Paleoepidemiology of cribra orbitalia: Insights from early seventh millennium BP Con Co Ngua, Vietnam.

Objectives: We test the hypothesis that the condition(s) leading to the development of cribra orbitalia at Con Co Ngua, an early seventh millennium sedentary foraging community in Vietnam, effectively reduced the resilience of the population to subsequent health/disease impacts. An assessment of both the implications and potential etiology of cribra orbitalia in this specific population is carried out.

Methods: The effective sample included 141 adults aged ≥15 years (53 females, 71 males, and 17 unknown sex) and 15 pre-adults aged ≤14 years.

"Lest we forget": An overview of Australia's response to the recovery and identification of unrecovered historic military remains.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is responsible for the recovery and identification of its historic casualties. With over 30,000 still unrecovered from past conflicts including World War One (WW1) and World War Two (WWII), the Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force have teams that research, recover, identify and oversee the burial (or reburial) of the remains of soldiers and airmen who continue to be found each year. The Royal Australian Navy is also responsible for its unrecovered casualties.

Forager and farmer evolutionary adaptations to malaria evidenced by 7000 years of thalassemia in Southeast Asia.

Thalassemias are inherited blood disorders that are found in high prevalences in the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. These diseases provide varying levels of resistance to malaria and are proposed to have emerged as an adaptive response to malaria in these regions. The transition to agriculture in the Holocene has been suggested to have influenced the selection for thalassemia in the Mediterranean as land clearance for farming encouraged interaction between Anopheles mosquitos, the vectors for malaria, and human groups.

Asymmetric midshaft femur remodeling in an adult male with left sided hip joint ankylosis, Metal Period Nagsabaran, Philippines.

Objective: This study investigated microstructural changes of the right and left midshaft femur in an archaeological individual afflicted with left-sided hip joint ankylosis to assess whether increased cortical porosity was present as a result of leg disuse.

Materials: The individual is a middle-aged adult male excavated from the Metal Period (∼2000 BP) Nagsabaran, Luzon Island, Philippines.

Methods: Following standard examination of femur gross anatomy and differential diagnosis of the hip joint fusion, ∼1 cm thick posterior midshaft femur samples were removed for microstructural examination.

A paleoepidemiological approach to the osteological paradox: Investigating stress, frailty and resilience through cribra orbitalia.

Objectives: The Osteological Paradox posits that skeletal lesions may differentially be interpreted as representing resilience or frailty. However, specific consideration of the etiologies and demographic distributions of individual skeletal indicators can inform the criteria on which to differentiate stress, frailty, and resilience. Adopting a life history approach and adaptive plasticity model, this study proposes a framework for the analysis and interpretation of a commonly reported skeletal lesion, cribra orbitalia, which considers the underlying mechanisms of the condition, the clinical and epidemiological literature relating to anemia and malnutrition, and the bioarcheological evidence.

Domestication and large animal interactions: Skeletal trauma in northern Vietnam during the hunter-gatherer Da But period.

The aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis that healed traumatic injuries in the pre-Neolithic assemblage of Con Co Ngua, northern Vietnam (c. 6800-6200 cal BP) are consistent with large wild animal interactions prior to their domestication. The core sample included 110 adult (aged ≥ 18 years) individuals, while comparisons are made with an additional six skeletal series from Neolithic through to Iron Age Vietnam, Thailand, and Mongolia.

New distance-based exponential regression method and equations for estimating the chronology of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) defects on the anterior dentition.

Objectives: We present a new distance-based exponential regression approach based on published histological data to refine the objectivity, accuracy, and precision of age estimates of LEH defect formation on the anterior dentition.

Methods: Published histological data of anterior tooth crown growth for two samples (northern European and southern African) were fitted with exponential trendlines to construct exponential regression equations for each tooth type. A theoretical comparison of the age estimates produced by two commonly used methods (decile chart and linear regression), and those based on the exponential regression equations presented in this article were undertaken.

Cranio-morphometric and aDNA corroboration of the Austronesian dispersal model in ancient Island Southeast Asia: Support from Gua Harimau, Indonesia.

The Austronesian language is spread from Madagascar in the west, Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) in the east (e.g. the Philippines and Indonesian archipelagoes) and throughout the Pacific, as far east as Easter Island.

Estimation of sex and stature using anthropometry of the upper extremity in an Australian population.

Stature and a further 8 anthropometric dimensions were recorded from the arms and hands of a sample of 96 staff and students from the Australian National University and The University of Newcastle, Australia. These dimensions were used to create simple and multiple logistic regression models for sex estimation and simple and multiple linear regression equations for stature estimation of a contemporary Australian population. Overall sex classification accuracies using the models created were comparable to similar studies.

The D0-14/D ratio: A new paleodemographic index and equation for estimating total fertility rates.

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to develop a new subadult-adult ratio for application to sites with good infant representation and to produce an equation to estimate the total fertility rate for a population based on the age-at-death ratio. A new approach is required as current methods exclude the 0-4 years age category due to presumed underenumeration of infants. While this is true for some skeletal samples, others experience good infant representation.

Sex, Parity, and Scars: A Meta-analytic Review.

The ability to identify whether a female has been pregnant or has given birth has significant implications for forensic investigations and bioarcheological research. The meaning of "scars of parturition," their causes, and their significance are a matter of contention, with a substantial literature of re-evaluations and tests of the relationship between pelvic scarring and parity. The aim of this study was to use meta-analytic techniques (the methodological approach) to test whether pelvic scarring, namely dorsal pubic pitting and the preauricular groove, is a predictor of parity and sex.

Revisiting the Phenice technique sex classification results reported by MacLaughlin and Bruce (1990).

Phenice (Am J Phys Anthropol 30 (1969):297-301) reported a success rate of 96% for his method of sex determination based on three morphological features of the pelvis. Numerous studies have tested and evaluated the method with affirmative results. The results of the study by MacLaughlin and Bruce (J Forensic Sci 35 (1990):1384-1392) were inconsistent with other studies, reporting far lower rates of accuracy and a greater degree of interobserver error.

Demographic transitions and migration in prehistoric East/Southeast Asia through the lens of nonmetric dental traits.

The aim of this study is to examine and assess the nonmetric dental trait evidence for the population history of East and Southeast Asia and, more specifically, to test the two-layer hypothesis for the peopling of Southeast Asia. Using a battery of 21 nonmetric dental traits we examine 7,247 individuals representing 58 samples drawn from East and Southeast Asian populations inhabiting the region from the late Pleistocene, through the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and into the historic and modern periods. The chief data reduction technique is a neighbor-joining tree generated from the triangular matrix of mean measure of divergence values.

The neolithic demographic transition and oral health: The Southeast Asian experience.

The purpose of this article is to present new oral health data from Neolithic An Son, southern Vietnam, in the context of (1) a reassessment of published data on other Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Age Southeast Asian dental series, and (2) predictions of the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT). To this end, frequencies for three oral conditions (caries, antemortem tooth loss, and alveolar lesions) were investigated for seven Southeast Asian adult dental series from Thailand and Vietnam with respect to time period, age-at-death and sex. A clear pattern of elevated rates for oral disease in the Neolithic followed by a marked improvement in oral health during the Bronze and Iron Ages was observed.

Survival against the odds: Modeling the social implications of care provision to seriously disabled individuals.

Survival of an adult male (M9) with juvenile-onset quadriplegia in Neolithic Vietnam indicates provision of continuous care from his community, and adds to the growing literature documenting survival of disabled individuals in prehistory. Although the role of care-giving in achieving survival is occasionally acknowledged it is rarely elaborated, and a bioarchaeological model of care is missing. Contextualized analysis of specific instances of care can offer unique insights into contemporary culture, as the case of M9 illustrates.

Oral and physiological paleohealth in cold adapted peoples: Northeast Asia, Hokkaido.

This paper examines variables useful in reconstructing oral (caries, antemortem tooth loss, alveolar defects) and physiological (cribra orbitalia, linear enamel hypoplasia) well-being in two bioarchaeological assemblages from Hokkaido, Japan: Okhotsk (n = 37 individuals) and Jomon (n = 60). Findings are compared and contrasted with each other, with published series from Honshu Japan, and samples from climatically near-equivalent Alaska. It was found that more meaningful comparisons of Hokkaido paleohealth could be made with Alaskan material, rather than the more southerly Jomon.

Skeletal evidence for the emergence of infectious disease in bronze and iron age northern Vietnam.

Human skeletal evidence for the emergence of chronic infectious disease in northern Vietnam is examined. The sample includes the remains of 192 individuals representing the Mid-Holocene and Bronze to Iron Ages. The objective is to see if the transition from sedentary, foraging, coastally oriented economies to centralized chiefdoms with attendant development and intensification of agriculture, trade, metal technologies, warfare, and population increase was accompanied by an emergence of and/or increase in infectious disease.