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Death Assemblage (death + assemblage)
Selected AbstractsUrban small vertebrate taphonomy: a case study from Anglo,Scandinavian YorkINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OSTEOARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 5 2001P.J. Piper Abstract Sampling of deposits at the Queens Hotel site, York, produced a substantial number of small terrestrial vertebrate remains from the Anglo,Scandinavian features. By studying bone surface modification, fragmentation and skeletal completeness as taphonomic indicators, it was possible to demonstrate that the assemblage had resulted from two very different modes of accumulation and deposition. Refuse pits situated within the boundaries of the tenements had acted as accumulators of the fragmented and abraded small mammal and amphibian bones that existed as a sub-surface death assemblage within the local environment. In contrast, the excellent preservation and skeletal completeness of numerous frogs recovered from the basal fill of a wooden well could be accounted for by their direct entry into the burial environment as a result of pit-fall trapping. This paper also discusses the implications that the temporal and spatial variation in deposition demonstrated by the micro-faunal remains has for the reconstruction of local ecological and environmental conditions within this site, and for other such sites. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Paleodemographic comparison of a catastrophic and an attritional death assemblageAMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2002Beverley J. Margerison Abstract The aim of this contribution is to examine the effect of an indiscriminate epidemic on a population to assess whether or not a catastrophic event can be identified from examination of paleodemographic data. Using paleodemographic techniques, the death assemblage from the Royal Mint site, London, a Black Death cemetery dated 1349 AD, is compared with that from St. Helen-on-the-Walls, York, which dates from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries AD. The Royal Mint site represents a catastrophic cemetery, while that of St. Helen-on-the-Walls is of an attritional type. Certain features of the paleodemographic profile of the plague victims suggest that the population had been affected by factors other than natural wastage. Three factors are proposed which may define an indiscriminate catastrophic event in preindustrial populations. Am J Phys Anthropol 119:134,143, 2002. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] A Life Table for Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis: Initial Insights Into Ornithischian Dinosaur Population BiologyTHE ANATOMICAL RECORD : ADVANCES IN INTEGRATIVE ANATOMY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, Issue 9 2009Gregory M. Erickson Abstract Very little is known about nonavian dinosaur population biology. Multi-individual sampling and longevity estimation using growth line counts can be used to construct life tables,the foundation for population analyses in ecology. Here we have determined the size and age distribution for a sample consisting of 80 individuals of the small ornithischian, Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis from the early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China. Their ages ranged from less than a year to eleven years and the distribution was strongly right-skewed. This is consistent with taphonomic interpretations that these animals derive from a catastrophic death assemblage. The static life table analysis revealed the same general pattern of survivorship as tyrannosaurs including increased attrition before the attainment of full adult size. This may reflect increased physiological demands and/or predation exposure associated with reproduction. Collectively these findings suggest that most nonavian dinosaurs may have had a similar life history strategy. Anat Rec, 292:1514,1521, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Dental caries in a Portuguese identified skeletal sample from the late 19th and early 20th centuriesAMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Sofia N. Wasterlain Abstract Dental caries was investigated in 600 adult dentitions belonging to the identified osteological collections of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Coimbra, Portugal (late 19th/early 20th centuries). The main advantage of this sample compared to an archaeological source is the presence of known demographic parameters such as age, sex, and occupation. The aim of this study is to investigate the issues involved in comparing caries data derived from archaeological death assemblages with statistics compiled from clinical studies of the living. When only the upper dentition was considered, higher rates were observed in females than in males. No differences were found between sexes for lower teeth. In both sexes, both the percentage of carious teeth and the severity of lesions were found to increase with age, demonstrating that caries activity continued throughout life. The slight decrease observed for the age group 70,79 years is probably due to the increased antemortem tooth loss in the elderly. Caries was most common at contact areas (32.9%) and rarest at smooth crown surfaces (6.5%). Root surface caries was graphed in relation to the exposure of roots, and it was confirmed that the degree of root exposure was not strongly related to the frequency of carious lesions on the exposed root surface, although both increased with age. Molars were attacked more frequently by caries as a whole than premolars, canines or incisors. The results are similar to studies of recent living populations with a limited access to professional dental care. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] EVALUATING CONTEMPORANEITY AND POST-MORTEM AGE OF MALACOLOGICAL REMAINS USING SCLEROCHRONOLOGY AND DENDROCHRONOLOGY*ARCHAEOMETRY, Issue 5 2009S. HELAMA Sclerochronology and dendrochronology are based on series of incremental skeletal and cambial growths that have been correctly aligned in time via cross-dating (i.e., incremental dating through synchronization of the growth variability on a visual and statistical basis). Here we report a study of the shell increments of two anthropogenic death assemblages of freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera margaritifera) originating from Finnish Lapland. First, we cross-dated a new sclerochronology from an assemblage of river pearl mussel shells with unknown post-mortem age. Second, this chronology was cross-dated with the previously published sclerochronology of the same species and geographical source. Third, the composite of the two sclerochronologies was compared to dendrochronologies from Lapland. Temporal association of the two types of chronologies was markedly high, as confirmed by t -values of 7.1 and 8.9, which are well above the acceptable limit of 3.5. Our study demonstrates the potential of sclerochronological and dendrochronological materials and techniques in assessing the contemporaneity (i.e., temporal overlap) and post-mortem age of archaeomalacological deposits. In the palaeontological context, these results also show the wider possibility of dating shells with a large number of annual increments from natural deposits. [source] | ||||||||||