King Tutankhamun’s Family and Genetics

Back in February of 2010 I blogged about a research paper on Tutankhamun. In that post I focused on the paleopathological findings of the Hawass et al article and didn’t really mention the genetic research and resulting identification of Tutankhamun’s family. Recently this second aspect of the Hawass et al study have bubbled to the [...]

The Carthaginians And Human Sacrifice: Carthage Got A Bum Rap

The victors always write the history and the case of Carthage was no exception. Consider this from Wikipedia: Later commentators have compared the accounts of child sacrifice in the Old Testament with similar ones from Greek and Latin sources speaking of the offering of children by fire as sacrifices in the Punic city of Carthage, [...]

Paleopathology of King Tutankhamun And His Relatives

As mentioned in a previous post Jama has published the results of some interesting research on Tutankhamun and his family.

Begging For An Article

Can some one send me a copy of the following article: Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun’s Family Zahi Hawass, PhD; Yehia Z. Gad, MD; Somaia Ismail, PhD; Rabab Khairat, MSc; Dina Fathalla, MSc; Naglaa Hasan, MSc; Amal Ahmed, BPharm; Hisham Elleithy, MA; Markus Ball, MSc; Fawzi Gaballah, PhD; Sally Wasef, MSc; Mohamed Fateen, MD; [...]

Global History of Health Project

I know I have mentioned this before (unfortunately, I can’t find where) but Richard Steckel and Jerome Rose (among others) are working on a fascinating project called the Global History of Health Project. One of the reasons that I brought this up is because the Jewish World review has a fascinating overview of the project:

The Nasca Trophy Skulls: What Population Did They Derive From?

The Journal of Anthropological Archaeology has an interesting paper that addresses the issue of what population provided the trophy skulls. The question has, in the past, been part and parcel of the debate as to what the trophy skulls were used for. There are two broad groups of, not necessarily mutually exclusive, explanations for the [...]

Small Bodied Humans From Palau Revisited

One of the more controversial stories in physical anthropology concerns the small bodied humans found on Palau. The finds were published back in March in PLoS. In that paper Berger et al argued that the material they found represents a population of Palauans that possibly were subject to island dwarfing (although they also imply that [...]

The Logical End Result of Repatriation Laws?

Nature has an interesting news item called Online anthropology draws protest from aboriginal group:

Detecting Early Diet in Teeth

There is an interesting new paper out in PNAS that looks at enamel chemistry to try and reconstruct early diet. The study is by Humphrey, Dean, Jeffries, and Penn. The abstract is below the fold.

Ancient DNA and Bioarchaeology

Razib mentioned this study of ancient DNA. Although the study is being billed as important because it allows us to gain an understanding of the biological history of the skeletons studied, the research will also allow us to gain some insight into the culture of the people those remains represent:

3,000 Year Old Mixtec Cremations

PNAS has an interesting paper on Mixtec cremations. I don’t have a copy yet (so if someone could email me a copy I would be eternally grateful – leave a comment so others will know it has been sent). The paper can be found here. Here is the abstract (to pique your interest):

Small Bodied Humans From Palau

Palau is fast becoming an anthropological paradise. In addition to being one of the places Margaret Mead did fieldwork, we now have news that a large collection of skeletons have been found. Currently, the fragmentary remains of 25 individuals have been excavated, but others remain to be freed from their calcium carbonate matrix:

Personology is for Crackpots

Steve has taken time off from getting the new blog ready to bring us news of some credulous reporting on CNN. The reporting concerns some new woo called “Personology” which seeks to determine personality based on various measures of the face and hair. Forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology are concerned with looking at skeletal variation through [...]

Paleodemography and the Plague

Paleodemography, like demography, is concerned with mortality, fertility, population structure and life expectancy (among other things). Unlike demography proper, paleodemography rarely has written records such as birth and death certificates to draw on and has to rely on skeletal indicators of age, gender, etc. This has lead to some heavy criticisms of the field (“A [...]

When Did Humans Start Wearing Shoes: A Second Look

I originally blogged about this story in August of 2005 and reposted the story (twice actually) in May of 2006. Trinkaus has recently returned to the subject and analyzed some skeletal material from Sunghir and Tianyuan. I have tracked down both articles on the subject and will have more to say as soon as I [...]