Social arrangements. Kinship, descent and affinity in the mortuary architecture of Early Neolithic Britain and Ireland

This article reassesses the social significance of Early Neolithic chambered tombs. It critically evaluates inferences about social organization drawn from tomb architecture and interpretations of kinship based on aDNA analyses of human remains from tombs. Adopting the perspective that kinship is a multifaceted and ongoing field of practice, it argues that the arrangement of tomb chambers was related to the negotiation of Early Neolithic kinship. Drawing together inferences about biological relatedness from aDNA analyses with interpretations of chamber arrangements, it suggests that variation in the architectural arrangements and sequential modification of chambered tombs relates to different ways of negotiating aspects of kinship, particularly descent and affinity. It presents interpretations of how kinship was negotiated at Early Neolithic tombs in different regions of Britain and Ireland and concludes that it is increasingly possible to gauge pattern and diversity in Neolithic negotiations of kinship, descent and affinity by combining different strands of evidence, including architectural arrangement.

Identifying Blunt Force Traumatic Injury on Thermally Altered Remains: A Pilot Study Using Sus scrofa

In forensic scenarios involving homicide, human remains are often exposed to fire as a means of disposal and/or obscuring identity. Burning human remains can result in the concealment of traumatic injury, the creation of artifacts resembling injury, or the destruction of preexisting trauma. Since fire exposure can greatly influence trauma preservation, methods to differentiate trauma signatures from burning artifacts are necessary to conduct forensic analyses. Specifically, in the field of forensic anthropology, criteria to distinguish trauma from fire signatures on bone is inconsistent and sparse. This study aims to supplement current forensic anthropological literature by identifying criteria found to be the most diagnostic of fire damage or blunt force trauma. Using the skulls of 11 adult pigs (Sus scrofa), blunt force trauma was manually produced using a crowbar and flat-faced hammer. Three specimens received no impacts and were utilized as controls. All skulls were relocated to an outdoor, open-air fire where they were burned until a calcined state was achieved across all samples. Results from this experiment found that blunt force trauma signatures remained after burning and were identifiable in all samples where reassociation of fragments was possible. This study concludes that distinct patterns attributed to thermal fractures and blunt force fractures are identifiable, allowing for diagnostic criteria to be narrowed down for future analyses.

Human Remains Identification Using Micro-CT, Spectroscopic and A.I. Methods in Forensic Experimental Reconstruction of Dental Patterns After Concentrated Acid Significant Impact

(1) Human teeth are the most resilient tissues in the body. However, exposure to concentrated acids might lead to their obliteration, thus making human identification difficult. Teeth often contain dental restorations from materials that are even more resilient to acid impact. This paper introduces novel method of 3D reconstruction of dental patterns as a crucial step for digital identification with dental records.; (2) With combination of modern methods of Micro-Computed Tomography, Cone Beam Computed Tomography, Attenuated Total Reflection in conjunction with Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy and Artificial Intelligence Convolutional Neural Network algorithms, the paper presents the way of 3D dental pattern reconstruction and human remains identification. Research studies morphology of teeth, bone and dental materials (Amalgam, Composite, Glass-ionomer cement) under different periods of exposure to 75% sulfuric acid; (3) Results reveal significant volume loss in bone, enamel, dentine and as well glass-ionomer cement. Results also reveal significant resistance of composite and amalgam dental materials to sulfuric acid impact, thus serving as strong parts in the dental pattern mosaic. Paper also introduces probably first successful artificial intelligence application in automated forensic CBCT segmentation.; (4) Interdisciplinary cooperation utilizing mentioned technologies can solve problem of human remains identification with 3D reconstruction of dental patterns and their 2D projections over existing ante-mortem records.

The Walbrook skulls

Many disturbed burials, including the river-rolled crania known to archaeology as the Walbrook skulls, are dated to the period following the rebuilding of London after the Hadrianic fire. This rebuilding involved the construction of a new road on the north side of the city which may have connected London with a ford over the river Fleet near King’s Cross. The road was built over partly articulated human body parts, and subsequently attracted a cemetery that included instances of execution and corpse abuse. Hundreds of reworked human crania have been found in waterlogged contexts where this road bridged the Walbrook and at other locations in the Hadrianic city. Various ideas accounting for this evidence are reviewed. Drawing on ancient sources and ethnographic parallels it is suggested that some of the remains were war dead and the victims of retributive violence, subjected to post-mortem corpse abuse, denial of burial leading to body fragmentation, and dedication to watery places on liminal locations in necrophobic ritual. The intensification of such practices in Hadrianic London may have been occasioned by a war that destroyed the city c. AD 125/126. Some of the partially articulated human remains might even mark the site of a battlefield or execution ground.

Locating places for repatriated burial: A case study from Ngarrindjeri ruwe, South Australia

In this ingenious co-operative case study, archaeologists and Indigenous peoples use geophysical survey to scan suitable places for the reburial of repatriated human remains. The process is also building a procedure for the low impact and respectful research of early Indigenous burial locations.

Vertebrate Subfossil Localities in Taylorsville MetroPark, Montgomery County, Ohio, USA

Karst features in the Silurian dolomites of Taylorsville MetroPark (Dayton Metropolitan Area, Ohio, United States) were explored from 2017 to 2018 to identify sites of paleontological interest. Initial landscape surveys recovered 124 skeletal elements (from 12 sites) that were attributed to 17 vertebrate species—including evidence of such extirpated animals as bobcats (Lynx rufus) and rattlesnakes (Crotalus sp.). Of the 12 sites, 9 sites contained remains from the historical era and 3 sites contained much older remains (n = 17) that were radiocarbon dated to approximately 1,400 years before present (YBP). Human remains at one site, butchered bones at another, and artifacts from a third suggest a long period of pre-colonial human use of the area. The presence of rare taxa expands pre-historical species lists and confirms the coexistence of many previously undocumented taxa from the area during the late, pre-colonial, Holocene Epoch.