Book review: Primate Craniofacial Function and Biolog

Constantino, Paul J

Marshall University

Marshall UniversityMarshall Digital ScholarBiological Sciences Faculty Research Biological SciencesSummer 3-2010Primate Craniofacial Function and BiologyPaul J. ConstantinoBiological Sciences, paulconstantino@gmail.comFollow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/bio_sciences_facultyPart of the Biological and Physical Anthropology CommonsThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Biological Sciences at Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion inBiological Sciences Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contactzhangj@marshall.edu, martj@marshall.edu.Recommended CitationConstantino PJ. Review of Primate Craniofacial Function and Biology. Edited by Christopher J. Vinyard, Matthew J. Ravosa, andChristine E. Wall. New York: Springer. 2008. 496pp. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 142:336-337.focus on Britain, this handbook draws together a greatdeal of information in a single volume. I will likely use itin my future bioarchaeology courses.BRENDA J. BAKERCenter for Bioarchaeological ResearchSchool of Human Evolution and Social ChangeArizona State UniversityTempe, ArizonaDOI 10.1002/ajpa.21216Published online 27 October 2009 in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com).PRIMATE CRANIOFACIAL FUNCTION AND BIOLOGY. By ChristopherJ. Vinyard, Matthew J. Ravosa, and Christine E. Wall.New York: Springer. 2008. 496 pp. ISBN 978-0-387-76584-6. $159.00 (hardcover).Edited books resulting from conference symposiumscan be hit or miss. Some, such as Frederick Grine’s(1988) ‘‘Evolutionary History of the ‘Robust’ Australopi-thecines,’’ become classics in the field. Others seem morelike a collection of ideas that have been published else-where in one form or another or a hodgepodge of worksin progress that lack cohesiveness and leave the readerwithout any real sense of the symposium’s purpose orgoals. I was pleased to discover that ‘‘Primate Craniofa-cial Function and Biology’’ is a ‘‘hit.’’ This volume inhonor of Dr. William L. Hylander is full of insightfulanalyses that leave no doubt as to the vitality ofresearch on primate skull function. It also does a com-mendable job of highlighting the importance ofHylander’s work as a foundation for current and futureresearch in this area.The breadth of cutting-edge methodologicalapproaches presented in this volume make it a valua-ble introduction to the study of primate skull func-tional morphology. These include studies of bonestrain and muscle recruitment patterns (both corner-stones of Hylander’s own work), muscle scaling pat-terns, bone microstructure and material properties,and food mechanical properties and their relationshipto tooth and jaw morphology. There are modelingstudies as well as in vivo and in vitro research, andthe study subjects encompass a diversity of taxaincluding prosimians, New World monkeys, Old Worldmonkeys, and fossil hominins. There are even studiesof nonprimates such as mice, rabbits, pigs, camelids,and marsupials, all of which present interesting com-parative tests for functional hypotheses of particularprimate features. For example, anthropoid primates,pigs, and camelids all fuse their mandibular symphy-ses. However, strain gauge experiments conducted byHerring et al. (pigs, Chapter 2) and Williams et al.(camelids, Chapter 3) conclude that symphyseal fusionlikely occurred for a different reason in primates(wishboning or lateral transverse bending) than it didin either of the other groups.Given that many of the authors worked closely withHylander at one time or another, it is not surprisingthat only one chapter (Simons, Chapter 18) does notfocus on the masticatory system. This may be disap-pointing to those wanting a more holistic view of primateskull function, but I do not feel that it is a significantdetraction. The book is still full of interesting andthought-provoking research, albeit with a slightly morelimited scope than the title suggests.Useful introductions start each of the five majorsections providing clear and concise summaries of theresearch in the subsequent pages. However, someadditional effort on the part of the editors to drawconnections between the studies in each section, andpossibly between sections, would have been valuable.For example, Wang et al. (Chapter 8) suggest thatfused cranial sutures allow the transfer of strainswhereas unfused (patent) sutures do not, and thisagrees with earlier chapters on the mandibular sym-physis in which symphyseal fusion appears to allowthe transfer of strains from balancing-side muscleaction. Drawing such connections would help readerssynthesize research from individual chapters andcome away with a better understanding of the fieldas a whole.In general, the figures are well selected and add tothe reader’s understanding of the research being pre-sented. However, there are occasional exceptions. Thefigures in the Ross chapter (Chapter 4) have separatelines to indicate the magnitude and direction of themaximum principal strains for chewing on both theleft side and right sides, but it is impossible to distin-guish between the lines for the left and right sides inthe figures. I must surmise that these figures wereoriginally in color and the transfer to black and whiteresulted in the loss of this important information,although even varying the grayscale of the two lineslikely would have been enough to make the distinc-tion. Figure 13.2 in the Dechow et al. chapter(Chapter 13) is another point of confusion. Four boxesare depicted to show differences in directional proper-ties, but the three boxes that are supposed to showorthotropy, transverse isotropy, and isotropy allappear to show orthotropy. Fortunately, the descrip-tion in the caption is well written and one can stillascertain the meaning of these terms.These minor points aside, I was repeatedlyimpressed with the quality of the work presentedhere, and there are very few chapters from which Idid not learn something new. The diversity and qual-ity of research in this book make it a particularlyuseful resource for new Ph.D. students interested inprimate craniofacial biology as they struggle to iden-tify suitable dissertation topics, although the fairlyhigh price tag will likely keep most students frompurchasing their own copies. This book would also bevaluable for professors and researchers who simplywant to stay up to date on the myriad approachescurrently being undertaken to understand primateskull function, particularly if they have a special in-terest in the masticatory system. For someone not ac-customed to reading about biomechanics, the terminol-ogy can get a bit dense in places, but in general the336 BOOK REVIEWSAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropologyauthors do an admirable job defining technical terms,and the index is useful and quite complete.This book is a fitting tribute to Hylander’s pioneer-ing and influential research. It quickly becomes clearas one moves from one article to the next thatHylander’s influence on this field will be felt for manyyears to come. To the authors’ (and editors’) credit,Hylander’s contributions are often mentioned specifi-cally either in the body of the text or in the acknowl-edgments of each chapter. For example, Williams et al.(Chapter 3) provide an excellent summary ofHylander’s work on anthropoid symphyseal fusion. Inaddition, Chapter 1 by Schmitt et al. recountsHylander’s role in answering Sherwood Washburn’scall for an experimental approach in physical anthro-pology.The symposium on which this volume is based tookplace at the 2005 meetings of the American Associationof Physical Anthropologists. That was the 75th anniver-sary of the AAPA, and I recall a poster from those samemeetings in which over 44% of American field primatolo-gists were found to be academic descendants of Wash-burn. It is clear from this book that Bill Hylander hashad an equally profound influence on the study of pri-mate skull function.PAUL J. CONSTANTINOCenter for the Advanced Study of Hominid PaleobiologyDepartment of AnthropologyThe George Washington UniversityWashington, DCDOI 10.1002/ajpa.21263Published online 12 March 2010 in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com).BONES AND OCHRE: THE CURIOUS AFTERLIFE OF THE REDLADY OF PAVILAND. By Marianne Sommer. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press. 2007. 398 pp. ISBN0-674-02499-0. $42.00 (hardcover).The Red Lady of Paviland is a partial human skeleton,missing its skull, covered in red ochre and associated witha number of possible grave goods (periwinkle shells, ivoryrods, and rings). It was excavated in 1823 by WilliamBuckland at Paviland Cave, or Goat’s Hole, in northernWales. Despite its common appellation, it is an anatomi-cally modern male, now thought to be a Gravettian burial.In this book, Marianne Sommer, a historian of science,presents the ‘‘biography of a scientific object’’ (p. 3). Shedoes not just review the history of research at PavilandCave, but also the role of the skeleton in the constructionand reconstruction of ideas about early human history.She discusses three stages in the production of this knowl-edge: 1) the initial discovery of the skeleton by WilliamBuckland; 2) its reinterpretation by William Sollas in theearly twentieth century, in the light of growing evidenceof human biological and cultural evolution; and 3) the latetwentieth century re-examination of the site by StephenAldhouse-Green and his colleagues.Sommer states that what was initially importantabout the Red Lady was its status as the first genuinelyfossil human skeleton discovered by a scientist. But itsdiscoverer, William Buckland (1784–1856), was not youraverage scientist. He was the first Reader in Geologyand Mineralogy at Oxford University, but he was also anAnglican churchman and eventually the Dean of West-minster. As such, he was the authority to whom amateurcollectors of fossils and what we now recognize as Palae-olithic artifacts deferred. Since he believed in a literalbiblical interpretation of history, one could make a rea-sonable case that he single-handedly delayed the scien-tific establishment of human antiquity in the BritishIsles by at least thirty years. For him, any humanremains or artifacts associated with so-called extinct ani-mals had to date from the Diluvial Period, that of Noah’sflood, or immediately before it. On the positive side,Buckland was one of the first to emphasize the forma-tional processes behind the fossil bones recovered fromcaves and carried out experiments with African hyenasto establish their role in accumulating bones. He usedthese studies to dismiss the possibility that humans hada role in the accumulation of any Pleistocene bones.For Buckland, the Paviland burial represented a genu-ine archaeological site. As a result, it had to be quiterecent. He originally interpreted the skeleton as that of atax collector, surrounded by his ivory receipts. Eventually,he described it as that of a female and the ochre as a ‘‘scar-let letter’’ identifying the woman as a prostitute or witch.He stressed its burial in a remote, forbidden place, nearan ancient Romano-British camp. In this immortal phrasefrom his Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823), Buckland concludedthat the camp ‘‘seems to throw much light on the charac-ter and date of the woman under consideration; and what-ever may have been her occupation, the vicinity of a campwould afford a motive for residence, as well as the meansof subsistence’’ (cited on p. 65). This is the picture thatmost historians of Palaeolithic research present of thisfind. It was a genuine fossil human burial misinterpretedby its discoverer.Did the reinterpretation of the site and skeleton byWilliam Sollas (1849–1936) offer a better answer? Sollas,one of Buckland’s successors to the Chair of Geology atOxford, was aware of the ever-increasing evidence offossil humans and their artifacts. He concluded thatthe Red Lady was an Aurignacian male burial, a Cro-Magnon just like those that had been recovered in theDordogne a few decades before. This is much closer tothe modern interpretation but still had a number ofproblems. He fit the skeleton into a racial theory ofhumankind but eventually accepted that it representedone of the possible ancestors of modern Europeans.The third study discussed is that of a team of research-ers led by Stephen Aldhouse-Green of the University ofWales. This began in 1995 and led to a multidisciplinarymonograph, published in 2000. The goal of their work wasto re-examine the finding and to produce a ‘‘definitivereport’’ on the site. They wanted to conduct new excava-tions but discovered that the relevant deposits had allbeen removed during earlier work or by subsequent scour-ing of the cave by the sea. But by examining the original337BOOK REVIEWSAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology

English

Primate Craniofacial Function and Biology

Collection Of Biostatistics Research Archive

Marshall UniversityMarshall Digital ScholarBiological Sciences Faculty Research Biological Sciences3-1-2010Primate Craniofacial Function and BiologyPaul J. ConstantinoBiological Sciences, paulconstantino@gmail.comFollow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/bio_sciences_facultyPart of the Biological and Physical Anthropology CommonsThis Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Biological Sciences at Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion inBiological Sciences Faculty Research by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contactzhangj@marshall.edu.Recommended CitationConstantino PJ. Review of Primate Craniofacial Function and Biology. Edited by Christopher J. Vinyard, Matthew J. Ravosa, andChristine E. Wall. New York: Springer. 2008. 496pp. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 142:336-337.focus on Britain, this handbook draws together a greatdeal of information in a single volume. I will likely use itin my future bioarchaeology courses.BRENDA J. BAKERCenter for Bioarchaeological ResearchSchool of Human Evolution and Social ChangeArizona State UniversityTempe, ArizonaDOI 10.1002/ajpa.21216Published online 27 October 2009 in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com).PRIMATE CRANIOFACIAL FUNCTION AND BIOLOGY. By ChristopherJ. Vinyard, Matthew J. Ravosa, and Christine E. Wall.New York: Springer. 2008. 496 pp. ISBN 978-0-387-76584-6. $159.00 (hardcover).Edited books resulting from conference symposiumscan be hit or miss. Some, such as Frederick Grine’s(1988) ‘‘Evolutionary History of the ‘Robust’ Australopi-thecines,’’ become classics in the ﬁeld. Others seem morelike a collection of ideas that have been published else-where in one form or another or a hodgepodge of worksin progress that lack cohesiveness and leave the readerwithout any real sense of the symposium’s purpose orgoals. I was pleased to discover that ‘‘Primate Craniofa-cial Function and Biology’’ is a ‘‘hit.’’ This volume inhonor of Dr. William L. Hylander is full of insightfulanalyses that leave no doubt as to the vitality ofresearch on primate skull function. It also does a com-mendable job of highlighting the importance ofHylander’s work as a foundation for current and futureresearch in this area.The breadth of cutting-edge methodologicalapproaches presented in this volume make it a valua-ble introduction to the study of primate skull func-tional morphology. These include studies of bonestrain and muscle recruitment patterns (both corner-stones of Hylander’s own work), muscle scaling pat-terns, bone microstructure and material properties,and food mechanical properties and their relationshipto tooth and jaw morphology. There are modelingstudies as well as in vivo and in vitro research, andthe study subjects encompass a diversity of taxaincluding prosimians, New World monkeys, Old Worldmonkeys, and fossil hominins. There are even studiesof nonprimates such as mice, rabbits, pigs, camelids,and marsupials, all of which present interesting com-parative tests for functional hypotheses of particularprimate features. For example, anthropoid primates,pigs, and camelids all fuse their mandibular symphy-ses. However, strain gauge experiments conducted byHerring et al. (pigs, Chapter 2) and Williams et al.(camelids, Chapter 3) conclude that symphyseal fusionlikely occurred for a different reason in primates(wishboning or lateral transverse bending) than it didin either of the other groups.Given that many of the authors worked closely withHylander at one time or another, it is not surprisingthat only one chapter (Simons, Chapter 18) does notfocus on the masticatory system. This may be disap-pointing to those wanting a more holistic view of primateskull function, but I do not feel that it is a signiﬁcantdetraction. The book is still full of interesting andthought-provoking research, albeit with a slightly morelimited scope than the title suggests.Useful introductions start each of the ﬁve majorsections providing clear and concise summaries of theresearch in the subsequent pages. However, someadditional effort on the part of the editors to drawconnections between the studies in each section, andpossibly between sections, would have been valuable.For example, Wang et al. (Chapter 8) suggest thatfused cranial sutures allow the transfer of strainswhereas unfused (patent) sutures do not, and thisagrees with earlier chapters on the mandibular sym-physis in which symphyseal fusion appears to allowthe transfer of strains from balancing-side muscleaction. Drawing such connections would help readerssynthesize research from individual chapters andcome away with a better understanding of the ﬁeldas a whole.In general, the ﬁgures are well selected and add tothe reader’s understanding of the research being pre-sented. However, there are occasional exceptions. Theﬁgures in the Ross chapter (Chapter 4) have separatelines to indicate the magnitude and direction of themaximum principal strains for chewing on both theleft side and right sides, but it is impossible to distin-guish between the lines for the left and right sides inthe ﬁgures. I must surmise that these ﬁgures wereoriginally in color and the transfer to black and whiteresulted in the loss of this important information,although even varying the grayscale of the two lineslikely would have been enough to make the distinc-tion. Figure 13.2 in the Dechow et al. chapter(Chapter 13) is another point of confusion. Four boxesare depicted to show differences in directional proper-ties, but the three boxes that are supposed to showorthotropy, transverse isotropy, and isotropy allappear to show orthotropy. Fortunately, the descrip-tion in the caption is well written and one can stillascertain the meaning of these terms.These minor points aside, I was repeatedlyimpressed with the quality of the work presentedhere, and there are very few chapters from which Idid not learn something new. The diversity and qual-ity of research in this book make it a particularlyuseful resource for new Ph.D. students interested inprimate craniofacial biology as they struggle to iden-tify suitable dissertation topics, although the fairlyhigh price tag will likely keep most students frompurchasing their own copies. This book would also bevaluable for professors and researchers who simplywant to stay up to date on the myriad approachescurrently being undertaken to understand primateskull function, particularly if they have a special in-terest in the masticatory system. For someone not ac-customed to reading about biomechanics, the terminol-ogy can get a bit dense in places, but in general the336 BOOK REVIEWSAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropologyauthors do an admirable job deﬁning technical terms,and the index is useful and quite complete.This book is a ﬁtting tribute to Hylander’s pioneer-ing and inﬂuential research. It quickly becomes clearas one moves from one article to the next thatHylander’s inﬂuence on this ﬁeld will be felt for manyyears to come. To the authors’ (and editors’) credit,Hylander’s contributions are often mentioned speciﬁ-cally either in the body of the text or in the acknowl-edgments of each chapter. For example, Williams et al.(Chapter 3) provide an excellent summary ofHylander’s work on anthropoid symphyseal fusion. Inaddition, Chapter 1 by Schmitt et al. recountsHylander’s role in answering Sherwood Washburn’scall for an experimental approach in physical anthro-pology.The symposium on which this volume is based tookplace at the 2005 meetings of the American Associationof Physical Anthropologists. That was the 75th anniver-sary of the AAPA, and I recall a poster from those samemeetings in which over 44% of American ﬁeld primatolo-gists were found to be academic descendants of Wash-burn. It is clear from this book that Bill Hylander hashad an equally profound inﬂuence on the study of pri-mate skull function.PAUL J. CONSTANTINOCenter for the Advanced Study of Hominid PaleobiologyDepartment of AnthropologyThe George Washington UniversityWashington, DCDOI 10.1002/ajpa.21263Published online 12 March 2010 in Wiley InterScience(www.interscience.wiley.com).BONES AND OCHRE: THE CURIOUS AFTERLIFE OF THE REDLADY OF PAVILAND. By Marianne Sommer. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press. 2007. 398 pp. ISBN0-674-02499-0. $42.00 (hardcover).The Red Lady of Paviland is a partial human skeleton,missing its skull, covered in red ochre and associated witha number of possible grave goods (periwinkle shells, ivoryrods, and rings). It was excavated in 1823 by WilliamBuckland at Paviland Cave, or Goat’s Hole, in northernWales. Despite its common appellation, it is an anatomi-cally modern male, now thought to be a Gravettian burial.In this book, Marianne Sommer, a historian of science,presents the ‘‘biography of a scientiﬁc object’’ (p. 3). Shedoes not just review the history of research at PavilandCave, but also the role of the skeleton in the constructionand reconstruction of ideas about early human history.She discusses three stages in the production of this knowl-edge: 1) the initial discovery of the skeleton by WilliamBuckland; 2) its reinterpretation by William Sollas in theearly twentieth century, in the light of growing evidenceof human biological and cultural evolution; and 3) the latetwentieth century re-examination of the site by StephenAldhouse-Green and his colleagues.Sommer states that what was initially importantabout the Red Lady was its status as the ﬁrst genuinelyfossil human skeleton discovered by a scientist. But itsdiscoverer, William Buckland (1784–1856), was not youraverage scientist. He was the ﬁrst Reader in Geologyand Mineralogy at Oxford University, but he was also anAnglican churchman and eventually the Dean of West-minster. As such, he was the authority to whom amateurcollectors of fossils and what we now recognize as Palae-olithic artifacts deferred. Since he believed in a literalbiblical interpretation of history, one could make a rea-sonable case that he single-handedly delayed the scien-tiﬁc establishment of human antiquity in the BritishIsles by at least thirty years. For him, any humanremains or artifacts associated with so-called extinct ani-mals had to date from the Diluvial Period, that of Noah’sﬂood, or immediately before it. On the positive side,Buckland was one of the ﬁrst to emphasize the forma-tional processes behind the fossil bones recovered fromcaves and carried out experiments with African hyenasto establish their role in accumulating bones. He usedthese studies to dismiss the possibility that humans hada role in the accumulation of any Pleistocene bones.For Buckland, the Paviland burial represented a genu-ine archaeological site. As a result, it had to be quiterecent. He originally interpreted the skeleton as that of atax collector, surrounded by his ivory receipts. Eventually,he described it as that of a female and the ochre as a ‘‘scar-let letter’’ identifying the woman as a prostitute or witch.He stressed its burial in a remote, forbidden place, nearan ancient Romano-British camp. In this immortal phrasefrom his Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823), Buckland concludedthat the camp ‘‘seems to throw much light on the charac-ter and date of the woman under consideration; and what-ever may have been her occupation, the vicinity of a campwould afford a motive for residence, as well as the meansof subsistence’’ (cited on p. 65). This is the picture thatmost historians of Palaeolithic research present of thisﬁnd. It was a genuine fossil human burial misinterpretedby its discoverer.Did the reinterpretation of the site and skeleton byWilliam Sollas (1849–1936) offer a better answer? Sollas,one of Buckland’s successors to the Chair of Geology atOxford, was aware of the ever-increasing evidence offossil humans and their artifacts. He concluded thatthe Red Lady was an Aurignacian male burial, a Cro-Magnon just like those that had been recovered in theDordogne a few decades before. This is much closer tothe modern interpretation but still had a number ofproblems. He ﬁt the skeleton into a racial theory ofhumankind but eventually accepted that it representedone of the possible ancestors of modern Europeans.The third study discussed is that of a team of research-ers led by Stephen Aldhouse-Green of the University ofWales. This began in 1995 and led to a multidisciplinarymonograph, published in 2000. The goal of their work wasto re-examine the ﬁnding and to produce a ‘‘deﬁnitivereport’’ on the site. They wanted to conduct new excava-tions but discovered that the relevant deposits had allbeen removed during earlier work or by subsequent scour-ing of the cave by the sea. But by examining the original337BOOK REVIEWSAmerican Journal of Physical Anthropology

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