Bones of recent mammals in the Amboseli Basin, southern Kenya, exhibit distinctive weathering characteristics that can be related to the time since death and to the local conditions of temperature, humidity and soil chemistry. A categorization of weathering characteristics into six stages, recognizable on descriptive criteria, provides a basis for investigation of weathering rates and processes. The time necessary to achieve each successive weathering stage has been calibrated using known-age carcasses. Most bones decompose beyond recognition in 10 to 15 yr. Bones of animals under 100 kg and juveniles appear to weather more rapidly than bones of large animals or adults. Small-scale rather than widespread environmental factors seem to have greatest influence on weathering characteristics and rates. Bone weathering is potentially valuable as evidence for the period of time represented in recent or fossil bone assemblages, in- cluding those on archeological sites, and may also be an important tool in censusing populations of animals in modern ecosystems.

Taphonomic and Ecologic Information Form Bone Weathering

Children in archaeology This book reviews the current status of children's skeletal remains in biological and forensic anthropology. Child skeletons provide a wealth of information on their physical and social life from their growth and development, diet and age at death, to the social and economic factors that expose them to trauma and disease at different stages of their brief lives. Cultural attitudes dictate where and how infants and children are buried, when they assume their gender identity, whether they are exposed to physical abuse, and at what age they are considered adults. Similarly, children may enter the forensic record as the result of warfare, neglect, abuse, murder, accident or suicide and the presence of young children within a mass grave has powerful legal connotations. The death of a child under suspicious circumstances is highly emotive and often creates intense media coverage and public concern, making the recovery and identification of their remains more pressing. In forensic anthropology, techniques used to provide a biological and personal identification as well as the cause and manner of death provide particular challenges. The study of children and childhood in social archaeology emerged out of gender theory in the 1990s, and has gradually increased in its sophistication, moving children out of the realm of women's work, to participating and active agents in the past, with their own social identity, material culture and influence on the physical environment around them. Children who were once invisible in the archaeological record are slowly coming into view.

The Bioarchaeology of Children: The bioarchaeology of children

Newly created academic programs at Brazilian universities have provided the impetus for new archaeological projects in southeastern South America during the last two decades. The new data are changing our views on emergent social complexity, natural and human-induced transformation of the landscape, and transcontinental expansions and cultural interactions across the Rio de la Plata basin during the Middle and Late Holocene. We concentrate on six major archaeological traditions/regions: the Sambaquis, the Pantanal, the Constructores de Cerritos, the Tupiguarani, the Southern Proto-Je, and the middle and lower Parana River. Diverse and autonomous complex developments exhibit distinct built landscapes in a region previously thought of as marginal compared with cultural developments in the Andes or Mesoamerica. The trajectories toward increased sociopolitical complexity flourished in very different and changing environmental conditions. While some groups were pushed to wetland areas during a drier mid-Holocene, others took advantage of the more humid Late Holocene climate to intensively manage Araucaria forests. The start of the second millennium AD was a critical period marked by an increased number of archaeological sites, the construction of ceremonial architecture, and the intensification of landscape transformation; it also was marked by the rapid expansion of influences from outside the La Plata basin. The Amazonian Tupiguarani and Arawak newcomers brought with them significant changes in technologies and social and political structures, as well as novel landscape management practices.

/pdf/emergent-complexity-changing-landscapes-and-spheres-of-1urqttqzxo.pdf

Emergent Complexity, Changing Landscapes, and Spheres of Interaction in Southeastern South America During the Middle and Late Holocene

RESUMEN. En este trabajo, presentamos una sintesis de las practicas mortuorias de los grupos aborigenes del tramo final de la cuenca del Plata, correspondiente al Holoceno tardio. Este registro ha sido analizado siguiendo dos aspectos centrales: la tendencia general de las conductas mortuorias y su variabilidad vinculada con las diferentes unidades del paisaje que conforman el area bajo estudio. Dicho analisis ha permitido observar como tendencia el uso de areas formales de enterramiento, el empleo extendido de inhumaciones secundarias, la orientacion de las inhumaciones primarias, preferentemente con un eje este-oeste, y un claro tratamiento mortuorio diferencial basado en el sexo y en la edad de los individuos en algunos sitios. Paralelamente, se observa un aumento en la cantidad de inhumaciones secundarias en los sectores del paisaje donde existe mayor fragmentacion del mismo, particularmente en las islas del Delta inferior y superior. PALABRAS CLAVE: humedal del Parana inferior, delta del Parana, registro funerario, inhumaciones primarias y secundarias, diferencias mortuorias regionales, variabilidad en categorias de sexo y edad. TITLE: Mortuary practices in the wetland of the lower Parana.

https://www.laiesken.net/arqueologia/pdf/2012/AI1301.pdf

Las prácticas mortuorias en el humedal del Paraná inferior

Radiocarbon trends in the pampean region (Argentina). biases and Demographic patterns during the final late pleistocene and holocene

The Cerro Lutz archaeological site, located in the flood plains of southeast of Entre Rios, evidences a detailed mortuary record of hunter-gatherer societies of the area. There were found primary and secondary burials in different positions and orientations, differences related to sex and age categories, a continued use of space as a cemetery and an organized distribution of burials. These characteristics classify Cerro Lutz as a typical formal disposal area, which importance lies in the variety of mortuary practices registered. This work, together with others recently published, reinitiates the systematic analyses of mortuary behaviors in the area.

https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/3673887.pdf

Cerro Lutz: Aproximaciones al estudio de las prácticas mortuorias de las sociedades cazadoras-recolectoras del Humedal del Paraná Inferior

Anthropogenic modifications to archaeological human bones from the lower Paraná River basin (Argentina)

Fil: Mazza, Barbara Pamela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina. Secretaria de Cultura de la Nacion. Direccion Nacional de Cultura y Museos. Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Pensamiento Latinoamericano; Argentina

Auditory Exostoses in Pre-Hispanic Populations of the Lower Paraná Wetlands, Argentina

Different aspects of bone morphology have been studied worldwide with the purpose of explaining their causative factors and if they are suitable for inferring activities from past societies. Among them, entheseal changes have been widely analyzed and several researchers agree on their multifactorial etiology. The main objective of this work is to understand patterns of variation in entheseal changes in a sample of adult individuals of both sexes from late Holocene complex hunter-gatherers that inhabited the southern point of the La Plata basin. For that purpose, entheseal ruggedness at fibrous and fibrocartilaginous entheses is analyzed in relation to age, sex, body size, midshaft robusticity indices (as a probable proxy of physical activity levels), and archaeological site variability, through generalized linear models. The results show that physical activity, sex and age are the most important factors in determining entheseal morphology. Generally, high levels of entheseal changes were found among males, in older and large-bodied individuals, and among robust anatomical units. However, some entheses showed an inverse pattern. This leads us to propose that social (sexual and age division of labor) as well as biological factors (hormones, genetic and degenerative changes) could have an influence on entheseal changes. No differences were found between fibrous and fibrocartilaginous entheses.

Barbara Mazza

Papers

Las prácticas mortuorias en el humedal del Paraná inferior

Cerro Lutz: Aproximaciones al estudio de las prácticas mortuorias de las sociedades cazadoras-recolectoras del Humedal del Paraná Inferior

Anthropogenic modifications to archaeological human bones from the lower Paraná River basin (Argentina)

Auditory Exostoses in Pre-Hispanic Populations of the Lower Paraná Wetlands, Argentina

Entheseal changes among late Holocene hunter-gatherers from the southern extreme of La Plata basin (Argentina)