Faces of the Teouma Lapita People: Art, Accuracy and Facial Approximation

In 2008 we completed facial approximations of four individuals from the early Lapita Culture, a seafaring people who were the first to settle the islands of the Western Pacific circa 3000 years ago. Typically an approximation is performed as a 3D sculpture or using computer graphics. We chose to sketch what we have been able to determine from the remains because the artistic conventions of drawing work with visual perception in ways that are more complementary to the knowledge, theories and methods that make up the facial approximation of human remains

Health and disease in the prehistoric Pacific Islands

The main impetus of this research was to assess the role of infectious disease, particularly malaria, on the success of human settlement in the prehistoric Pacific Islands. A significant difference in the disease environments of the Pacific Islands is the presence of malaria in most of Melanesia and its absence in Polynesia. This research is the first attempt to assess the impact of malaria on the health of prehistoric Pacific Islanders. The materials used were two samples of human skeletal remains from different regions of the Pacific Islands; one from Taumako, an island in the malarial zone of the Solomon Islands, Melanesia and one from Tongatapu, the Kingdom of Tonga, Polynesia where malaria has always been absent. The objectives of this research were to record several different parameters of health and disease in these samples. Firstly, the demographic profile of each population was compiled to test whether the mortality rates of the Taumako people may have been affected by the presence of malaria. Secondly, non-specific indicators of growth disruption in dental material were recorded to assess whether levels of childhood stress were greater at Taumako. The stature of adults was also compared between Taumako and Tonga as a measure of the individual ability to achieve a genetic potential for growth. Finally, the skeletal indicators of iron deficiency anaemia and infectious disease were recorded to test whether the prevalence of disease differed and whether these differences may be attributed to malaria. The results of the analyses of these parameters of health and disease showed significantly higher prevalences of prenatal and childhood growth disturbance at Taumako compared to Tonga. The stature of adults was similar between the two regions but the range of heights was greater at Taumako. Similarly, a higher prevalence and more severe expression of iron-deficiency anaemia and significantly more proliferative skeletal lesions were found at Taumako. However, a significantly greater number of subadults were affected with postcranial proliferative lesions at Tonga than Taumako, although, the affected children were older at Tonga. The mortality rates of the two populations were similar, although males were more vulnerable to early death than females at Taumako. A differential diagnosis proposed that endemic yaws was the most likely infectious disease causing the skeletal lesions at Taumako; while at Tonga a more non-specific pattern of disease was proposed. The possibility of multiple causes for the skeletal lesions was also proposed for some individuals at both sites. The discussion of the results found they were consistent with the premise that the presence of malaria in Melanesia may have caused chronic growth disturbance and exacerbated the expression of anaemia and infectious disease in prehistory. However, it is also argued that differences in diet may have had an equally strong role in the observed patterns of health and disease. In conclusion, the results of this research did not unequivocally demonstrate the role of malaria on the health of prehistoric populations. However, this study is an initial step in the investigation of the impact of malaria on human populations, while not excluding other factors such as diet

Detection of temporospatially localized growth in ancient Southeast Asia using human skeletal remains

Measures of population growth can provide significant insights into the health, adaptivity and resilience of ancient communities, particularly the way in which human populations respond to major changes, such as the transition to agriculture. To date, paleodemographic tools have facilitated the evaluation of long term, regional population growth, while identification of intraregional variability and short-term growth has been more challenging. This study reports on the application of a new method for estimating the rate of natural population increase (RNPI) from skeletal remains. We have applied the method to ancient Southeast Asian samples and, based on the LOESS fitting procedure, our preliminary results indicate a trend of temporal homogeneity and spatial heterogeneity. This trend is validated against the existing archaeological narrative for the region and, we argue, may indicate intraregional variability in population responses to major technological, economic and sociocultural events, consistent with the variable response observed at the regional level. Due to the critical importance of temporospatial specificity to a vast array of paleodemographic research questions, we have evaluated the precision, assumptions and limitations of this method in the context of other existing paleodemographic methods. Our RNPI measure, in isolation or in combination with existing methods, provides a promising tool that can be used to develop a deeper and more localized understanding of the conditions impacting on population dynamics and, conversely, community responses to change.This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship and Australian Research Council Grant: FT120100299

A Land of Plenty? Colonial Diet in Rural New Zealand

Colonial New Zealand was built on the ideal of creating better lives for settlers. Emigrants came looking to escape the shackles of the class-system and poor conditions in Industrial Revolution period Britain. Colonial propaganda claimed that most emigrants achieved their aims, but the lives the colonists actually experienced upon reaching New Zealand remain relatively unexplored from a biosocial perspective. In this paper we present a pilot study of stable isotope results of bone collagen from seven adults interred in the St. John’s Cemetery (SJM), Milton, New Zealand (ca. AD 1860–1900). We interpret the diet at Milton and broadly compare our isotopic results with contemporaneous samples from Britain. We show that, like contemporary Britain, the diet of our studied individuals was focused on C3 crops and terrestrial meat sources. Despite higher ????15N values in contemporary UK populations (which can simplistically be interpreted as indicative of higher meat intake), consideration of different local baselines makes it likely that this New Zealand population had relatively similar levels of meat intake. Interestingly marine resources did not form an important part of the Milton diet, despite the site's proximity to the ocean, hinting at the possible stigmatisation of local resources and the development of a European New Zealand (pākehā) food identity

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

Funding: Grant sponsors were: Australian Research Council DP110101097; FT 120100299 awarded to MO; Institute of Advanced Study (IAS), Durham University and the COFUND 'Durham International Fellowships for Research and Enterprise' scheme. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The First New Zealanders: Patterns of Diet and Mobility Revealed through Isotope Analysis

Direct evidence of the environmental impact of human colonization and subsequent human adaptational responses to new environments is extremely rare anywhere in the world. New Zealand was the last Polynesian island group to be settled by humans, who arrived around the end of the 13th century AD. Little is known about the nature of human adaptation and mobility during the initial phase of colonization. We report the results of the isotopic analysis (carbon, nitrogen and strontium) of the oldest prehistoric skeletons discovered in New Zealand to assess diet and migration patterns. The isotope data show that the culturally distinctive burials, Group 1, had similar diets and childhood origins, supporting the assertion that this group was distinct from Group 2/3 and may have been part of the initial colonizing population at the site. The Group 2/3 individuals displayed highly variable diets and likely lived in different regions of the country before their burial at Wairau Bar, supporting the archaeological evidence that people were highly mobile in New Zealand since the initial phase of human settlement.: University of Otago Research Grant (http://www.otago.ac.nz/research/otago004140.html); A grant-in-aid by the School of Medical Sciences, University of Otago (http://osms.otago.ac.nz/); The Mason Foundation (http://research-hub.griffith.edu.au/display/fosc_MASONG); Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund (http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/programmes/funds/marsden/) grant number UOO0711. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Past rainfall patterns in Southeast Asia revealed by microanalysis of δ18O values in human teeth

Funding Information: Technical assistance was provided by Kamil Sokolowski and Brian Tse at the Preclinical Imaging Core Facility at the Translational Research Institute, funding support for which came from Therapeutic Innovation Australia, under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Histological preparation and SHRIMP analyses were funded by the Australian Academy of Sciences Regional Collaborations Program; Project ‘Tracing Ancient Environments During the Peopling of Southeast Asia’ (BCC 2017/2305974; Co-PIS: TM Smith, IS Williams, HR Buckley, DR Green) and the Australian Research Council (Future Fellowship FT200100390, PI: TM Smith). The excavation of the Pain Haka site was funded by a grant from the Research Institute for Development, UMR Paloc, and by additional funding from the French Embassy in Indonesia and a University of Otago Research Grant. Regarding the Napa material we thank Mr Ermilando Napa; Captain Leopoldo Quindoza of Barangay Tuhian and the Barangay council; the Sitio Buhangin community; and Jeremy Barns and Angel Bautista of the National Museum of the Philippines. With respect to the Con Co Ngua material grant sponsors included the Australian Research Council DP110101097, FT120100299, FT100100527, and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science 16H02527. Two living tooth donors and their families are also acknowledged with gratitude for their contributions.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

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. Here we document macroscopic and microscopic skeletal evidence for the presence of thalassemia in both hunter-gatherer (Con Co Ngua) and early agricultural (Man Bac) populations in northern Vietnam. Firstly, our findings demonstrate that thalassemia emerged prior to the transition to agriculture in Mainland Southeast Asia, from at least the early seventh millennium BP, contradicting a long-held assumption that agriculture was the main driver for an increase in malaria in Southeast Asia. Secondly, we describe evidence for significant malarial burden in the region during early agriculture. We argue that the introduction of farming into the region was not the initial driver of the selection for thalassemia, as it may have been in other regions of the world

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

Acknowledgements We would like to thank Dr. Ngo Anh Son, Mr. Bui Van Khanh and Ms. Nellissa Ling for their assistance with the radiographs. We are grateful to Dr. Dr. Nguyen Gia Doi for permission to extract histological samples. This work was supported by a National Geographic Early Career Grant (EC-54332R-18);Royal Society of New Zealand Skinner Fund Grant; University of Otago Doctoral Scholarship; Australian Research Council DP110101097 and FT120100299. Histologicalprocessing was funded by the Australian Research Council (DE190100068).Peer reviewedPublisher PD