is, of course, the narrative presented to us by those who were promoting that lifestyle: it is difficult to know quite how representative not only of society at large, but even of the upper classes these practices were. Yet although I have reservations about the degree of success of ascetic practice by the early fifth century, it did eventually become a new cultural norm. What Vuolanto demonstrates quite convincingly in this book is how the ideological framing of asceticism in that period is what facilitated the transition from Roman to medieval family, by anchoring a very un-Roman practice into traditional Roman discourse about the family.