Stanley Serafin

Bioarchaeological investigation of ancient Maya violence and warfare in inland Northwest Yucatan, Mexico.

This study investigates evidence of changes and continuities in ancient Maya violence and warfare in inland northwest Yucatan, Mexico from the Middle Preclassic (600-300 BC) to the Postclassic (AD 1050-1542) through bioarchaeological analysis of cranial and projectile trauma. It is hypothesized that the frequency of violence increases before the Classic Maya collapse and remains high during the Postclassic period. It is also hypothesized that the flat, open terrain was conducive to warfare and resulted in higher trauma frequencies than in other parts of the Maya area. Results show that the frequency of cranial trauma decreases before the Classic collapse and increases in the Postclassic, partially matching the expected chronological trends. The frequency of cranial trauma does not differ significantly from other Maya regions but the pattern does: for all periods, males have more healed injuries than females and they are concentrated on the left side of the anterior of the skull. Some injuries appear to be from small points hafted in wooden clubs. In addition, projectile trauma is evident in a scapula with an embedded arrowhead tip, the first such case reported in a Maya skeleton. Overall, these results suggest greater reliance on open combat and less on raids in this region compared with other parts of the Maya area, possibly due to the flat, open terrain, though the identification of perimortem trauma in both women and men indicates surprise raids on settlements were also practiced.

War and Food Production at the Postclassic Maya City of Mayapán

Mayapan was a large and highly nucleated city located in the northwestern Yucatan Peninsula that served as a primate regional capital between 1200 and 1450 C.E. Increasing militarism is evident in the northern Maya lowlands starting in the Terminal Classic Period (850–1000 C.E.) and ethnohistorical, archaeological, and osteological data from Mayapan point to a later cycle of increasing hostilities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries C.E., prior to the city’s collapse and abandonment between 1441 and 1461 C.E. A large defensive wall was constructed to protect the urban core and a large residential population from external threats. We examine dietary change/stability through time using stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic analysis of 77 individuals from a variety of elite and commoner contexts within the city wall. Our results indicate that diet was remarkably stable through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, despite a suite of episodic shortages, warfare, and violence between 1290 and 1400 C.E. We attribute this stability to a unique array of food production strategies practiced at Mayapan that combined maize-based food production, animal husbandry, hunting, and options for food exchange with towns located across the northern peninsula. Stored food surpluses, or the option to import them, evidently provided a sufficient buffer to recurrent environmental crises and related events of warfare and rebellion for over two centuries.

Dental Nonmetric Investigation of Population Dynamics at Mayapan

This study investigates the internal population dynamics of the Postclassic regional Maya capital of Mayapan through biodistance analysis of dental nonmetric traits. Mayapan’s ancient population has drawn considerable scholarly interest, stoked by colonial accounts of the exploits of the site’s nobles, including migrations, wars, and uprisings. Recent discoveries of anomalous burials suggestive of acts of violence have raised hopes that physical traces of historical events may actually be recovered. Analyses of the human remains in these anomalous burials have demonstrated that some do in fact present evidence of perimortem violence and postmortem manipulation. Dental nonmetric analyses were performed to aid in the identification of elites and other groups that may have been the targets of violence, as well as to reconstruct broader aspects of the site’s population dynamics.

Odontometric Investigation of the Origin of Freestanding Shrine Ossuaries at Mayapan

Mayapan was the largest and most densely populated city in the Maya area during the Late Postclassic period (ca. AD 1200–1450), but was it truly cosmopolitan? This question was investigated through biodistance and population genetic analyses of heritable dental metric traits, the first such study conducted at this site. The analyses concentrated on burials excavated from a diverse array of contexts, such as mass graves, residences, and plaza floors, with a particular focus on freestanding shrine ossuaries. The results of both univariate and multivariate analyses suggest individuals interred in freestanding shrine ossuaries are genetically distinct from contemporary and earlier populations from northwestern Yucatan, suggesting this new burial practice was introduced by foreigners. These findings also have implications for the larger question of whether pan-Mesoamerican elite identity formation in the Postclassic period (AD 900–1543) was accompanied by more intense long-distance mixing of populations, rather than just the exchange of goods and ideas. Given the important role played by exchange in the regeneration of sociopolitical complexity in ancient societies from different parts of the world (Schwartz, 2006), this study also contributes to the broader discussion of how cultures survive and respond to upheaval, as well as to a more nuanced consideration of the role of migration in culture change.

The Context of Ancient American Violence

Violence has become a popular research topic in archaeology. Various types of violence are now the focus of investigation, such as warfare, ethnic conflict, and violence that does not involve bodily harm. The theoretical perspectives of researchers working in this area have diversified as well. From an early and still dominant focus on neoevolutionary approaches, recent works have increasingly come to rely on various postmodern perspectives, as exemplified in the four books under review. The approaches taken by these works are well-suited to combating the popular misrepresentations of violence in, and the concomitant denigration of, ancient American societies. As these books demonstrate, this is achieved, not by whitewashing the archaeological record but, rather, by examining the evidence, and especially the context in which it occurs, in closer detail. El sacrificio humano en la tradición religiosa mesoamericana, edited by Leonardo López Luján and Guilhem Olivier, is the most comprehensive treatment of the topic to date and will undoubtedly serve as an important reference for some time to come. Geographic coverage spans Mesoamerica, including Oaxaca, the Maya area, Veracruz,

Students' attitudes toward body image donation for 3D printing: Letter to the Editor

Anatomy education has been evolving rapidly in recent years and one of its main features has been the utilization of new technologies. In both educational and financial terms, among the most promising of these technologies is 3D printing (McMenamin et al., 2014). While the technical aspects of printing have been investigated considerably in the last few years, very little attention has been paid to the legal and ethical aspects of it (Cornwall, 2016). One might assume that the images of anatomical structures for 3D printing (both living and dead) are to be used only if informed consent was obtained. If that is the case than the willingness of different populations toward donation of body images for educational purposes is of significant interest. These attitudes, however, have not been investigated yet. The aim of this study was to investigate the attitudes of first year anatomy students toward image donation and contrast them with their attitudes toward whole body donation for anatomy education. A survey was completed among first-year anatomy students at Macquarie University, Sydney. A questionnaire was designed based on a previous survey of students’ attitudes toward whole body donation for anatomy education (Alexander et al., 2014). Students were asked about their willingness to donate images of their bodies for 3D printing with “yes,” “no,” and “cannot tell” as possible answers. They were also asked if they would advise their family members and strangers to donate. For comparison, they were asked the same questions concerning whole body donation. The study was approved by Macquarie University Human Research Ethics Committee. A class of 483 first-year anatomy students were surveyed. Of these, 75.6% responded. Overall, the respondents favored donation of medical images of the bodies rather than whole body donation (Table 1). Students showed significantly greater opposition to whole body donation compared to medical image donation when it came to their own body (v554.079, df51, N5365, P<0.000) or that of a family member (v55.347, df51, N5366, P<0.050) but not with regard to donation by strangers (v51.165, df51, N5366, P50.280). Somewhat worrying is the fact that students were prone to advise strangers to make a whole body donation, but less inclined to make a donation themselves or to suggest that to family members (cf. similar results in Perry and Ettarh, 2009; Alexander et al., 2014; Srdić Galić et al., 2016). These differences, however, were not as pronounced in attitudes toward image donation. Further developments in the application of new imaging technologies in anatomy education are dependent on the willingness of individuals of different ages, sex, and ancestry to donate the images of their bodies. This study suggests that finding image donors might be considerably easier than finding whole body donors. It would appear that some reasons which traditionally make members of the public reluctant to donate, such as religious beliefs, cultural constraints, and fear that the bodies will not be respected in anatomy laboratories, are not as strong in the case of image donation as they are in the case of full body donation. This seems to be of great importance as images and 3D models produced upon them play an increasingly important role in medical education (Baskaran et al., 2016; Li et al. 2017). Furthermore, 3D images and prints are produced with increasingly better quality and represent good replacements for human tissue which is often difficult to obtain and expensive to maintain (AbouHashem et al., 2015). Further studies, particularly of the general population, should throw more light on this subject and provide further data necessary in informing donation programs.