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

Infant Death in Late Prehistoric Southeast Asia

Important infortnation on demography, epidemiology, inter-population differences in growth, infant burial practices, and social aspects of the community can be gleaned from the study of perinatal bones. The increasing number of perinates unearthed from prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia provides a rare opportunity to investigate these issues. The high number offull-term infants represented at the site of Khok Phanom Di in Central Thailand (4000-3500 B.P.) remains an enigma. This is an important issue for bioarchaeologists as infant mortality patterns are sensitive barometers of the health and fertility of a population. This study investigated the perinatal age distributions of several chronologically spread sites in prehistoric Southeast Asia with differing subsistence modes and evidence of social complexity. Results show that the age distribution in the collection from Khok Phanom Di is different from the other skeletal samples, with a comparatively higher number of full-term perinates represented. Explanations including infanticide, issues of health and disease, and infant burial practices are considered. It seems likely that the age distribution results from different burial rites of pre-term infants as a consequence of social and cultural differences between Khok Phanom Di and the other sites. This study emphasizes the important contribution bioarchaeological research and the comparative study of infant burial rites can make in understanding aspects of social change in prehistoric communities. KEYWORDS: bioarchaeology, infant burial practices, perinatal age at death distributions, prehistoric mainland Southeast Asia, social organization

Ban Chiang, Northeast Thailand, vol. 2C: The Metal Remains in Regional Context ed. by Joyce C. White and Elizabeth G. Hamilton (review)

[Extract] The third volume of the Thai Archaeology Monograph (TAM) Series on the metal remains at Ban Chiang provides important interpretations of the metal evidence within a regional social context. This edited volume presents substantive contributions from multiple scholars on copper mining and smelting from Thailand and Laos, provenance research on artifacts from the sites of Ban Chiang and Dan Klang, and a thorough regional synthesis of metal technology systems in Northeast and Central Thailand. This corpus of work presented by the authors supports the theory that there was a maintenance of regional economic networks with community-based, nonhierarchical, social organization of production in these metal age societies

Linear and appositional growth in infants and children from the prehistoric settlement of Ban Non Wat, Northeast Thailand: evaluating biological responses to agricultural intensification in Southeast Asia

The bioarchaeological model of health change predicts a deterioration inpopulation health with the adoption and intensification of agriculture. However, research in mainland Southeast Asia challenges this model, showing no clear pattern of health deterioration associated with the intensification of rice agriculture. Childhood growth, a sensitive indicator of general population stress, is used in this paper to test the applicability of the bioarchaeological model at the prehistoric site of Ban Non Wat in Northeast Thailand. Agricultural intensification at Ban Non Wat is most apparent in the Iron Age rather than the earlier periods. Linear and appositional growth patterns of infants and children (n = 95) at Ban Non Wat were compared among the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age periods (1750 BCE–430 CE) to assess differences in growth patterns associated with agricultural intensification over time. Comparative analysis of linear growth found no evidence for differences among the chronological phases at the site. A detailed assessment of appositional growth from the larger Bronze Age sample showed no evidence for extreme nutritional stress. These findings are consistent with other bioarchaeology health research in prehistoric Southeast Asia. A gradual transition to intensified agriculture over time and retention of a broad-spectrum based diet at Ban Non Wat may have provided a buffer from the biological stress exhibited in other parts of the world during agricultural intensification

Is It Health or the Burial Environment: Differentiating between Hypomineralised and Post-Mortem Stained Enamel in an Archaeological Context

<div><p>Developmental enamel defects are often used as indicators of general health in past archaeological populations. However, it can be difficult to macroscopically distinguish subtle hypomineralised opacities from post-mortem staining, unrelated to developmental defects. To overcome this difficulty, we have used non-destructive x-ray microtomography to estimate the mineral density of enamel. Using a sample of deciduous teeth from a prehistoric burial site in Northeast Thailand, we demonstrate that it is possible to determine whether observed enamel discolourations were more likely to be true hypomineralised lesions or artefacts occurring as the result of taphonomic effects. The analyses of our sample showed no evidence of hypomineralised areas in teeth with macroscopic discolouration, which had previously been thought, on the basis of macroscopic observation, to be hypomineralisations indicative of growth disruption. Our results demonstrate that x-ray microtomography can be a powerful, non-destructive method for the investigation of the presence and severity of hypomineralisation, and that diagnosis of enamel hypomineralisation based on macroscopic observation of buried teeth should be made with caution. This method makes it possible to identify true dental defects that are indicative of growth disruptions.</p></div

Developing a new project: the impact of social change on health at the late Iron Age site of Non Ban Jak in Northeast Thailand

This paper introduces on-going research by presenting the original proposal for this work. This research seeks to combine archaeological and bioarchaeological analyses, as well as theoretical perspectives from these fields, to obtain an integrated and holistic perspective of social change and its effect on health in prehistory. This approach will be tested on the archaeological and human skeletal remains from the late Iron Age site of Non Bak Jak in northeast Thailand. Social organization prior to the advent of state society in mainland Southeast Asia has long been a focus of archaeological research. The Iron Age of northeast Thailand (420 BCE-500 CE) has received particular archaeological attention, as rapid social and technological change has been identified in this region during this period. These changes include increasing social complexity, which is often associated with inequality between social groups and deterioration of population health. In contrast, bioarchaeological research in northeast Thailand has largely focused on the periods prior to the Iron Age, leaving the biocultural consequences of these late social changes relatively less well understood. Excavations at Non Ban Jak, a moated settlement and residential burial site with two distinct mounds, have been undertaken from 2011 to 2017. These have provided a well-preserved skeletal sample, unusual for this period in Thailand, making it ideal for investigating health and social change. The project underway aims to explore how a putative rise in social inequality might have affected levels of physiological stress using the holistic approach presented. Social groupings will be identified through spatial analyses of grave wealth, burial practice and location in the Esri ArcGIS programme. This programme uses statistics to identify and explore the patterning and relatedness of spatial data. Dental enamel defects and long bone lengths will provide information on physiological disruptions in growth. It is expected that this work will inform on health and social organization during a period of rapid social transition

Social status and its relationship to non-specific stress at late Iron Age Non Ban Jak, Northeast Thailand

The rise of social inequality is a key development in human history and is linked to deteriorating health. These associated health impacts are poorly understood for Iron Age (420 B.C.–A. D. 500) northeast Thailand. To clarify this issue we investigate whether social status differences influence non-specific stress at the site of Non Ban Jak (A.D. 300–800), which comprises two separate burial mounds. These mounds are thought to represent the neighborhoods of two distinct social groups at the site. Quantitative analyses were used to explore differences in grave goods among the adults of Non Ban Jak (N = 47). Long bone lengths, ages at death, and linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) were examined to explore differences in non-specific stress on the basis of age, sex, burial mound, and mortuary phase. Results demonstrated that older adults of both sexes, males of all ages, and west mound individuals received greater grave good quantities and may therefore have been of higher social status. West mound individuals were taller and had a lower prevalence of LEH compared to those from the east mound. Although female LEH prevalence and mortality were reduced relative to males, decreasing stature over time and high neonatal mortality indicated greater female stress. Lower-status individuals may therefore have suffered increased stress relative to those of higher status. Artifactual and epigraphic evidence supports the suggestion of sex-and class-based status differences at Non Ban Jak, legitimized and perpetuated through the adoption of residential burial and new religious ideologies