Canadian anthropologist in a tight squeeze

In order to do her exciting excavation of fossils in South Africa’s Rising Star cave complex, Marina Elliottmust squeeze into some very narrow passages. Researchers have already uncovered am astounding 1,800 fragments of bones and teeth from 15 individuals of Homo naledi, somehow related to our own species.

A cranial capacity the size of a large orange

Although they share many features with us, they are also very different, says Elliott: “They are quite a bit smaller than modern humans and they had a very, very tiny head. They had a cranial capacity about a third the size of a modern human, so about the size of a large orange.

“And the body below this little head is quite slim, very long limbs, quite a short trunk, but a real combination of features that we haven’t seen in any other early hominid species.”

A ‘treasure trove’ of fossils

The site is highly significant as a “veritable treasure trove” of material that is not encased in hard rock, but preserved in relatively soft material which means it can be relatively easily unearthed, relatively intact.

Cousins or more?

Beyond that, Elliott says finding these 15 individuals of all ages may change our understanding of human evolution. “We don’t know yet whether Homo naledi is on the human line or just a distant cousin, but what it does tell us is that the picture that we’ve been painting for many years is a bit more complicated than we thought at first.”

Marina Elliott got her PhD in biological anthropology at Simon Fraser University in western Canada. She was named one of the National Geographic Society’s 2016 Emerging Explorers. She is now South Africa’s Witwatersrand University. Results of her work were published in the current edition of theJournal of Human Evolution.
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Reference:

Desjardins, Lynn. 2016. “Canadian anthropologist in a tight squeeze”. Radio Canada International Net. Posted: August 5, 2016. Available online: http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2016/08/05/canadian-marina-elliott-homo-naledi-rising-star-cave-fossils/

Population boom preceded early farming

University of Utah anthropologists counted the number of carbon-dated artifacts at archaeological sites and concluded that a population boom and scarce food explain why people in eastern North America domesticated plants for the first time on the continent about 5,000 years ago.

"Domesticated plants and animals are part of our everyday lives, so much so that we take them for granted," says Brian Codding, senior author of the study published online August 2 by the British journal Royal Society Open Science. "But they represent a very unique thing in human history. They allowed for large numbers of people to live in one place. That ultimately set the stage for the emergence of civilization."

Graduate student Elic Weitzel, the study's first author, adds: "For most of human history, people lived off wild foods - whatever they could hunt or gather. It's only relatively recently that people made this switch to a very different method of acquiring their food. It's important to understand why that transition happened."

The study dealt not with a full-fledged agricultural economy, but with the earlier step of domestication, when early people in eastern North America first started growing plants they had harvested in the wild, namely, squash, sunflower, marshelder and a chenopod named pitseed goosefoot, a pseudocereal grain closely related to quinoa.

Codding, an assistant professor of anthropology, says at least 11 plant domestication events have been identified in world history, starting with wheat about 11,500 years ago in the Middle East. The eastern North American plant domestication event, which began around 5,000 years ago, was the ninth of those 11 events and came after a population boom 6,900 to 5,200 years ago, he adds.

For many years, two competing theories have sought to explain the cause of plant domestication in eastern North America: First, population growth and resulting food scarcity prompted people to grow foods on which they already foraged. Second, a theory called "niche construction" or "ecosystem engineering" that basically says intentional experimentation and management during times of plenty - and not immediate necessity - led people to manage and manipulate wild plants to increase their food supply.

"We argue that human populations significantly increased prior to plant domestication in eastern North America, suggesting that people are driven to domestication when populations outstrip the supply of wild foods," Weitzel says.

"The transition to domesticating food allowed human populations to increase drastically around the world and made our modern way of life possible," he adds. "People start living near the fields. Whenever you've got sedentary communities, they start to expand. Villages expand into cities. Once you have that, you have all sorts of social changes. We really don't see state-level society until domestication occurs."

When early North Americans first domesticated crops

The region of eastern North America covered by the study includes most of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas, and portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana.

"This is the region where these plant foods were domesticated from their wild variants," Weitzel says. "Everywhere else in North America, crops were imported from elsewhere," particularly Mexico and Central America.

Four indigenous plant species constitute what scientists call the Eastern Agricultural Complex, which people began to domesticate about 5,000 years ago.

Previous research shows specific domestication dates were 5,025 years ago for squash at an archaeological site named Phillips Spring in Missouri, 4,840 years ago for sunflower seeds domesticated at Hayes in Tennessee, 4,400 years ago for marshelder at the Napoleon Hollow site in Illinois, and 3,800 years ago for pitseed goosefoot found in large quantities at Riverton, Illinois, along with squash, sunflower and marshelder.

Three more recent sites also have been found to contain evidence of domestication of all four species: Kentucky's Cloudsplitter and Newt Kindigenash rockshelters, dated to 3,700 and 3,640 years ago, respectively, and the 3,400-year-old Marble Bluff site in Arkansas.

Sunflower and squash - including acorn and green and yellow summer squashes - remain important crops today, while marshelder and pitseed goosefoot are not (although the related quinoa is popular).

Deducing population swings from radiocarbon dates

"It's really difficult to arrive at measures of prehistoric populations. So archaeologists have struggled for a long time coming up with some way of quantifying population levels when we don't have historical records," Weitzel says.

"People have looked at the number of sites through time, the number of artifacts through time and some of the best work has looked at the effects of population growth," such as in the switch from a diet of tortoises to rabbits as population grew in the eastern Mediterranean during the past 50,000 years, he adds.

Codding says that in the past decade, archaeologists have expanded the use of radiocarbon-dates for artifacts to reconstruct prehistoric population histories. Weitzel says radiocarbon dates in the new study came from artifacts such as charcoal, nutshells and animal bones - all recorded in a database maintained by Canadian scientists.

The University of Utah anthropologists used these "summed radiocarbon dates" for 3,750 dated artifacts from eastern North America during the past 15,000 years.

"The assumption is that if you had more people, they left more stuff around that could be dated," Weitzel says. "So if you have more people, you conceivably should have more radiocarbon dates."

"We plotted the dates through time," namely, the number of radiocarbon dates from artifacts in every 100-year period for the past 15,000 years, he adds.

The analysis indicated six periods of significant population increase or decrease during that time, including one during which population nearly doubled in eastern North America starting about 6,900 years ago and continuing apace until 5,200 years ago - not long before plant domestication began, Codding says.

Codding notes that even though plant domestication meant "these people were producing food to feed themselves and their families, they're still hunting and foraging," eating turtles, fish, water fowl and deer, among other animals.

The other theory

Weitzel says the concept of niche construction is that people were harvesting wild plants, and "were able to get more food from certain plants." By manipulating the environment - such as transplanting wild plants or setting fires to create areas favorable for growth of wild food plants - they began "experimenting with these plants to see if they could grow them to be bigger or easier to collect and consume," he adds. "That kind of experimentation then leads to domestication."

Codding says: "The idea is that when times are good and people have plenty of food then they will experiment with plants. We say that doesn't provide an explanation for plant domestication in eastern North America." He believes the behavioral ecology explanation: increasing population and-or decreasing wild food resources led to plant domestication.
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2016. “Population boom preceded early farming”. EurekAlert. Posted: August 2, 2016. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-08/uou-pbp072816.php

The geologist who wanted to understand the Sami

While his scientific contemporaries were exhuming skulls from Sami graves to measure them, the Finnish geologist and amateur anthropologist Väinö Tanner tried to see the Skolt Sami through their own eyes.

A century ago, a Finnish geologist named Väinö Tanner was appointed by the government to explore the country’s northern reaches. Along the way, he gave himself a not-so-typical task: as he explored Lapland, he decided, he would try to understand its people, the Sami, as they understood themselves.

Today we would think nothing of this approach. But around the turn of the last century, when field scientists dressed in knickers and double-breasted jackets and used skull measurements as a way to classify different races, Tanner’s approach was positively radical.

“He was one of the first researchers who tried to understand Sami communities based on their own terms,” says historian Jukka Nyyssönen.

Nyyssönen is an associate professor at UiT the Arctic University of Norway, and is writing a book about Tanner. The Tromsø Museum has a large Tanner archive, including books, letters and photographs, along with other researchers’ descriptions of him.

Geologist and anthropologist

He was a contradictory man, Väinö Tanner. Educated as a geologist, self-appointed as an anthropologist. Concerned about race and simultaneously acting as a cheerleader for the Sami. A dilettante and yet deeply scientific.

“He managed to get the Sami to speak up, but it appears he lacked the people skills to have any lifelong friendships,” says Nyyssönen.

Born in 1881, the young Tanner built his research career at the time when researchers were in the midst of exploring the indigenous people of the northern regions.

It was a little by chance that Tanner came to be one of the researchers who knew the Skolt Sami the best.

Between 1924 and 1931 he was the state geologist in Pechenga, a Russian region in Pasvikdalen near Kirkenes that belonged to Finland at the time. His real job was supposed to be mapping bedrock and soils with an eye to exploiting mineral resources in the area.

But he had previously been head of two reindeer commissions in other Sami areas, which fueled his interest in the Sami way of life.

Twenty-five summers with the Sami

Much like other scientists of his day, he collected information about the Sami once he was in Pechenga. In this unfamiliar landscape he hired Eastern Sami as helpers, and reportedly discovered that the population was not nearly as drunken and degenerate as it had been portrayed —at least according to an online exhibit from the Finnmark County Library.

In total, he spent 25 summers among the Skolt Sami, or Eastern Sami as they are often called today.

This group has traditionally lived in the border areas between Norway, Finland and Russia. It has its own language and a culture that differs from the North Sami. The Eastern Sami use the Cyrillic alphabet and belong to the Russian Orthodox Church.

Today, this group of indigenous people is almost gone. There are about 600 Eastern Sami in Finland and 250 in Russia. In Norway there are very few left, possibly just 150, according to the Finnmark County Library exhibit.

Racial research

In the early 1900s, some researchers were more interested in measuring the body parts of indigenous people than learning about their way of life.

Race researchers measured the shape of skulls and used these measurements to come to conclusions about how intelligent or developed different ethnic groups were.

Skolt Lapps were considered to be at the bottom of the ladder.

One legacy of this research is a large collection of skulls that for many years was housed at the University of Oslo. Researchers removed the skulls from Sami graves in the service of racial research at the turn of the last century. They were finally reinterred in 2011, at the request of the Orthodox Church in Norway.

Tanner, in contrast, came home from his time in northern Finland with an elaborate description of Sami Siida system, which regulates everything from homes and families’ right to fishing grounds to legal disputes. He saw this system as the Sami’s rational adaptation to their natural environment.

Children of nature

Tanner was nevertheless a man of his time, a time when the Sami were seen as inferior to Finns and Norwegians.

His accounts of the Sami reflected some of that feeling. On the one hand he argued in support of their way of life, while on the other hand he would also correct his own informants.

He, the expert, would admonish these children of nature about how they should live. He thought they should be partially nomadic, and he prized reindeer husbandry, even though only a few Skolt Sami were reindeer herders, and herding was a fairly new occupation among the East Sami.

A comprehensive book still in use

But he was also occupied by racial differences, and his book about the Skolt Sami has descriptions of their physical characteristics.

Nevertheless, Tanner was not quite as bad as other scientists of his day, Nyyssönen says.

“Unlike others, he did not believe that race decided a person’s place in the world forever. He believed that Skolt Sami had the opportunity to improve themselves,” Nyyssönen said.

While Tanner’s efforts were not widely acclaimed by his peers, later academics recognized the value of Tanner’s work among the Sami. Despite some questionable theories and a little messy presentation, Tanner’s book, “Antropogeografiska studier inom Petsamoområdet: 1. Skoltlapparna” provides among the most comprehensive overviews of Skolt Sami traditions.

His book, published in 1929, is still read today.
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Reference:

Bazilchuk, Nancy. 2016. “The geologist who wanted to understand the Sami”. Science Nordic. Posted: August 1, 2016. Available online: http://sciencenordic.com/geologist-who-wanted-understand-sami

How To Use Ethnographic Research To Help Your Business

As the president and CEO of a company that produces software-enabled solutions for other businesses, one of my biggest goals is to design products that create a compelling user experience. One strategy that I’ve found vital to achieve this goal, to which I directly attribute my company’s success, is the use of ethnographic research.

Stemming from anthropology, ethnographic research is the study of a something — in this case a business — in its own environment. My company uses it to meet with clients face-to-face and observe them in their normal environment. This allows us to view the real relationships between the business and its own clients, and as a byproduct, what the products or services they’re providing need to succeed.

Ethnographic research is without a doubt the largest part of achieving our user experience (UX) goals. However, it also can work for other types of businesses, whether you’re selling software like us, doing digital marketing, or offering a product like baby clothes.

How Ethnographic Research Can Help Your Business

My company UM Technologies is not the pioneer of this strategy. As Intel Research’s anthropologist Ken Anderson said, when he summed up the use of ethnographic research inHarvard Business Review, “Our goal is to see people’s behavior on their terms, not ours. While this observational method may appear inefficient, it enlightens us about the context in which customers would use a new product and the meaning that product might hold in their lives.”

An example of this in action: My firm completed work for a utility company’s platform in a market that had no existing systems to model from. We based our initial design on user observation and modified this based on user feedback about what features were important to them for running the business. The result was a focus on triggering alarms when things went wrong, without the need to review when things ran properly. Without having observed its natural business environment, we would not have been able to know what the company needed or been able to build a design tailored to the business.

We’ve found ethnographic research when seeking UX solutions powerful, and so can you. The following are important guidelines for incorporating this type of research into your business plan.

Pinpoint The Actual Needs Of The Business

By viewing a company’s business-client relationships in real time, the actual needs of the business can surface — not just the wants. Sometimes, too much energy is placed on a business’s wants instead of what product or services their customers actually need.

Wants are usually addressed during conferences or internal meetings — this could be the idea of improving the product, which is mostly based on customer interactions. To find the real needs of the business, observe how their customers react to the business — either by watching the sales people or client services staff. The real needs of the customer, and consequently the business, will emerge.

For us, viewing the utility company it in its natural environment helped us figure out what they actually needed — rather than what they said they wanted.

Understand The True Client

Businesses spend a lot of energy trying to understand what they perceive are the optimal clients. Although you can learn from objective data, nothing pushes along the client discovery process more than observing a customer talking with a client services person.

When observing the client service employees at the utility company, we quickly realized that some were not asking a few basic protocol discovery questions. Discovering this not only helped the utility company itself, but a few answers to these missing questions helped us improve the software we eventually developed.

A business can learn a lot during this observation — a core tenant of ethnographic research — and the lessons are absorbed more quickly than time-consuming, data-based studies.

Predict Design Through A Business’s Natural Flow

The most important takeaway of ethnographic research is its ability to predict future design elements of your product or services model, or the entire business itself. As you observe the reaction of a client and business in real time, you’ll also observe trends that are naturally developing within the industry.

If you can recognize these movements quickly, it will help you freshen your product or services and give you a jump on the competition.

The most successful and sustainable businesses have deep thinkers throughout their organization, ones who master both long-term strategy and everyday tactics. Using ethnographic research as part of this can help you stay ahead of the competition and create a truly valuable product or service.
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Reference:

Stiner, Scott. 2016. “How To Use Ethnographic Research To Help Your Business”. Forbes. Posted: June 1, 2016. Available online: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2016/06/01/how-to-use-ethnographic-research-to-help-your-business/#78a8dfe269ec

Hundreds of years later, teeth tell the story of people who didn't get enough sunshine

Researchers at McMaster University have found a rich new record of vitamin D deficiency, one that resides in the teeth of every person and remains viable for hundreds of years or more.

The team of anthropologists has determined that looking into the microscopic structure of teeth opens a window into the lives and challenges of people who lived hundreds of years ago, and whose only record is their skeletal remains.

Their paper, published online today in the Journal of Archaeological Science, establishes that when the body is deprived of vitamin D, permanent microscopic abnormalities form in the layers of dentin, the tooth structure under the enamel, creating an ongoing record that can later be read like the rings of a tree.

"The layers store what happens as teeth grow," says author Lori D'Ortenzio, a PhD candidate in Anthropology at McMaster.

"We all know the importance of vitamin D, but until now we did not have such a clear way of measuring exactly what happened to people, and when."

The discovery is significant, since it can yield valuable information about vitamin D deficiency - also known as rickets - which continues to be a serious public health issue, affecting some 1 billion people worldwide. Most cases of rickets are caused by a lack of sun exposure, with effects that can include pain, bone deformities and failure to achieve or maintain adequate bone levels.

"If we can properly understand past changes in deficiency levels, we can evaluate where we currently are and move forward," says author Megan Brickley, a professor of Anthropology at McMaster who holds the Canada Research Chair in the Bioarchaeology of Human Disease.

Until now, scientists trying to understand historical patterns in vitamin D deficiency have had to use bones, which are problematic sources of such information. In life, bone material is constantly being remodelled, obscuring details of prior damage. After death, bones interact with soil and break down.

Dentin is not remodelled, and dental enamel - much harder than bone - protects the dentin long after death, making teeth a rich and accurate source of archaeological information.

"They're essentially fossils in your mouth," says author Bonnie Kahlon, a Lab Co-Ordinator in McMaster's Department of Anthropology.

The researchers compared the teeth of modern-day control subjects to teeth extracted from bodies buried in rural Quebec and France in the 1700s and 1800s. Their analysis showed that one Quebec man had suffered four bouts of rickets in his 24 years of life - all before he turned 13.

Examining thin sections of the teeth under a microscope and using technology at the McMaster-based Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy, the researchers were able to show that anomalies formed in the dentin layers during years when victims failed to get enough Vitamin D to fully mineralize the structures that form dentin and bone.

McMaster University, one of four Canadian universities listed among the Top 100 universities in the world, is renowned for its innovation in both learning and discovery. It has a student population of 30,000, and more than 170,000 alumni in 137 countries.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “Hundreds of years later, teeth tell the story of people who didn't get enough sunshine”. Phys.org. Posted: July 18, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-hundreds-years-teeth-story-people.html

Identifying Migrant Deaths in South Texas

Abstract

The rise in migrant deaths at the South Texas Border has created a humanitarian crisis.  The dead have been buried as “unknown” without proper analyses or DNA collection, leaving no hope of identification. With recent exhumations of these “unknowns”, Texas State University faculty and students are helping to identify and repatriate these individuals to their families.

The Humanitarian Crisis at The South Texas Border

"People sometimes have difficulty understanding why the families of those who die in disasters are so invested in the recovery of their loved ones' bodies...It is when the remains of their loved ones are returned to the family that the more personal experience of the death tends to begin. " Gerard Jacobs, 2014

In 1994, the United States Border Patrol (USBP) adopted the policy “Prevention through Deterrence” as the operational strategy of choice for securing the US-Mexico border.  This strategy deterred migrant crossings in populated areas that were relatively safe and instead forced migrants to cross in more remote and dangerous areas (Haddal 2010).  As a result, a funnel effect was created that led to an increase in migrant apprehensions and deaths (Rubio-Goldsmith 2006).  The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME) located in Tucson, Arizona receives the remains of migrants, due to their proximity to the border.  The PCOME also keeps official statistics on border deaths. In 2000, as a result of “Prevention through Deterrence”, migrant death rates began to rise.  Between the years of 1990 to 1999, 129 deaths occurred along the Arizona-Mexico border in contrast to the 802 deaths that occurred within the next five years (Rubio-Goldsmith et al. 2006).

Although USBP strategies have historically aimed to stop migrants before entering the US, the problem still remains that migration and death continue, creating a humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border. Until recently the majority of migrant deaths occurred in Arizona despite the fact that the Texas-Mexico border covers 1,254 miles of the 1,900 miles of the entire border (Texas Tribune, 2014). However, in 2012 Texas surpassed Arizona in deaths, with the majority occurring in the Rio Grande Valley and more specifically in Brooks, County, Texas (USBP, 2012).

The Mass Disaster in Brooks County, Texas

In Texas, unlike Arizona, not all migrant deaths are sent to a medical examiner’s office.  Brooks County, Texas receives the highest reported number of undocumented migrant deaths each year (80 in 2011, 129 in 2012, and [Grave Marker] 87 in 2013, and these deaths fall under the jurisdiction of a Justice of the Peace (JP), as there is no medical examiner within the county.  When any individual dies and the circumstances surrounding death are unknown, the Texas Code of Criminal Procedures requires a forensic examination, collection of DNA samples, and submission of paperwork to an unidentified and missing persons database.  However, due to the high volume of deaths and lack of county resources, the local JP and Brooks County Sheriff’s Office were overwhelmed and began to bury the undocumented migrants, most without proper analyses or collection of DNA samples, leaving little chance that these individuals will ever be returned to their families.  In turn, families are left without knowing what has happened to their son, daughter, mother, father, brother or sister.

In response to the migrant burials in Brooks County, Dr. Lori Baker (Baylor University) and Dr. Krista Latham (University of Indianapolis) and their students performed voluntary exhumations of these burials for the purpose of skeletal analysis and DNA sampling in hopes of facilitating positive identifications and returning individuals to their families.  However, the majority of the exhumations contained individuals in early to late stages of decomposition, requiring storage until the remains could be prepared for analysis.  Because the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS) has large scale storage, processing, and analysis capabilities due to the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility (FARF) and the Osteological Research and Processing Laboratory (ORPL), the undocumented migrant remains (57 in 2013 and 20 in 2014) were brought to FACTS for processing (maceration to skeletal remains) and analysis to facilitate identification. Teaching, research, and service are the pillars of the FACTS mission.

Once in FACTS custody, all remains are taken to a special enclosure within FARF while faculty and students conduct intake procedures that involve opening body bags and documenting the condition of remains and personal effects.  At this time, personal effects are removed and placed in plastic bags for freezer storage until they can be hand-washed and dried for photography. Thus far, in our work towards identification, personal effects have played a major role in narrowing down the identity of remains because family members report what their loved one was wearing when they were last seen alive.  Once the remains have been processed at ORPL, they are analyzed to generate a biological profile, the estimation of age, sex, geographic origin, and height.  [Shirt] Additionally, any trauma or pathology is noted.

"The man tied a [brown plad] shirt around the knee to help him walk.  He was left behind under a tree, somewhere near Falfurrias, Texas.  The family visited Falfurrias and were shown pictures of a body that they believe is Oscar*, but were told that the body had already been buried and there was no DNA sample to confirm identity."

Excerpt from a missing persons report taken by the Colibri Center for Human Rights and upload into NamUS

*name has been changed

The Identification Process

The identification process for any unidentified human remains usually begins with entering the biological profile, along with all case information, including personal effects, into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).  Because NamUs contains both missing persons information (reported by family) and unidentified persons information (reported by medical examiners, anthropologists, or law enforcement), FACTS faculty and students can search through records of the missing and unidentified to narrow down potential matches.  If a missing person in NamUs is a potential match to an unidentified person, the family of the missing person can submit a DNA sample to the University of North Texas (UNT) and FACTS will submit a DNA sample from the skeletal remains.  Identity can be established or ruled out based on comparison of the DNA profiles.  Additionally, DNA testing through UNT is free.

Alternatively, if the biological profile of an unidentified individual does not have any potential matches within NamUs, a DNA sample from the skeletal remains is submitted to UNT and the DNA profile generated will be stored in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).  CODIS contains DNA from families and unidentified human remains.  CODIS will cross-reference DNA from unidentified human remains with DNA samples from families to see if there are any potential matches (identifications).

Problems With Identification For Undocumented Migrants

Resources for decedent identification within the US, such as NamUS and CODIS often lack missing persons information or appropriate DNA samples from family for comparison to undocumented migrant deaths. While DNA profiles of unidentified remains are cross-referenced with DNA from the families of missing persons within CODIS, CODIS does not allow foreign nationals to submit DNA samples unless there is a potential for a one-to-one match (e.g. based on circumstantial evidence, missing persons case A is likely one in the same as unidentified persons case A).  Therefore, although DNA samples from undocumented persons are submitted to CODIS, there is no DNA for comparison, therefore no identifications will be made.

The process of identification of migrant remains in Texas, as in every other border state requires collaboration with multiple agencies. Currently FACTS collaborates with the Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense (EAAF) and with the Colibrí Center for Human Rights to facilitate migrant identifications. The EAAF and Colibrí provide a mechanism for families of missing migrants to file missing persons reports. These agencies also provide a mechanism for families to submit DNA samples that can be sent to a private DNA lab for comparison. FACTS faculty maintain a close working relationship with these agencies in addition to foreign consulates and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as some of the cases represent individuals under the age of 18.  Working with all of these agencies has resulted in one positive identification of a young woman from Honduras and another pending identification.

Request for Funding

The amount of migrant deaths recovered from Brooks County, Texas in 2012 is equivalent to the passenger capacity of a Boeing 737. If a 737 crashes, it is considered a mass disaster and state funding is spent to facilitate recovery and identification of the passengers. Because these migrant deaths accumulate slowly, albeit in the same geographic location, they are not considered a mass disaster and no funding has been released to adequately process this particular mass fatality. While Texas State University has the facilities to handle such a mass fatality, our efforts are strictly voluntary. Because FACTS also has a large willed body donation program, processing both the donated remains (~70 per year) and the migrant remains is time consuming and requires full time efforts. Time is of the essence in trying to identify these individuals.

We are seeking funding for a full time project manager and a part-time project assistant to ensure that the migrant deaths are processed in a timely fashion that will facilitate identification and repatriation of remains to families. The full time project manager will supervise all processing and analysis of remains, organize case information, serve as point of contact for collaboration with all external agencies including but not limited to the EAAF, Colibrí Center for Human Rights, foreign consulate offices, law enforcement, and NCMEC.  The project assistant will facilitate processing of human remains, assist with analysis, provide data entry into internal databases and NamUs, and supervise undergraduate students to wash and photograph personal effects for upload to NamUs, DNA sample collection, and assist in searching for possible matches with missing persons.

With funding we anticipate we can analyze all cases, upload to NamUs, submit DNA samples to UNT and private labs as needed, and work towards identification on the remaining 53 cases in our laboratory within a two-year time period.  Without funding, it may take five years or longer to complete this work. Traditional funding sources, such as the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Justice, and the National Institute of Health only fund research. Operation Identification is an applied project, not research oriented, that benefits the many families who are missing loved ones. Any financial support will go directly to Operation Identification funds for processing, analysis, and identification.

Texas State University is a Hispanic Serving Institution and maintains a 501c3 status for charitable gifts.
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Reference:

Spradley, Kate. 2016. “Identifying Migrant Deaths in South Texas”. Texas State University Department of Anthropology. Posted: March 25, 2016. Available online: http://www.txstate.edu/anthropology/people/faculty/spradley/Identifying-Migrant-Deaths-in-South-Texas.html

Kendra Sirak: Combining anthropology and genetics to study ancient DNA

Kendra Sirak, a PhD candidate in anthropology in the Laney Graduate School, is currently working in Ireland, testing the DNA of people ranging from medieval Nubians to an ancient Chinese specimen to an Irish rebel.

Originally from the small town of Dallas, Pennsylvania, Sirak attended Northwestern University on an athletic scholarship for field hockey. There, she fell in love with study of anthropology.

"Starting out in psychology, I was inspired by an amazing young professor and became hooked after writing a research paper about the allegedly extinct subspecies Homo sapiens idaltu," Sirak recalls. "I wanted to study the past of humanity so I added anthropology for a double major."

Sirak came to Emory in 2012, drawn by the opportunity to work with George Armelagos, Goodrich C. White Professor of Anthropology (who passed away in 2014).

"I emailed George, who was one of the gods of anthropology, not expecting an answer," she says. "He responded in 37 minutes."

Now, Sirak is working as a visiting researcher at the Earth Institute at University College Dublin. Her research has also taken her to Russia, Hungary, Romania, China, India and Italy to access DNA in human skeletons and train other researchers in those techniques.

In an interview from Ireland, Sirak talks about her work and how she came to add genetics to anthropology, resulting in fascinating research and career paths.

What led you to add genetics to anthropology?

I had no interest in genetics, being totally dedicated to the study of human osteology and paleopathology. But George [Armelagos] believed DNA was going to become a critical part of anthropological research — and he couldn’t have been more right.

He proposed that I take some Nubian skeletal remains he had excavated in the 1970s to Ireland and learn how to do ancient DNA analysis at Trinity College Dublin.

I went home and cried because I didn’t want to say no, but I really, really did not want to go. However, I decided to just go anyway. It was the best academic decision I could have ever made. I stepped into the ancient DNA lab at Trinity and realized that I had been spelling “chromosome” wrong for as long as I could remember, which was where my knowledge of DNA was then.

What do you gain by combining anthropology with genetics in your research?

Genetics provides really fantastic, concrete data. However, it doesn’t provide the contextthat anthropology does. I like to think of genetics giving me the hard scientific data that I want, but anthropology adding in the human context and making the molecular data a human reality.

At Emory, I have learned how to think from a “biocultural” point of view. While many other anthropology programs stress only either a “biological” or a “cultural” approach, Emory combines the two.

I study the biology of past populations and I think about the way their culture and social environment could have influenced individual health and well-being, population demographics, patterns of morbidity and mortality, etc.

What have you been working on in Ireland?

Primarily extracting and sequencing DNA from skeletal remains from two socially disparate medieval cemeteries at the site of Kulubnarti in Sudanese Nubia. I am also part of a collaboration between University College Dublin and Harvard Medical School’s Department of Genetics lab.

We were recently contacted by the Irish National Police to help identify the remains of Thomas Kent, executed by the British for his part in the Easter Rising insurrection in 1916 and buried in a shallow grave on the grounds of Cork Prison; however, his body could not be positively identified. Collaborating with another team, we came up with this novel method to compare genetic data collected from two of Kent’s known living relatives and confirm his identity. He was given an honorable burial and a big state parade.

What other projects do you have in the works?

We hope to become involved in the Duffy’s Cut Project. Duffy’s Cut is the location of railroad tracks west of Philadelphia built by 57 Irish immigrants in the mid-1800s. All 57 are thought to have died from cholera. However, forensic evidence suggests that some might have been murdered, perhaps because of fear of contagion. We are hoping a DNA analysis on these samples will help identify these men and their family relationships.

We are in conversation with an Irish human rights group about identifying the remains of more than 800 Irish babies uncovered in a mass grave in western Ireland. This grave was a consequence of the period when it was not socially acceptable for a woman to have a baby out of wedlock. The ultimate goal would be a database of the unidentified infants’ genetic information. Then people who believe they might have some relative in this mass grave could be tested for a genetic match. This project was presented at the United Nations.

What are your post-Emory plans and goals?

My goal is to start writing my dissertation, a bioethnography of the ancient Nubians, this fall and be graduated from Emory in June 2018.

Post-Emory, I can see myself applying for a postdoc position to expand my research, or I might like to get involved with scientific communication to the lay public.

After taking a human genetics course taken at Emory, I’m really interested in genetic counseling. I’ve been thinking about becoming a certified genetic counselor.

What do you like to do in your “off” time?

I am a world traveler, marathon runner and craft beer connoisseur. Studying anthropology and working in ancient DNA has given me incredible opportunities to travel around the world to collect samples for our analyses.
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Reference:

King, Leslie. 2016. “Kendra Sirak: Combining anthropology and genetics to study ancient DNA”. Emory. Posted: July 13, 2016. Available online: http://news.emory.edu/stories/2016/07/er_profile_kendra_sirak/campus.html

Population size fails to explain evolution of complex culture

There is a growing consensus among archaeologists and anthropologists that the size of a population determines its ability to develop as well as to maintain complex culture. This view is however severely compromised by a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by a research team including technology philosopher Krist Vaesen of the Eindhoven University of Technology.

Archeologists observe a fairly sudden appearance of behavioural modernity, such as complex technologies, abstract and realistic art and musical instruments, some 40,000 years ago, in the Later Stone Age. For decades archeologists and antropologists are looking for an explanation for these and other 'cultural revolutions', and in this way finding the origin of human culture. Since ten years or so the predominant theory says the driving factor would be growing population numbers.

Severely compromised

The logic seems inescapable indeed. The bigger the population, the higher the probability it contains an Einstein. Hence, bigger populations are more likely to develop complex culture. But this consensus view is however severely compromised by a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by a research team including technology philosopher Krist Vaesen from Eindhoven University of Technology (working in the Philosopy & Ethics group of the faculty Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences), along with archeologists from Simon Fraser University, La Trobe University and Leiden University. They refute this demography hypothesis with a growing body of ethnographic evidence.

Critical flaws

The authors reveal critical flaws both in the theoretical models and the empirical evidence behind such demographic interpretations of cultural innovation. The models support a relationship between population size and cultural complexity only for a restricted set of extremely implausible conditions. A critical analysis of the available archaeological evidence suggests that there are simply no data to infer that behavioural modernity emerged in a period of population growth or that the size of a population directly influences the rate of innovation in a society's technological repertoire.

Back to the drawing board

Hence, archaeologists may need to go back to the drawing board. the idea behind the demography hypothesis is attractive in its simplicity. But complex questions by definition demand complex answers. For the evolution of complex culture, no satisfying answer is available yet. The question of the emergence of complex culture remains as elusive as ever.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “Population size fails to explain evolution of complex culture”. Phys.org. Posted: April 5, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-04-population-size-evolution-complex-culture.html

Anthropologist Seeks the Roots of Terrorism

In the wake of terrorist attacks last week on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Paris supermarket, the world has struggled to understand the combination of religion, European culture and influence from terrorist organizations that drove the gunmen. Scott Atran, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, studies such questions by interviewing would-be and convicted terrorists about their extreme commitment to their organizations and ideals. Atran recently returned from Paris, where he talked with members of the shooters’ communities. He spoke with Nature about what he discovered.

What sociological and cultural factors are behind the Paris attacks?

Unlike the United States, where immigrants achieve average socioeconomic status and education within a generation, in Europe even after three generations, depending on the country, they’re 5–19 times more likely to be poor or less educated. France has about 7.5% Muslims and [they make] up to 60–75% of the prison population. It’s a very similar situation to black youth in the United States.

The difference is here’s an ideology that appeals to them, it’s something that’s very attractive to more people than you might think. In France, a poll by [ICM Research] showed that 27% of young French people, not just Muslims, between 18 and 24 had a favourable attitude toward the Islamic State. The jihad is the only systemic cultural ideology that’s effective, that’s growing, that’s attractive, that's glorious—that basically says to these young people, “Look, you're on the outs, nobody cares about you, but look what we can do. We can change the world.”

And of course they are. These three lowlifes, they managed to capture the entire world’s attention for the better part of a week. They mobilized all of French society. That’s a pretty good cost–benefit for the bad guys.

So is this a ready-made population for groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda to recruit from?

It’s not about recruitment, it’s about self-seekers. The Islamic State and Al Qaeda don’t directly order commando operations. Basically they say, “Hey guys, here are ideas, do it yourself. Here’s the way to make a pressure cooker bomb; here are likely targets that will terrorize people; here are things we hate. Go out and do it.”

Do the terrorists you study seem to have fit this pattern?

I talked to people in the neighbourhood where the [9/11 pilots] came from, their families. They didn’t know what the hell they were doing. They were guys who worked at a technical university, they sort of hooked up, went to mosque together, got an apartment together, wanted to do something together. They dragged in mattresses, they watched videos. Neighbours told us the place stank because they never went out of the apartment.

None of this was carefully planned. But the [attacks] we remember, the ones that work, they pick carefully planned targets. The attacks on the [World Trade Center] and Pentagon, these shook America to the core. In Madrid, [when a set of train bombings in 2004 killed 191 people] they changed the government. But they're petty criminals with a little bit of training.

It’s the organized anarchy of it that does more to terrorize than actually carefully planned commando operations. Of course, a lot more of these guys are now heroes. They're going to be models for other guys.

Can anything be done to predict extremist attacks?

I think people want to be able to predict, to have surety. [But] it wouldn’t help if you knew about every single [foiled] plot in terms of being able to predict it. The fact is that anybody at any time anywhere can start to make their own network with their friends. It’s like when you boil water, when the cones rise up, you don’t know which will boil first and pop. Complexity theory is not good for modelling these things. You’ll never be able to predict with certainty. It depends on the poll, but 7–14% of Muslims worldwide supported the Al Qaeda strike against the United States. If something like that support the Islamic State, that’s a lot of people, [over 100] million. But who is actually willing to fight and die? There is a problem of specificity. Even if people buy into the ideology, buy into the values, it’s far from a sufficient condition.

The best predictors turn out to be things like who your friends are and whether you belong to some action group. In the case of the Kouachi brothers [who committed the Charlie Hebdo attack], we had the greatest bonding experience and that is prison. But it could be soccer, it could be whitewater rafting. If you want to find out who's going to fight and die, if you want to break up a particular terrorist cell, find out what they’re eating and how they dress. Plots never occur in mosques: you have to be quiet in a mosque. They occur in fast food places, soccer fields, picnics and barbeques.

Why aren’t more people doing anthropological fieldwork, such as interviewing jihadis and their families?

The problem is you can't have large samples. The insights you get can't come from surveys. They have to come from in-depth field interviews and very tightly controlled experiments.

If you really want to do a scientific study with jihadis—I do it—you have to convince them to put down their guns, not talk to one another, and answer your questions. Some people, if you ask them if they would give up their belief in God if offered a certain amount of money, they will shoot you. So you can't ask that question.

It’s not just because it’s dangerous. It’s because human subjects reviews at universities and especially the [US] defence department won't let this work be done. It’s not because it puts the researcher in danger, but because human subjects [research ethics] criteria have been set up to defend middle class university students. What are you going do with these kind of protocols when you talk to jihadis? Get them to sign it saying, “I appreciate that the Defense Department has funded this work,” and by the way if you have any complaints, call the human subjects secretary? This sounds ridiculous and nothing gets done, literally.

Have you run into such difficulties with your fieldwork?

As an example, I got permission, before the [three] Bali bombers [who carried out a set of simultaneous attacks in 2002] were executed, to interview them. They were going to be shot because they blew up 200 people. I couldn’t get human subjects approval because “you have to bring a lawyer, and besides we won't allow anyone to interview prisoners.” I said why? “You can never be sure you're not violating their right to speech.”

Then you have crazy things [required by US funding bodies] like host country authorization. Suppose you want to do work in Israel and Palestine. So you go to the Israelis, say, “We want to do studies, just like we do in American universities,” and say, “We need host country authorization from some government.” They say, “Are you crazy?” And in many countries that are in chaos, who’s going to give you permission?
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Reardon, Sara and Nature Magazine. 2015. “Anthropologist Seeks the Roots of Terrorism”. Scientific American. Posted: January 20, 2015. Available online: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/anthropologist-seeks-the-roots-of-terrorism/

English Heritage Archaeological Monographs

Some reading for you over the holidays. Courtesy of Archaeology Data Service. Happy reading!
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Archaeology Data Service. 2014. “English Heritage Archaeological Monographs“Archaeology Data Service. Posted: 2014. Available online: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/eh_monographs_2014/

What is Anthropology?

Anthropology is the study of humans, early hominids and primates, such as chimpanzees.

Anthropologists study human language, culture, societies, biological and material remains, the biology and behavior of primates, and even our own buying habits. It’s a broad discipline that constantly incorporates new technologies and ideas. As technologies are developed that allow exoplanets to be detected and studied in greater detail, anthropology may eventually expand to include the study of non-human civilizations.

“Historically, anthropologists in the United States have been trained in one of four areas: sociocultural anthropology, biological/physical anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics,” writes the American Anthropological Association on its website. “Anthropologists often integrate the perspectives of several of these areas into their research, teaching, and professional lives.”

To an anthropologist, “anything is available to inspection, including the most ordinary, mundane items and events such as a McDonald’s hamburger, a pair of blue jeans, a cell phone, a birthday or New Year’s Eve, and so forth,” writes Carol Delaney, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, in her book “An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). “Each of them provides a window into a much larger set of beliefs, power relations, and values,” she writes.

In thinking about ordinary things from our culture, we can help understand those of others. “For example what would you make of a community that celebrates death days rather than birthdays? How might that fact relate to other facets of that society? What other kinds of questions would you need to ask to begin to understand not just that practice but also the culture in which it occurs?”

Sociocultural anthropology

“Sociocultural anthropologists examine social patterns and practices across cultures, with a special interest in how people live in particular places and how they organize, govern, and create meaning,” writes the American Anthropological Association.

It’s a broad discipline that explores human behavior in all its diversity, from hunter-gatherer societies to the habits of shopping mall visitors.

For instance, Richard Lee, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, is known for his studies of the !Kung people that live in several countries in southern Africa (the ! represents a sound). The !Kung are one of a small number of modern-day societies that live as hunter-gatherers, providing a window into how ancient hunter-gatherers lived.

On the other side of the coin is the growing field of business anthropology where anthropologists study consumer behavior, including how people act in shopping malls. It’s something that can help companies produce and market products to meet their needs and desires.

“Business anthropologists have influenced market research by pointing out that, to be successful, marketers must understand people — what they do and how they live,” writes Shirley Fedorak, of the University of Saskatchewan, in her book “Anthropology Matters” (University of Toronto Press, 2013).

Archaeology

Archaeology is the study of humanity through the materials — the stuff — we leave behind. This can be in the distant past, such as the pyramids at Giza, or very recent times, such as a 21st-century marriage proposal carved near a closed quarantine station.

Many archaeologists do not call themselves anthropologists, and archaeology’s relationship to anthropology is a matter of debate. Archaeologists examine past societies using some of the methods and theories that sociocultural anthropologists work with. Additionally, physical anthropologists work closely with archaeologists to investigate human remains.

Physical anthropology

Physical or biological anthropologists study the remains of human beings and hominids using a variety of techniques to investigate human disease, diet, genetics and lifestyle.

Some, such as Jane Goodall, specialize in the study of primates, such as chimpanzees. By studying these creatures, which are closely related to us, we can learn much about ourselves and how we came to be.

Another important sub-branch is forensic anthropology, which tends to focus on helping authorities solve crimes and identify human remains found at crime and disaster scenes.

A 2008 article published in the magazine Chico Statements tells the story of Ben Figura, who “worked in the foul waters of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and in Thailand in the aftermath of the 2005 tsunami that killed some 230,000 people.” He also led “a small team of experts from New York City’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner working to put names to the thousands of human remains still being found at Ground Zero. Most of the remains at this stage are bone fragments, some very small.”

It’s a tough field to work in. “Working at the site of a historic tragedy and in such intimate contact with its victims, as well as its survivors — Figura often calls family members when his team identifies remains — can be emotionally wrenching,” the article notes.

Linguistic anthropology

In some ways, linguistic anthropology can be the hardest branch of anthropology to identify.

The American Anthropological Association states that it “is the comparative study of ways in which language reflects and influences social life. It explores the many ways in which language practices define patterns of communication, formulate categories of social identity and group membership, organize large-scale cultural beliefs and ideologies, and, in conjunction with other forms of meaning-making, equip people with common cultural representations of their natural and social worlds.”

Linguistic anthropologists can be found analyzing languages, both verbal and non-verbal, around the world. They do things like study American presidential debates to determine how candidates use non-verbal hand gestures to communicate with voters. They can also be found analyzing the books and movies read by young teenagers (the "Twilight" series, for instance) to determine how they affect the teenage mind.

By studying the usage of language, these anthropologists can determine what cultures value.

“The everyday language of North Americans, for example, includes a number of slang words, such as dough, greenback, dust, loot, cash, bucks, change and bread, to identify what an indigenous native of Papua-New Guinea would recognize only as money,” writes William Haviland, a professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, in his book “Anthropology” (Harcourt College Publishers, 2000).

“Such phenomena help identify things that are considered of special importance to a culture.”

How do you become an anthropologist?

Anthropologists tend to have either a master’s or doctoral degree. There are many universities in the United States, Canada and Europe that teach the discipline. Often those studying anthropology will specialize in a specific area.  Fieldwork is often required to complete a degree.

Where do anthropologists work?

Anthropologists can be found working for a wide variety of employers. These include museums, police departments, marketing companies, cultural resource management firms, government agencies and research institutes.

How much do anthropologists earn?

It is hard to give a salary range for anthropologists. A junior anthropologist doing fieldwork on contract may earn a low amount of money, perhaps not much more than minimum wage. On the higher end, a tenured professor at a large university may earn over $100,000, while those in senior positions at large private companies may earn considerably more.

How did anthropology get its start?

In some ways anthropology is in itself an ancient discipline. Writers in the ancient world often analyzed the cultures of various peoples in an attempt to understand their practices.

For instance, in A.D. 43, the writer Pomponius Mela examined the Druid religious beliefs of the Gauls and noted how it prepared them for the many wars they fought. “And yet, they have both their own eloquence and their own teachers of wisdom, the Druids. These men claim to know the size and shape of the Earth and of the universe, the movements of the sky and of the stars, and what the gods intend…” he wrote. “One of the precepts they teach — obviously to make them better for war — has [become] common knowledge, namely that their souls are eternal and there is a second life for the dead.” (Translation by E.F Romer)

As the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution spawned new technologies and ideas, anthropology grew as a discipline. For example, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution paved the way for the skeletal remains of hominids to be better understood, allowing for a new understanding of how humans came into existence.
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References:

Jarus, Owen. 2014. “What is Anthropology?”. Live Science. Posted: April 15, 2014. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/44833-what-is-anthropology.html

What Is Archaeology?

Archaeology is fundamentally the study of humanity and its past. Archaeologists study things that were created, used or changed by humans. They do this by studying the material remains — the stuff we leave behind, such as lithic tools, a simple hut dwelling, a skeleton covered with gold jewelry or a pyramid that majestically rises from a desert floor. Sometimes, archaeologists study contemporary societies in order to shed light on those that flourished in the past.

Archaeology is practiced around the world by archaeologists who work with people from a wide variety of other disciplines to help answer questions about who we are and where we came from. In doing so, archaeologists find evidence that sheds light on what our future may bring.

Who are archaeologists?

While archaeologists don’t use bullwhips or revolvers like the fictional Indiana Jones, they use a multitude of technologies and techniques to help solve mysteries of the past. Archaeologist Zahi Hawass, the former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, said that people sometimes tell him that real-life archaeology, with its careful note-taking and lab work, doesn’t sound as exciting as what Indiana Jones does in the movies. He replies that, on the contrary, “to an archaeologist, yes, it certainly is!”

The term “archaeologist” is an increasingly broad term. While professional archaeologists may all share some general fieldwork and lab skills, they may have developed expertise that allows them to specialize in the study of certain types of artifacts or sites.

Underwater archaeology, textile analysis and the study of plant and animal remains found at archaeological sites are just a few examples. Some may develop language skills that allow them to record and translate texts found at archaeological sites. These language experts may not call themselves archaeologists but instead refer to themselves as epigraphers or another title related to the language that they study. Similarly those who specialize in the study of human remains often call themselves “physical” or “biological” anthropologists, rather than archaeologists.

As new technologies and disciplines appear, the skills that archaeologists develop will continue to grow. Some undergraduate archaeology programs offer only a small number of core archaeology courses and instead encourage students to branch out, taking courses from across many other departments at a university.

Archaeologists also tend to focus their studies on a certain part of the world, or a specific culture, such as Egypt, China or the Maya civilization in Central America. They may also focus on specific timeframes. For instance, an Egyptologist may focus on the Old Kingdom period (2649-2150 B.C.), the time period when the pyramids at Giza were built.

Archaeology deals with animals and plants in only so much as it helps us understand humanity. A dinosaur fossil, for instance, would not be studied by an archaeologist unless that dinosaur was dug up by a human and became part of an archaeological site under investigation (in which case the archaeologist would work with a paleontologist to study it).

Becoming a professional archaeologist

In North America and Europe, professional archaeologists tend to have a masters degree or doctorate. This wasn’t always the case. Howard Carter, the archaeologist who led the team that discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, had little formal education and learned various archaeological techniques by practice.

A large number of universities offer archaeology programs. The expertise they can convey to their students depends on the faculty and staff members who are available to teach.

Archaeologists can work for a wide variety of employers. These include museums, art galleries, universities, research institutes, government agencies (the National Park Service, for instance), cultural resource management firms (which often work with private companies and governments to survey and excavate sites before development), tourism companies (for instance, acting as highly educated guides) and media companies (helping to make documentaries and aiding in the publication of books, journals and magazines).

Opportunities for amateurs

There are many opportunities for amateurs to become involved in archaeology. Local archaeology societies offer chances for volunteers to become involved in excavation and lab work.

Overseas digs will sometimes also offer the chance for people, who are able to pay their own way, to volunteer and help excavate an archaeological site. Sometimes those who volunteer can get course credit at a university in return.

Archaeologists' salary

It is hard to give an exact salary range for an archaeologist. In the United States and Canada, a junior field archaeologist (sometimes called a “technician”) who works with a small cultural resource management firm may earn a small amount of money, perhaps not much more than minimum wage.

On the high end, a tenured professor at a major research university may earn a salary that reaches over $100,000. An archaeologist who holds a senior management position at a university, government agency, large cultural resource management firm or large museum may also earn a salary that reaches into six figures. If an archaeologist succeeds in publishing a book that sells well (something that is difficult to do) that may raise their income further. Few, if any, archaeologists say that they went into the discipline for the money.

It does belong in a museum (or at least it should)

Archaeologists today, generally, do not sell the artifacts they dig up. In the past, this was not always the case. Over a century ago, antiquarians (sometimes little more than looters) would excavate artifacts and sell them. In the past, museums, universities, galleries and private individuals would sometimes help pay the cost of a scientific archaeological excavation and, in return, expect a share of the artifacts.

One of the few areas of archaeology where practices like these still, legally, occur is in the salvage of underwater shipwrecks. Some jurisdictions, which don’t have the money to pay for an underwater excavation, will allow a salvage company to excavate a site using professional archaeologists and scientific techniques. The salvage company in turn recoups their costs (and sometimes makes a good profit) by selling some of the artifacts. This practice is deeply controversial among archaeologists and a source of debate among lawmakers.

Another notable exception occurs in part of the United Kingdom where amateurs using metal detectors are allowed to search for artifacts, and at times own their finds, under a complicated system of laws. Again, the use of metal detectors by amateurs is highly controversial with many archaeologists saying that they damage archaeological sites and impede scientific investigations.

How did archaeology get its start?

In some ways, archaeology is an ancient discipline. It was not unusual for ancient societies to keep old material and take steps to preserve sites and monuments they deemed important.

In the early modern period, with the onset of the Enlightenment and subsequent scientific revolution, archaeology gradually became what we would consider “scientific” as methods were developed at recording sites in greater detail and determining the age of artifacts (for instance by studying the sediment in which they were found and analyzing how the style of lithic and ceramic artifacts changed over time).

Where does archaeology go from here?

As technology develops, new methods for studying the past have been incorporated into the discipline. For instance, as high resolution Google Earth imagery became available in the last decade, archaeologists (and amateurs) got to make use of this free (or otherwise very cheap) tool that allowed them to survey large tracts of land in areas that are sometimes difficult to access (such as Iraq or Afghanistan).

Where archaeology will go in the future depends very much on future technological advances and where humans will travel to in the future. With the development of techniques that allow astronomers to detect Earth-size planets it’s even been speculated that archaeologists will increasingly work with astronomers, physicists, biologists and other scientists, to search for the remains of non-human civilizations.
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References:

Jarus, Owen. 2014. “What Is Archaeology?”. Live Science. Posted: March 28, 2014. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/44448-what-is-archaeology.html

11/11/11: Anthropologist debunks doomsday myths

University of Kansas anthropologist and Maya scholar John Hoopes and his students are watching predicted doomsday dates such as 11/11/11 and Dec. 21, 2012, with considerable skepticism.

Hoopes is regarded as one of the major go-to guys to separate fact from fiction about the Maya calendar and a prediction that the world would end Dec. 21, 2012.

He has written scholarly articles debunking the 2012 myth, including a chapter in "2012: Decoding the Counterculture Apocalypse," edited by Joseph Gelfer and scheduled for release this month by Equinox Publishing. In addition, Hoopes contributes to Wikipedia as a 2012 skeptic and is featured in at least three documentaries on the topic ("Apocalypse 2012" airing on CNBC, and two more scheduled for release next year). In his fall course on Archaeological Myths and Realities – An Introduction to Critical Thinking, the 2012 myth works as a dynamic teaching tool.

This fall, Hoopes and his students have watched two predicted cataclysmic dates — Oct. 21 and 28 — come and go with little fanfare. Oct. 21 was a date selected by California evangelist Harold Camping after his original May 21, 2011, prediction passed without calamity. Swedish pharmacologist, self-help advocate and self-taught Maya cosmologist Carl Johan Calleman was among those predicting that Oct. 28 would usher in a worldwide unified consciousness.

The next big date to consider is 11/11/11, when many in the New Age movement plan celebrations to receive emerging energies in preparation for a transformation of consciousness on Dec. 21, 2012.

Whether these dates mark a time for transformation of consciousness or a catastrophic end, they are part of a 2012 eschatological myth that originated with Christopher Columbus and Franciscan missionaries, not the ancient Maya calendar, Hoopes emphasizes.

In a paper presented in January at the Oxford IX International Symposium on Archaeoastronomy in Lima, Peru, Hoopes tracks the 2012 Maya myth origins through various revivals into the 21st century. The myth is rooted in an early 16th-century European combination of astrological and biblical prophecies to explain the new millennium. Columbus believed that his discovery of the world's "most remote land" would lead to Spain's re-conquest of Jerusalem and fulfill world-end events described in the Book of Revelations.

To validate his convictions, Columbus wrote his own Book of Prophecies that included an account of his interview with a "Maia" leader in 1502. The reference inspired early speculation by explorers and missionaries, indirectly influencing crackpots as well as scholars to link ancient Maya — before any contact with Europeans — with the astrological and religious beliefs popular in Europe in the 1500s.

Misinterpretations and distortions flowed with each revival of interest in Maya culture. In the 1960s, the myth re-flowered as the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, enjoyed a resurgence in Y2K and thrives today. Hoopes adds that the Occupy Wall Street movement clearly reflects a nostalgia for the progressive culture of the 1960s.

More than 1,000 books have been published on the 2012 myth, not to mention a plethora of Web sites on the topic. Hoopes expects the hype won't hit its peak until well into 2012. Fear and fantasy both sell well, especially in uncertain times, he notes.

End-of-the-world and transformative beliefs are found in many ancient cultures but have been a fundamental part of modern times since 1499, Hoopes point out. They are also fundamentally American, he adds.

"The United States has always embraced religious freedom. Peculiar religious sects, including occult beliefs, have always been part of America," he says.

Astrology, Ouija boards, séances, channeling, spiritualists, extraterrestrial life and a host of pseudosciences all have had acceptance in parts of America, he adds. Mary Todd Lincoln used séances to contact her son. Nancy Reagan consulted astrologists.

Wishful or magical thinking help perpetuate myths and beliefs that have no basis in science. Hoopes uses the 2012 myth and others to teach students to think critically and learn to distinguish science and myth.

"If a narrative has a moral message, then it probably is not a scientific story. Stories based in science ideally should be objective, not subjective," Hoopes says.

The persistence of the 2012 myth may reflect a fear of mortality that has nagged ancient and modern civilizations.

"It's much easier to discuss mortality when we're all in the same boat," Hoopes said. "Creating a concerned community allays people's fears and allows us to project individual morality onto the world."

Hoopes' interest in the 2012 phenomenon began as an academic hobby and has evolved into an anthropological study of contemporary American culture. At the very least, he says, the 2012 phenomenon "has made a huge audience aware of Maya calendrics and the winter solstice."
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References:

EurekAlert. 2011. "11/11/11: Anthropologist debunks doomsday myths". EurekAlert. Posted: November 3, 2011. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/uok-1ad110311.php

Intel anthropologist: Fieldwork with the silicon tribe

Anthropologist Genevieve Bell gives the chip maker insight into how people experience new technologies

How did you come to work as an anthropologist with a tech firm?

My mother was an anthropologist. I grew up in Australia on field sites and Aboriginal settlements, running around with no shoes and killing my supper. My father and grandfather were engineers, so being surrounded by people who constantly take things apart is very much part of my life.

What does your work involve?

At Intel, my job is to bring humanity back into the technology equation. I talk about what people care about, what motivates them, and then think about how understanding their everyday practices might generate new forms of technology.

At Stanford you studied Native American culture. Are there parallels with your work today?

Initially, Intel was like a field site. It was so profoundly foreign. That let me ask naive questions and it created a headspace I could work in. They also knew anthropology was interesting and believed you could apply it to anything. It was liberating. I was able do research that I could not have done had I stayed in a university.

How does your work fit in at Intel?

It can drive silicon in the making. We studied why people love TV and learned it's because you press one button for a story - it is straightforward, flexible and lets you get away from the everyday.

The engineers said they didn't care. I said, "You do." A traditional microprocessor needs a fan to cool it down - which has implications for designing chip-based consumer electronics. This noise is going to kick in and ruin the mood. If television is about telling a story, nothing should get in the way of that story.

Do you often knock heads with engineers?

Engineering tends to start with what is technologically possible. Part of my job is about how you talk about experiences as a starting point instead. Taking a shower, for example: you don't need to know how plumbing works, but what people love about showering. This approach creates very different solutions.

Who are you designing for?

To design for real people, you've got to think of messy apartments where everything is plugged into the same electrical outlet. As an engineer you tend to imagine you're designing into a blank space. It's a different problem to think about how to create technology so compelling that a person is willing to give something up, to unplug it to plug your thing in.

Now we have touchscreens will user interfaces change again?

At the moment, we're thinking about how control by voice and gesture will materialise. The engineers I used to work with would tell me how they were going to make all televisions with voice recognition. I thought, as soon as you have more than one person in a room there is no way you want voice recognition. It would mean the television has to solve the problem of who's in charge. Remote controls make it easy.

Your new book is about the rising role of computers in everyday life. Why did you pick this topic?

Paul Dourish and I have been writing papers together for nearly a decade. He comes from a computer science background, and we've shifted each other's perspectives considerably. We thought the conversation about where technology development has come from and where it's going should have a broader audience: the field has moved on so much.

Your book deals in depth with privacy. How big an issue is it now?

Privacy was a big issue a decade ago. Today, people are more worried about reputation. We tested people with future scenarios, such as if your smart television could update your Facebook page about what you're watching. No one liked it. People said things like, "My girlfriend put the show on and left the room" or "I've only ever watched it once". We talk about the content we watch as part of who we are. One of the biggest anxieties we have about these technologies is that they reveal what we're really up to - what dreadful dorks we are.

Genevieve Bell is director of Interaction and Experience Research at Intel. She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University, California. Her first book, Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing is co-written with Paul Dourish and published by the MIT Press
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References:

Webb, Jeremy. 2011. "Intel anthropologist: Fieldwork with the silicon tribe". New Scientist. Posted: May 31, 2011. Available online: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/05/intel-anthropologist-fieldwork-with-the-silicon-tribe.html

Anthropology: “Excitment Brings Them in, and Jobs Keep Them”

The future of anthropology

The anthropology field is not a dying field; many students just think it is. While there may not be as many trips to the rainforest as there once were, businesses everywhere are hiring anthropologists to do research for their company.

“I encourage students to follow their hearts, at least long enough to really do some research because if you find out you can make a living doing something you love, it’d be great to do,” said Sharlotte Neely, anthropology coordinator and professor of anthropology.

Many of these new anthropologists are coming straight out of Northern Kentucky University. In fact, the Anthropology Department graduates more anthropology students than any other college in the state.

“We actually do anthropology rather than just talk about it in a classroom,” said Douglas Hume, assistant professor of anthropology. “We have some really good professors that know what they are talking about, who are really energized and involve students in the learning process.”

This extra attention that undergraduates receive from their professors also makes a difference in the quality of education in which the students receive. Anthropology professors at NKU are able to give students more of their time and allow them to become better involved than other universities such as the University of Kentucky or Ohio State University.

These larger universities have many more graduate students that take away precious time from the undergraduates.

“They (graduate students) take up huge amounts of professors’ time, so I think there is a tendency to teach larger classes of undergraduates or maybe hire some part-timers really cheaply to do the courses or have grad students teach them,” Hume said. “They don’t really want to have anything to do with the undergraduates because they are just cloning themselves, but here we involve undergraduates with what we do, which makes for a better undergraduate experience,”

According to Hume, NKU only receives about eight to ten incoming freshman anthropology majors a year, but graduate 30-40 students every year. Students, like Chris Hutchinson, a senior, may take an anthropology course as a general education class and then find the field interesting. Hutchinson began his college career as a music major before switching to anthropology.

“I took my very first class, which was cultural anthropology, and the class material was very abstract and like nothing I had ever really encountered in a high school,” Hutchinson said. “It drew me in to just sort of take more classes that I could as general studies, not knowing if I wanted to be a major yet. It was the professors’ enthusiasm that sort of brought me in and just the abstract and philosophical nature of anthropology that interested me the most.”

Many students do come to college with an interest in the field. Television shows such as “Bones,” whose main character is a forensic anthropologist, has brought the field back to public attention. These shows do a good job of grabbing students’ interest.

“I always joke that we ought to send the Discovery Channel a thank-you note because they do such a good job of making anthropology exciting,” Neely said.

Other universities, ranging from Ball State University to Texas Tech University, have links on their web pages to the NKU Anthropology Career Guide because of its excellent advice at finding careers in the anthropology field. Though the students come to college with the interest in anthropology, many think that they will be unable to find a job after graduation. This is why the anthropology department has developed a career guide to help anthropology students see all the local businesses that hire NKU anthropology graduates.

“For years we’ve had students who’ve said ‘Oh, I want to major in anthropology, but I better major in something practical so I can get a job,’ and it has always baffled me because I know we are teaching the kinds of skills that will get you jobs,” Neely said. “So I started actually doing the research and found out how many companies in the area have routinely hired our grads. Excitement brings them in and the jobs keep them.”

The department helps prepare their students for jobs also. The anthropology professors at NKU regularly take students on educational trips to Ghana, West Africa, Ireland and Thailand. Last winter intersession, a group of students went to California to interview and work with farmers to find out about invasive plant species. The department also provides many local experiences for those students who aren’t able take a long-distance trip. There is an archaeological dig every year in southern Campbell County.

“If you’re going back to school and have three kids you can’t just say ‘I’m going to Thailand for the summer,’ so we try to get a lot of stuff going here. You can be right in the area and go on an archaeology dig,” Neely said.

Every year the Student Anthropology Society takes trips to sharpen skills and gain new experiences that will help them in their field. Neely explains that sometimes your skills in anthropology will be much different and still useful than other professional jobs.

“They (the Student Anthropology Society) literally stay a couple nights in caves and practice making stone tools, which sounds like it is just fun and couldn’t have a practical aspect, but one of our grads a few years ago, Todd Young, is now the state naturalist at Big Bone Lick State Park and his job is to run things and show people how to make stone arrows.”
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References:

Brewer, Matt. 2010. "Anthropology: “Excitment Brings Them in, and Jobs Keep Them”". . Posted: October 6, 2010. Available online: http://www.thenortherner.com/?p=6826

'Human Terrain' hits rocky ground

I've been following the Human Terrain Systems information via the Open Anthropology blog so I thought I'd add the latest news here.

The US Army's controversial project for social scientists to serve alongside soldiers on the battlefield has suffered another setback with the loss of its director, retired US Army colonel Steve Fondacaro, who left on 11 June. Although no reason was given for his sudden departure, those familiar with the programme say that it is yet another sign of trouble for a project that has faced criticism since its inception four years ago.

Greg Mueller, a spokesman for US Army Training and Doctrine Command, based in Fort Monroe, Virginia, confirmed that Fondacaro is no longer manager of the Human Terrain System (HTS), but declined to provide details. He says that the army is now looking for a new civilian director. Colonel Sharon Hamilton will run the programme until a new director is found.

Fondacaro said in a phone interview that, although not technically fired, he had been pushed out of the position. He said that there had been "a lot of tension" between himself and senior army leaders, exacerbated by congressional pressure. "This is just a culmination of that," he said.

The HTS aims to help commanders to understand local culture and reduce violence. But critics, including the American Anthropological Association in Arlington, Virginia, see a contradiction between the goal of anthropology, to help local populations, and the goals of the army, which often wants to control them.

The programme has also suffered more concrete setbacks. It has struggled to recruit and retain social scientists. Several deployed social scientists have been killed, a translator was kidnapped in January (and later released) and one civilian team member pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter after executing an Afghan man who attacked social scientist Paula Loyd last year. Loyd later died of her wounds.

Roberto Gonzalez, an anthropologist and the author of American Counterinsurgency, a book on the HTS, says he is surprised that the leadership shake-up has been so long in coming. "Some argue that the HTS is suffering from poor management and lack of oversight, and that if these problems could be corrected it would be successful," he says. "I disagree. The entire programme is flawed because Human Terrain team members are thrust into an impossible situation in which they are torn between conflicting interests."

Funding for the HTS has increased from US$10 million to US$100 million a year since it began in 2006. But in May, a congressional panel said that it would limit funding until the project had been assessed by the army.

More changes lie ahead. The army has confirmed that it is seeking a new contractor to train Human Terrain teams. Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta, which currently provides training, has decided to end its involvement — but did not give details.

Fondacaro denied that problems with the programme were caused by his leadership, arguing that aspects such as contracting were beyond his control. "The record will show, if anybody cares to look, that the things I was able to manage worked quite well," he said.

Asked about the programme in a meeting with reporters in March, US secretary of the army John McHugh said that he was "neither happy nor unhappy" with the HTS. "Whether it's a long-term solution or one in which we can glean short-term lessons and then move forward is still something we're not able to judge," McHugh said.
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References:

Weinberger, Sharon. 2010. "'Human Terrain' hits rocky ground". Nature. Posted: June 22, 2010. Available online: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100622/full/465993a.html

100 Incredible Anthropology Lectures Online

Topics that are covered include; General Anthropology, Modern Culture, Ancient Cultures, Society, Evolution, Archaeology, Linguistics, Technology and Society, and, Primatology. Some of the lectures will end up here individually, like yesterday's post on forensic anthropology. Thanks to Best Colleges Online for compiling the links. (And no, I didn't get paid for this.)

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Best Colleges Online. 2010. "100 Incredible Anthropology Lectures Online". Best Colleges Online. Posted: June 3rd, 2010. Available online: http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2010/06/03/100-incredible-anthropology-lectures-online/

Foreign honey oozes in

The last decade has really stung U.S. beekeepers.

There’s been the widely reported Colony Collapse Disorder, in which some keepers have reported the loss of 30 to 90 percent of their hives, the underlying cause of which remains mysterious.

Less well known but just as significant for their economic vitality, U.S. beekeepers have also had to deal with tens of thousands of tons of Chinese honey being illegally dumped onto the market.

These combined natural and economic forces have dampened honey production by large American producers from 221 million pounds in 1998 to 144 million pounds last year.

Last year’s levels were the lowest since the 1970s.

“It’s been a real struggle for many to survive,” said John Talbert, owner of the Sabine Creek Honey Farm in Josephine, and executive secretary of the Texas Beekeepers Association.

While scientists continue to study the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, there is hope that the economic issues stemming from illegal Chinese honey flowing into the United States may be addressed. Vaughn Bryant would welcome the help.

An anthropologist at Texas A&M University, Bryant has honed a unique honey sleuthing talent since 1975, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture asked him if he could test a sample of honey and determine its origin.

At the time Bryant studied pollen at archaeological sites in order to tease out historical details.

As it turns out, pollen in bee honey — traces of the many, variable nectar sources bees use — can be used to geographically pin down where the honey was made.

“Holy Moses, I had no idea what I was getting into,” Bryant recalled.

He knows his pollen

After decades of experience, Bryant can look at samples of honey under a microscope in his lab and identify hundreds of types of pollen on sight. That’s no small feat considering each looks like a roundish, nondescript speck of dust.

By linking pollen to plants, and knowing the geographical range of plants, he almost always can pin down the location of the bees that produced a certain sample.

To help him, along one wall of Bryant’s lab stand several large cabinets in which he houses a multimillion-dollar collection of 20,000 pollen samples. Two-thirds of the collection, he says, was donated by BP and Exxon Mobil Corp., which use pollen in oil exploration activities to determine the relative ages of rock strata.

In addition to pinpointing a honey’s country of origin by glancing in a microscope, Bryant has a second talent: storytelling.

There’s the anecdote about Greek armies that catapulted beehives into enemy cities. Or the one about “mad honey,” produced by bees that use nectar from certain plants that produce a toxin. The Persians, in 67 B.C., apparently left jars of mad honey along the roadside. Honey-loving Roman soldiers came along and ate it, got sick, and then the Persians fell upon them, Bryant said.

Today, in some Turkish nightclubs, he said, mad honey is taken as a drug.

Since becoming involved in honey in the 1970s, Bryant has closely followed the fortunes of the industry.

The U.S. honey habit

To meet its needs, the United States imports about one-third of the honey it uses.

While consumers may be most familiar with jars of honey on grocery shelves, industry uses most of the honey as a flavoring in foods such as cereals, breads and barbecue sauce.

The tobacco industry uses a lot of honey, too, as it enhances the body’s ability to absorb nicotine, Bryant said.

“If you put sugar into tobacco, you get a bigger charge out,” he said. The domestic honey market itself isn’t that large, about $200 million a year.

The real economic concern, Bryant said, is the loss of pollination. Fewer bees will mean less pollination of crops.

The Department of Agriculture estimates that pollination is worth about $15 billion in America, particularly for crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits and vegetables. About one mouthful in three in the diet directly or indirectly benefits from honeybee pollination, according to the government.

So in 2001, when it determined that lower-priced Chinese honey was flooding the market and driving beekeepers out of business, the U.S. government imposed 200 percent and higher tariffs on honey from China.

But since then, Bryant said, there’s been a dramatic rise in honey exports from countries near China, at very low prices. Bryant’s analysis of this honey reveals that it has either been transshipped from China, or even cut with high-fructose corn syrup to increase its volume.

“At the rate the Chinese are dumping this honey, it could devastate the U.S. honey industry,” he said.

Enforcement efforts

The government has undertaken recent enforcement efforts.

Last month U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested a Taiwanese executive, Hung Ta Fan, 41, in Los Angeles for allegedly conspiring to illegally import honey that was falsely identified to avoid U.S. tariffs.

“ICE will not tolerate products being illegally imported into the U.S. marketplace,” John Morton, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for ICE, said in a statement.

And in May 2009, Yong Xiang Yan, the president of a honey manufacturer in China, was arrested and later pled guilty to conspiring to illegally import Chinese honey that was falsely identified as coming from the Philippines. Yan is cooperating in the ongoing investigation while awaiting sentencing, according to the affidavit against Fan.

Big flow of cheap honey

Earlier this month, five U.S. honey producers launched the Honest Honey campaign to raise consumer awareness of this illegally imported honey. They estimate the United States loses about $100 million annually in uncollected duties because of illegal honey imports.

“We’re encouraged by the activity we’ve seen from the Department of Homeland Security on this issue,” said Jill Clark, an official with Lancaster, Pa.-based Dutch Gold Honey, one of the companies sponsoring the campaign.

Bryant, who studies about 150 samples a year to determine their origin, is more skeptical about the U.S. fight to stop Chinese dumping of honey.

Many importers, he said, are happy just to get the honey at a good price. So it will take a lot of enforcement to solve the problem.

“Essentially,” he said, “what we’ve got is a big leak in the dike with the government sticking a few fingers into it, trying to plug small holes.”
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References:

Berger, Eric. 2010. "Foreign honey oozes in". Chron. Posted: May 16, 2010. Available online: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7008114.html

New Forensics Research Will Help Identify Remains of Children

New research from North Carolina State University is now giving forensic scientists a tool that can be used to help identify the remains of children, and may contribute to resolving missing-persons cases, among other uses. Identifying skeletal remains can be a key step in solving crimes, but traditionally it has been exceptionally difficult to identify the skeletal remains of children.

"The key finding in our research is that children's faces attain the shapes they will have in adulthood much earlier than previously thought," says Dr. Ann Ross, an associate professor of anthropology at NC State and lead author of the new study. This finding is important because physical anthropologists use the shape of the skull to examine similarities and differences between populations, such as between Eastern Europeans and Mediterranean populations. This means that forensic experts can help identify the ancestry of skeletal remains in much younger individuals than is currently the case.

For example, Ross was able to use these findings to examine the remains of an unidentified 10-year-old boy, whose body was found in 1998, and determine that he was of Mesoamerican origin. That finding gives investigators additional information on the cold case, which can be used for facial reconstruction, among other things.

Until now, anthropologists relied solely on the remains of people who were at least 18 years old when studying the craniofacial (i.e. skull) characteristics of different populations. Similarly, forensic analysts did not attempt to assess the ancestry of remains belonging to people under the age of 18.

But the researchers have found that the population-specific traits that can be measured in the skull are actually present -- and can be measured -- at least as early as the age of 14. "These findings can likely be applied to much younger remains as well," Ross says, "but we did not have a large enough sample size to include younger kids in this paper."

One of the things that made this work possible was the use of shape analysis, relying on "geometric morphometrics" -- which is a field of study that characterizes and assesses biological forms. Geometric morphometrics has led to the development of software, statistical tools and research methods that enabled the researchers to examine shape differences in the skulls of children and adults.

"In the past," Ross says, "this was impossible because traditional techniques for measuring craniofacial characteristics relied on calipers -- which introduced size as a confounding variable." In other words, it was impossible to compare the small skulls of children to the larger skulls of adults.

The researchers collected craniofacial measurements from the remains of children between the ages of 14 and 16. The researchers then ran the data through modeling software and additional statistical analyses to determine whether children differ significantly from adults in terms of the craniofacial markers that identify a given population.

In addition to forensic applications, the findings also represent a breakthrough for physical anthropologists studying past civilizations. Because craniofacial characteristics are used to examine differences between populations, these findings can help anthropologists advance our understanding of how populations have moved or changed over time. The study shows that anthropologists can now use the remains of children to help get a snapshot of what the population looked like in a specific area -- they are no longer limited to using the craniofacial remains of adults.

The paper describing the research, "Craniofacial Growth, Maturation, and Change: Teens to Midadulthood," was co-authored by Dr. Shanna Williams of the University of Florida and was funded, in part, by the National Institute of Justice. The paper was published earlier this month by The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery.

NC State's Department of Sociology and Anthropology is a joint department under the university's College of Humanities and Social Sciences and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
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References:

North Carolina State. 2010. "New Forensics Research Will Help Identify Remains of Children". Science Daily. Posted: May 14, 2010. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100513093733.htm

Ann H. Ross, Shanna E. Williams. Craniofacial Growth, Maturation, and Change: Teens to Midadulthood. Journal of Craniofacial Surgery, 2010; 21 (2): 458 DOI: 10.1097/SCS.0b013e3181cfea34