Charles E. Hilton

Body proportions of circumpolar peoples as evidenced from skeletal data: Ipiutak and Tigara (Point Hope) versus Kodiak Island Inuit.

Given the well-documented fact that human body proportions covary with climate (presumably due to the action of selection), one would expect that the Ipiutak and Tigara Inuit samples from Point Hope, Alaska, would be characterized by an extremely cold-adapted body shape. Comparison of the Point Hope Inuit samples to a large (n > 900) sample of European and European-derived, African and African-derived, and Native American skeletons (including Koniag Inuit from Kodiak Island, Alaska) confirms that the Point Hope Inuit evince a cold-adapted body form, but analyses also reveal some unexpected results. For example, one might suspect that the Point Hope samples would show a more cold-adapted body form than the Koniag, given their more extreme environment, but this is not the case. Additionally, univariate analyses seldom show the Inuit samples to be more cold-adapted in body shape than Europeans, and multivariate cluster analyses that include a myriad of body shape variables such as femoral head diameter, bi-iliac breadth, and limb segment lengths fail to effectively separate the Inuit samples from Europeans. In fact, in terms of body shape, the European and the Inuit samples tend to be cold-adapted and tend to be separated in multivariate space from the more tropically adapted Africans, especially those groups from south of the Sahara.

Ritualized violence in the prehistoric American Southwest

The disarticulated and commingled human remains of at least 13 individuals were recovered from an archaeological site during salvage operations for a natural gas pipeline project near Ram Mesa in northwestern New Mexico. The condition of the remains and the nature of their interment suggested that unusual circumstances surrounded their deposition. The skeletal remains exhibited peri-mortem modification in the form of breaking, cutting and burning. This late Pueblo II (ca ad 900–1100) assemblage shares similarities with other mass inhumations from the American Southwest described as cannibalized. Interpretations of cannibalism have long overshadowed consideration of other reasonable alternatives. We suggest that the ritualized violence associated with the persecution and execution of witches offers a more parsimonious explanation for the bone damage patterns seen in this modified assemblage. Witchcraft is an integral part of Puebloan and Athabascan religious belief and the well documented accounts in the Southwestern literature are compelling. Copyright

Seasonality and Sex Differences in Travel Distance and Resource Transport in Venezuelan Foragers

The anthropological literature generally describes forager women as less mobile than men because of their child-care responsibilities and the energetic costs of reproduction. Examination of resource transport among the savanna Pumé of southwestern Venezuela reveals, in contrast, that for certain food resources travel distances and resource weights relative to body weights are greater for women than for men. Male foraging is often associated with greater travel distances, but men frequently walk unencumbered because hunting trips may exhibit low or zero food returns and hunters usually carry only a minimum tool kit. Women, who target highly predictable foods that can be collected in large quantities, frequently carry firewood, tools, and large baskets of food for extended distances during gathering. It appears that the consistent and large returns of female foraging underwrite the large energetic effort of mens hunting.

From Biped to Strider

From Biped to Strider The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport D. Jeffrey Meldrum and Charles E. Hilton, Editors New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2004, 213 pp., paperback. ISBN 0‐306‐48000‐X Review by Susan Cachel Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. 08901‐1414 ______________________________________________________________________________ The papers in this edited volume were originally presented at a symposium during the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, held in San Antonio, Texas, in 2000. Paleoanthropologists traditionally investigate the functional anatomy of early hominid locomotion and the degree of terrestriality exhibited by different species. The goal of this symposium, however, was to present a broad overview of the varieties of modern human locomotion, and the appearance of anatomical traits in the skeleton that are associated with an erect striding gait. The editors believe that questions about early hominid locomotion could be more productively addressed against a background understanding of locomotor variability gleaned from modern humans. There are twelve papers in the book, including an introductory chapter by the editors and a concluding synthesis. Some of the chapters fall into natural sets. There are two papers on the origins of bipedalism, two papers on the Laetoli trackways, and two papers on mobility and resource transport in modern humans. There is a chapter on the functional anatomy of the foot and a chapter on the speed and cost of transport during bipedal locomotion. One paper compares body build and lifestyle in australopithecines and genus Homo, and one paper examines the biomechanical consequences of changing the proportions of leg segments in bipeds. The references are current, and there is an index. Some of the anatomical photographs are of poor quality; the anatomical photographs in one chapter are unlabeled, and lack a scale or orientation. Hilton and Meldrum begin the volume by reaffirming the importance of obligate bipedality as the signpost of hominid status. However, they also introduce a major theme of the book by arguing that bipedal locomotion has continued to evolve since its inception. Marathon running, endurance walking, and long distance carrying of heavy burdens are important features of modern hunting‐gathering groups. Hilton and Meldrum argue that these behaviors may have appeared only with the advent of genus Homo, and are still under significant selection pressure among living people following traditional lifestyles. In the shortest chapter in the book, McHenry summarizes the work of the other authors, but also presents a heavily referenced historical overview about research on bipedalism and its origins. The chapters by Begun and Deloison deal with bipedal origins. Believing that molecular phylogenies that yield a chimpanzee‐human clade offer an objective line of evidence independent from anatomy, Begun concludes that bipedalism evolves from knuckle‐walking. Begun notes the powerful recent arguments by Dainton and Macho for two independent origins of knuckle‐walking based on ontogenetic and kinematic differences between knuckle‐walking chimpanzees and gorillas, but he uses this evidence to argue that such variability shows that knuckle‐walking is a generalized form of terrestrial locomotion that does not

Age, Sex, and Resource Transport in Venezuelan Foragers

Enhancing our understanding of the skeletal biology of modern hunter-gatherers and developing more sophisticated models of fossil and prehistoric hominin locomotor behavior and subsistence activities requires information on male and female forager mobility patterns. Unlike other primates, modern human foragers expend considerable energy in activities involving the transport of resources across the landscape. Although male foragers are often associated with high mobility in comparison to their female counterparts, female foragers are seen to engage in subsistence tasks incorporating a high frequency of burden carrying. This paper examines the influence of age and sex on mobility and resource transport in a group of Pume foragers located in the savanna-wetlands of southwestern Venezuela.

Striders, Runners, and Transporters

Functional-morphological analyses related to fossil and contemporary hominin locomotion are the focus of this volume. As locomotion is considered a key element in the overall behavior of living primates, allowing them to fulfill such basic needs as avoiding predators, foraging for food, and finding mates, biological anthropologists have generally agreed that it most likely served similar functions in earlier hominins as well. In primates, differing locomotor behaviors and their impact on other biological complexes have produced a diverse range of behavioral and anatomical configurations. In turn, primate locomotion studies are diverse in their scope. Anthropologists interested in hominin locomotion frequently draw on primate and other animal locomotor studies in efforts to understand the complexities associated with the evolution of hominin locomotion. Through comparative analyses on musculo-skeletal structures, positional behavior, and the kinematic and kinetic components of body motion in settings ranging from dissection rooms, laboratories, and in the field, researchers have developed a wide variety of approaches and techniques for investigating the intricacies of locomotor movement in living contemporary hominins and their closest relatives.

“Dust people”: Samburu perspectives on disaster, identity, and landscape

ABSTRACT This paper discusses a Samburu pastoralist landscape idiom, ntoror, that encapsulates ideas about agentive pastoralist landscapes that inherently attract conflict; and passionate, place-based identities forged out of environmental and human-wrought disaster. The paper grows out of a project that experimentally integrated ethnographic self-scrutiny with a bio-archaeological excavation involving human remains, with the aim of encouraging reciprocal knowledge production. The inspiration for exploring ntoror and expanding its metaphorical reach came from our Samburu co-author, Musa Letua, who responded to the challenges the excavation posed by drawing upon the idiom of ntoror, which made sense to him. The overlapping stories of ntoror we narrate follow closely the ways in which Letua explored them in interviews associated with the excavation, and in other interview settings in earlier years. As such, this paper represents the fruits of cross-cultural collaboration and shared knowledge production.

‘It was maendeleo that removed them’: disturbing burials and reciprocal knowledge production in a context of collaborative archaeology

Recent decades have witnessed a growth in approaches to research and writing across anthropologys four fields that emphasize the need to respect alternative narratives and constructions of history, and to engage with anthropologys ‘publics’. These developments have generated more ethically responsible research and more inclusive writing practices. Nevertheless, the actual doing of cross-cultural collaboration and knowledge production remains a challenge. In this three-field (cultural, biological, and archaeological anthropology) study, we aim to capture, in writing, a process of collaborative fieldwork with Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya that experimentally integrated ethnographic self-scrutiny with a bio-archaeological excavation involving human remains. In the process, we highlight the reciprocal knowledge production that this cross-subdisciplinary, transcultural fieldwork produced. « C’est le maendeleo qui les a enleves » : derangements funeraires et production de connaissances reciproque dans un contexte d’archeologie collaborative Resume Depuis quelques decennies, les approches de la recherche et de l’ecriture dans les quatre domaines de l’anthropologie qui soulignent la necessite de respecter d’autres modes de narration et de construction de l’histoire et d’interagir avec les « publics » se sont multiplies. Cette evolution a donne naissance a une recherche plus responsable du point de vue ethique et a des pratiques d’ecriture plus inclusives. Il n’en reste pas moins que la mise en place meme d’une collaboration interculturelle et la production de connaissances y afferentes reste difficile. Dans cette etude menee dans trois domaines (anthropologie culturelle, biologique et archeologique), nous voulons restituer, par l’ecriture, un processus de travail de terrain collaboratif avec des pasteurs Samburu dans le nord du Kenya, qui integrait a titre experimental un auto-examen ethnographique et des fouilles bio-archeologiques impliquant des restes humains. Dans ce contexte, nous mettons en lumiere la production reciproque de savoir que ce travail de terrain inter-subdisciplinaire et interculturel a suscitee.

Suicide in Three East African Pastoralist Communities and the Role of Researcher Outsiders for Positive Transformation: A Case Study

We examine cultural understandings and practices surrounding suicide in Pokot, Samburu, and Turkana pastoralists in north-central Kenya—three geographically overlapping and mutually interacting pastoralist communities. We collected our data in the context of a study of poverty, violence, and distress. In all three communities, stigma associated with suicide circumscribed individual responses to the World Health Organization’s Self-Report Questionnaire, which led to an ethnographic sub-study of suicide building upon our long-standing research in East Africa on distress, violence, and death. As is true for most of sub-Saharan Africa, reliable statistical data are non-existent for these communities. Thus, we deliberately avoid making assertions about generalizable statistical trends. Rather, we take the position that ethnographically nuanced studies like the one we offer here provide a necessary basis for the respectful collection of accurate quantitative data on this important and troubling practice. Moreover, our central point in this paper is that positive transformational work relating to suicide is most likely when researcher outsiders practice ‘deep engagement’ while respectfully restricting their role to (1) iterative, community-driven approaches that contextualize suicide; and (2) sharing contextualized analyses with other practitioners. We contend that situating suicide within a broader cultural framework that includes attitudes and practices surrounding other forms of death is essential to both aspects of anthropological-outsiders’ role.

Comparative nutritional indicators as markers for resilience: the impacts of low-intensity violence among three pastoralist communities of northern Kenya

ABSTRACT We present results from a collaborative project on the consequences of endemic violence in the pastoralist zone of Northern Kenya. Drawing on our ethnographically driven epidemiological approach, we examine the differential cost of violence by examining household nutrition. The case/control approach we employ draws data from six sites that are culturally similar but differ in the degree of exposure to, or relative insulation from, violence. As one of many lenses through which to examine the consequences of endemic violence, nutritional status offers a different story than assessing livestock holdings or access to land. Our data suggest that despite the different strategies that the pastoralist communities employ to contend with the violence, each one comes with nutritional consequences. Measuring the direct and indirect effects of violence in communities already compromised by poverty and episodic drought challenges researchers, policy-makers, and humanitarian organizations. Our goal is to offer insights into reasonable pathways for understanding these intersections of insecurity for policy and humanitarian organizations.