This book is entirely devoted to the study of children's skeletons from archaeological and forensic contexts. It provides an extensive review of the osteological methods and theoretical concepts of their analysis. Non-adult skeletons provide a wealth of information on the physical and social life of the child from their growth, diet and age at death, to factors that expose them to trauma and disease at different stages of their lives. This book covers the factors that affect non-adult skeletal preservation; the assessment of their age, sex and ancestry; growth and development; infant and child mortality including infanticide; weaning ages and disease of dietary deficiency; skeletal pathology; personal identification and exposure to trauma from birth injuries, accidents and child abuse; providing insights for graduates and postgraduates in osteology, palaeopathology and forensic anthropology.

When it was published in 1996 Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia was the first book to examine the biology and lives of the prehistoric people of this region. Bringing together the most active researchers in late Pleistocene/Holocene Southeast Asian human osteology, the book deals with major approaches to studying human skeletal remains. Using analysis of the physical appearance of the region's past peoples, the first section explores issues such as the first inhabitants of the region, the evidence for subsequent migratory patterns (particularly between Southeast and Northeast Asia) and counter arguments centering on in situ microevolutionary change. This second section reconstructs the health of these people, in the context of major economic and demographic changes over time, including those caused by the adoption or intensification of agriculture. Written for archaeologists, bioarchaeologists and biological anthropologists, it is a fascinating insight into the bioarchaeology of this important region.

Over seventy per cent of the population in industrialized nations live in cities; soon, so will most of the world's population. This volume examines the impact of urban living on human health and biology. Cities pose numerous and diverse social and biological challenges to human populations which bear little resemblance to the forces that moulded human biology through millions of years of evolution. Urban populations in industrialized nations have distinctive patterns of behaviour, social stratification, stress, infectious disease, diet, activity and exposure to pollutants from years of industrialization. These features affect diverse aspects of human function including human nutrition, energy expenditure, growth and reproduction. This volume begins with an introduction to the history of urbanism and poverty, infectious disease, reproductive function, child health, nutrition, physical activity and psychosocial stress. The book will appeal to workers in urban planning, human biology, anthropology, preventative medicine, human ecology and related areas.

Olduvai is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world; indeed, the only Middle Pleistocene site of comparable importance is Choukoutien and Olduvai can show deposits far older. The site has produced a mass of material of the highest archaeological and palaeontology importance and in this first of five volumes Dr Leakey and his collaborators make their preliminary reports. The story of the excavations initiated by Dr Leakey in 1951 is well known. Their purpose was to locate and uncover a series of living-floors of early Hand-axe man and, if possible, of the preceding Olduwan culture. The discoveries were of striking and far-reaching importance. They included, besides a mass of tools and artefacts, small animal and human remains and the famous skull of Zinjanthropus boisei, the earliest tool-making man. Against this background Leakey and his collaborators discuss the geological evidence, its relation to the fauna and other fossil evidence, the problems of climatic sequence and the use of potassium-argon dating. The purpose of this volume is to provide a context in which the fossil human remains and the Stone Age cultural sequence at Olduvai can be studied.

On 15 August 1959 Dr L. S. B. Leakey announced the discovery, in the lowest level of Olduvai Gorge, of a new and beautifully preserved fossil cranium of a hominid, which he tentatively named Zinjanthropus boisei. For this second volume, Professor Tobias has undertaken a definitive analysis of the cranium. This is a most comprehensive study to be made on a hominid skull belonging to the early and mid-Pleistocene group of australopithecines. The fossilised skull provides a wealth of information on taxonomic status, way of life and age at death. To evaluate Zinjanthropus fully, the author has reviewed in detail the cranial and dental anatomy of all australopithecines from Tanzania and South Africa and has placed on record much valuable information about the group as a whole.

At Olduvai Gorge natural erosion exposed a deep series of superimposed geological beds containing rich artefact and fossil assemblages spanning the last 1.8 million years. The sire ot famous as a rsult of excavations conducted there since 1951 under the direction of Mary Leakey and her husband, the late Louis Leakey. This volume, written largely by Mary Leakey herself, is the last of the reports and records the archaeological finds in the upper part of the Olduvai sequence from excavations carried out from the end of 1968 until 1971. The period covered here is from about 1.2 to 0.4 million years ago and th efinds include artefacts and faunal remains excavated from sites in beds II, IV na the Masek beds. The volume follows on from the archaeological record in beds I and II published in volume 3 of the series.

Olduvai Groge is a valley in the Serengeti Plains at the western margin of the Eastern Rift Valley in northern Tanzania. The formations discussed in this volume, Beds I and II, were deposited in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene and have yielded large quantities of the remains of early man, in the form of bones and stone tools and evidence of the environment in which they lived. Bed I, in which remains of Australopithecus boisei and Homo habilis have been found, is firmly dated between 1.9 million years for the lowest level and 1.65 million years for a level below the top. This third volume describes the excavations. In Part I, starting with the lowest levels and devoting a chapter to each main level, Dr Leakey describes the actual process of excavation and the finding of the principal remains. In Part II, Dr Leakey describes the circumstances of the discovery of the hominid skeletal remains. These range from purposive excavation to accidental discovery while collecting small stones for mixing in concrete. Finally, mammalian bones, as tools and as food remains are discussed.

This new revised edition of African Civilizations re-examines the physical evidence for developing social complexity in Africa over the last six thousand years. Unlike the two previous editions, it is not confined to tropical Africa but considers the whole continent. Graham Connah focuses upon the archaeological research of two key aspects of complexity, urbanism and state formation, in ten main areas of Africa: Egypt, North Africa, Nubia, Ethiopia, the West African savanna, the West African forest, the East African coast and islands, the Zimbabwe Plateau, parts of Central Africa and South Africa. The book's main concern is to review the available evidence in its varied environmental settings, and to consider possible explanations of the developments that gave rise to it. Extensively illustrated, including new maps and plans, and offering an extended list of references, this is essential reading for students of archaeology, anthropology, African history, black studies and social geography.

While their health has suffered enormously because of the arrival of the Europeans, it is assumed that Aboriginal people enjoyed good health before 1788. Using data collected from all parts of the continent, this 1995 book studies the health of Australia's original inhabitants over 50,000 years. It represents the first continental survey of its kind and is the first to quantify and describe key aspects of Australian hunter-gatherer health. The book takes a theoretical approach to Upper Pleistocene regional epidemiology and presents empirical data of the health of late Pleistocene and Holocene populations. Major categories of disease described are: stress, osteoarthritis, fractures, congenital deformations, neoplasms and non-specific and treponemal infections. The author also describes surgical techniques used by Aboriginal people. Offering fresh insight into the study of Australian prehistory and Aboriginal culture, this book will be accessible to specialists and general readers alike. It illuminates the origins of human disease, and will fill a gap in our knowledge of health in the Australasian region.

Seasonality has effects on a wide range of human functions and activities, and is important in the understanding of human-environment relationships. In this volume, distinguished contributors including human biologists, anthropologists, physiologists and nutritionists consider many of the different ways in which seasonality influences human biology and behaviour. Topics addressed include the influence of seasonality on hominid evolution, seasonal climatic effects on human physiology, fertility and physical growth, seasonality in morbidity, mortality and nutritional state, and seasonal factors in food production, modernization and work organization in Third World economies. This book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in human biology, anthropology and nutrition.

Age-old ideas about the deserving and undeserving poor are still pervasive in our society. Stereotypes of the scrounger and the malingerer, and the widespread belief that much joblessness is voluntary, continue to constitute the ideological basis of conservative social policy on unemployment and poverty. In this study of unemployment in Belfast, Dr Howe successfully refutes some of the widely held myths about the black economy, the welfare benefit system and the so-called culture of dependency. This is a major ethnography of unemployment and the first community-based book on contemporary unemployment in the United Kingdom. It is an account of the social, psychological and material circumstances of working-class, long-term unemployed married men in both Catholic and Protestant communities in Belfast. Dr Howe shows how the experience of unemployment is shaped both by local factors and by factors that are more generally characteristic of industrial societies. These include the bureaucratic administration of welfare benefits, the exploitation of opportunities in the black economy and the conflict between those with and those without jobs.

Evolution of Human Behavior is the first text to synthesize and compare the major proposals for human behavioral evolution from an anthropological perspective. Ideal for courses in the evolution of human behavior, human evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, and biological anthropology, this unique volume reviews a wide array of approaches--including human behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, memetics, and gene-culture co-evolution--on how and why humans evolved behaviorally. Its overview of current and emerging theoretical practices and perspectives offers a novel resource for both students and practitioners.
Author Agustin Fuentes incorporates recent innovations in evolutionary theory with emerging perspectives from genomic approaches, the current fossil record, and ethnographic studies. He examines basic assumptions about why humans behave as they do, the facts of human evolution, patterns of evolutionary change in a global environmental-temporal context, and the interconnected roles of cooperation and conflict in human history. The net result is a text that moves toward a more holistic understanding of the patterns of human evolution and a more integrated perspective on the evolution of human behavior.
Features
*Accessible, student-friendly writing style offers a concise survey of human behavioral evolution for anthropology and psychology undergraduates
*Pedagogical aids--including summary charts and tables, suggested readings, and a glossary of key terms--enhance the text
*Provides extensive tabular charts comparing the components of the major perspectives and proposals in human behavioral evolution to aid students' understanding of the material
*Illustrative and contemporary examples of research in the area of human behavior engage students

Studies of brain evolution have moved rapidly in recent years, building on the pioneering research of Harry J. Jerison. This book provides state-of-the-art reviews of primate (including human) brain evolution. The volume is divided into two sections, the first offers new perspectives on the developmental, physiological, dietary, and behavioral correlates of brain enlargement. However, it has long been recognized that brains do not merely enlarge globally as they evolve, but that their cortical and internal organization also changes in a process known as reorganization. Species-specific adaptations therefore have neurological substrates that depend on more than just overall brain size. The second section explores these neurological underpinnings for the senses, adaptations, and cognitive abilities that are important for primates. With a prologue by Stephen J. Gould and an epilogue by Harry J. Jerison, this is an important new reference work for all those working on primate brain evolution.

Paleodemography is the field of enquiry that attempts to identify demographic parameters from past populations (usually skeletal samples) derived from archaeological contexts, and then to make interpretations regarding the health and well-being of those populations. However, paleodemographic theory relies on several assumptions that cannot easily be validated by the researcher, and if incorrect, can lead to large errors or biases. In this book, physical anthropologists, mathematical demographers and statisticians tackle these methodological issues for reconstructing demographic structure for skeletal samples. Topics discussed include how skeletal morphology is linked to chronological age, assessment of age from the skeleton, demographic models of mortality and their interpretation, and biostatistical approaches to age structure estimation from archaeological samples. This work will be of immense importance to anyone interested in paleodemography, including biological and physical anthropologists, demographers, geographers, evolutionary biologists and statisticians.

Animal-herding (pastoralism) is a subsistence strategy that is practised by populations of low-producing ecosystems worldwide. Increasingly, it is vanishing due to land pressure and ecological degradation, particularly in the developing world. While previous books have examined the social, cultural and economic dimensions of the pastoral way of life, there has been little systematic examination of the biology and health of pastoral groups. The Human Biology of Pastoral Populations fills this gap by drawing together our knowledge of the biology, population structure and ecology of herding populations. It investigates how pastoral populations adapt to limited and variable food availability, the implications of the herding way of life for reproductive patterns, population structure and genetic diversity and the impacts of ongoing social and ecological changes on the health and well-being of these populations. This volume will be of broad interest to scholars in anthropology, human biology, genetics and demography.

Latah, the Malayan hyperstartle pattern, has fascinated Western observers since the late nineteenth century and is widely regarded as a 'culture-bound syndrome'. Dr Winzeler critically reviews the literature on the subject, and presents new ethnographic information based on his own fieldwork in Malaya and Borneo. He considers the biological and psychological hypotheses that have been proposed to account for latah, and explains the ways in which local people understand it. Arguing that latah has specific social functions, he concludes that it is not appropriate to regard it as an 'illness' or 'syndrome'.

This journal of European ethnology presents articles and reviews by international scholars on ethnicity and culture in Europe. This issue includes the writings on the commercialization of childhood; killing in the name of the Lord; and political protest and snobbery.

This special symposium volume of the SSHB explores the biological effects of human isolation and migration, and how the situations to which they give rise help to elucidate a variety of biological problems, ranging from evolutionary change to disease etiology. The majority of the case studies presented here are by Asian investigators, and provide a uniquely accessible source of information. Besides documenting the results, the book illustrates the different methods employed in such studies. It will be invaluable to those contemplating similar investigations elsewhere, and will be of interest to researchers in a range of disciplines including epidemiology, clinical medicine, demography, anthropology, genetics and evolutionary biology.

An appreciation of the genetic and environmental determinants of tooth size is fundamental to an understanding of the metric variation of teeth in humans. Thus, besides imparting a sound knowledge of the theories of dental inheritance, development and evolution, this book has an important role in demonstrating the diverse practical applications of odontometrics. A particular feature of the book is the inclusion of numerous tables which bring together a vast body of information on tooth size in different population groups. Students of oral biology, orthodontics, physical anthropology, human biology, forensic science and archaeology will find this work of great value as a text and reference source. As Professor Phillip Tobias writes in the foreword, 'The breadth of Dr Kieser's reading, and his mastery of a staggering array of anthropological, evolutionary, embryological, orthodontic and statistical concepts shine through every page of this work'.

The Latina/o population in the United States has become the largest minority group in the nation. Latinas/os are a mosaic of people, representing different nationalities and religions as well as different levels of education and income. This edited volume uses a multidisciplinary approach to document how Latinas and Latinos have changed and continue to change the face of America. It also includes critical methodological and theoretical information related to the study of the Latino/a population in the United States.

This book narrates the story of human biological and cultural evolution, from the earliest beginnings of our zoological family Hominidae, through the emergence of Homo sapiens, to the Agricultural Revolution. It concludes with a brief overview of the subsequent diversification of cultural and technological traditions in all the areas our species inhabits. A particular focus is on the pattern of events/innovations in human biological and cultural evolution, which have tended not to proceed in lockstep. Prior to the emergence of Homo sapiens innovations of this kind were generally sporadic, and rare; since that event their frequency has been steadily increasing. Tattersall draws on his own research to demonstrate that the history of humankind has not been one of a singleminded struggle from primitiveness to perfection, but has rather been one of trial and error, of evolutionary experimentation that as often ended in failure as in success. In the process he thoroughly examines both the fossil and the archaeological records that document our human prehistory. All human beings have a thirst to know where they came from, whether as individuals or as a species. This book responds to this desire for knowledge, whether in the classroom where the subject has a place in history as well as in science curricula or in more informal contexts. There currently exist no high school texts or supplemental readings that treat this subject in an authoritative manner, written by a practicing scientist in the field. This volume will have the advantage of being written by one whose opinions are first hand, and conditioned by direct familiarity with the original evidence.

In the last decade, a dramatic increase in overweight individuals and obesity has been reported in both developed and underdeveloped countries. Noncommunicable diseases, as well as type 2 diabetes and obesity are one of the most common causes of long-term disability, especially cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is still the leading cause of death in the industrialised world. Accumulating evidence over the last 50 years indicates that exercise may postpone or counteract, at least partially, the debilitating consequences of CVD and prevent complications provoked by the inactive state. Today, we can conclude that lack of physical activity or lack of a physically active lifestyle is clearly an overall high health risk. Societal indicators of reductions in human energy expenditure and increases in sedentary behavior during the past several decades are particularly striking. By the year 2000, the human race reached a sort of historical landmark; for the first time in human evolution, the number of adults with excess weight surpassed the number of those who were underweight. Excess adiposity/body weight is now widely recognised as one of today's leading health threats. Although obesity during childhood is indicated as a complex disorder, the prevalence of overweight and obese children is continually growing globally. This has become a concern to public health, as overweight and obesity during childhood tracks into adulthood and is associated with short- and long-term adverse health outcomes. A number of research articles in this monograph provide interesting and innovating practical suggestions, applications, and directions for some future research. The researched phenomena include: the first physical movements of life recognised as fetal movements and a mother's physiological states; potential differences in cardiovascular fitness between schoolchildren from urban and rural areas, with respect to their age and gender; evidence for the 5-year regular sport exercise effect of on muscle contractile properties in children; trend changes of physical abilities of school children; the effects of linear and change-of-direction speed training methods on the sprint performance of young adults; the relationship between sports experience and performance scores on a health-related physical fitness test among female university freshmen; the application of sports activities that improve the level of upper extremity motor abilities in people with spinal cord injuries; theoretical frameworks supporting learning-inclusive environment details; basic approaches for the inclusion of people with disabilities in community recreation programs; the relation between health and fitness characteristics by Special Olympic athletes competing as cross-country skiers; the relations between physical activity and/or physical exercise and body composition characteristics in the working-age population of both genders; evidence- based information about the effects of sedentary behavior on physiological function in humans; new facts resulting from numerous clinical and epidemiological studies about the effects of physical activity, and reducing the risk of breast and prostate cancer; and information about the connection between physical activity and cognition across the human life span. Finally, the last chapter examines the opinion of the elderly about the impact of physical activity in some segments concerning the quality of life of people living in the Third Age.

A pioneering piece of ethnohistory, The Hollow Crown uses a variety of interdisciplinary means to reconstruct the sociocultural history of a warrior polity in south India between the fourteenth and the twentieth centuries. Central to the book is the belief that comparative sociology has systematically denied the importance of the Indian state and obscured the political basis of Indian society by representing caste as fundamentally a religious system. In reconstructing the history of the polity that eventually became the colonial princely state of Pudukkottai, Dr Dirks therefore raises a whole series of issues concerning the methodologies of history and anthropology, the character of Tamil kingship and social organization, the relationship between politics and ritual, the impact of colonialism and 'modernization', and the dynamics of the whole last millennium of south Indian history.

A detailed study of the political organization in an important area of Tanzania shortly before Independence. Unyamwezi covers 35,000 square miles and has a population of 400,000. Dr Abrahams outlines the social and economic framework and examines the origins of the modern political system. He then discusses the internal organization of Nyamwezi chiefdoms and villages and the emergence of national politics. The theoretical and comparative implications of the study, which is based on extensive field work in the area, are also considered.

Dr Schildkrout probes questions of ethnicity, religion, cultural change and the African national identity in this study of the immigrant community of Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city. She compares first- and second-generation immigrants - those born in their rural homelands, and those born in Ghana - in terms of their orientation to politics, to kinship, and to community participation. The author explores the meaning of ethnic identity for rural- and urban-born immigrants, and establishes certain generalizations about ethnicity based on these comparisons. The book discusses the issues of migration, particularly interregional migration; the position of the 'stranger'; questions of cultural change in modern Africa; the 'generational gap' in the African context; the questions of citizenship and national identity in Africa today, and the emergence of new identities, regional, national and religious. This book has importance not only as a local case study that gives a full description of West African urban life, but also as a theoretical reconsideration of ethnicity that has application outside the African context.