The Pacific Islands were the last major geographic region settled by humans. The physical remains of these settlers, who probably arrived within the last 4500 years, are rare. At the Chelechol ra Orrak site in the Palau archipelago of Micronesia, the discovery of a cemetery dating to near 3000 BP presents an opportunity to examine what portends to be a large sample of the earliest peoples to inhabit the western Pacific. This report is intended as an introduction to the human skeletal remains recovered to date and a preliminary analysis of the skeletal biology and paleopathology. Although quite fragmentary, analysis reveals a mortuary sample that includes neonates through aged adults and a pathology profile with examples of degenerative joint disease, porotic hyperostosis, and spondylolysis. Though in the early stages of investigation, the cemetery at Chelechol ra Orrak has great potential to aid our understanding of the biological relationships and health of the early inhabitants of Palau.

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Canine/premolar transposition is rare in both historic and prehistoric Homo sapiens with a known occurrence of less than 0.10%. This report describes a prehistoric population sample from one site (SCrI-3) on Santa Cruz Island, California in which the rate of C/P3 transposition is greater than eight percent, based on nine of 106 adult crania which exhibit the anomaly either uni- or bilaterally. As a means of investigating the etiology of this anomaly, the location of the canine root in adult crania was studied. Root location should indicate tooth bud origin, a factor likely to be under genetic control. In crania with normally erupted canines, the superior portion of the root averages 4.43 mm from alare, while this distance is 8.96 mm for anomalous roots. This difference suggests that during ontogeny the tooth buds for the canine and premolar arose in the wrong (or reversed) places, causing the teeth to erupt anomalously. It is suggested that inbreeding in a small island community resulted in a short-lived appearance of this anomaly at a high frequency.

Diets high in fermentable carbohydrates are known to be highly cariogenic, particularly when contained in very sticky food such as dates. This medium allows food to remain in contact with the teeth, thereby resisting the normal flushing action of the saliva. When comprising a large portion of the diet, food such as this can lead to high caries incidence and accelerated tooth loss. This appears to be the situation found in a skeletal series from the late Iron Age in the Sultanate of Oman (100 BC-AD 893). Dental remains from 37 individuals were used in this study. Antemortem tooth loss (AMTL), caries, and dental attrition data were compiled from the 32 adult and juvenile specimens. In this sample, the caries rate is 35.5% of individuals (39.4% corrected), and 18.4% of teeth (32.4% corrected), while AMTL occurs in 100% (ten of ten) of preserved mandibles. Caries onset in permanent molars begins soon after eruption, with tooth loss and remodeling of the alveolus frequently complete by the time of third molar occlusion.

Human skeletal remains have been discovered from a variety of contexts in the Palauan archipelago of western Micronesia. These include caves, rockshelters, earthen mounds, stone platforms, midden burials, crypts, sarcophagi, and historic period gravesites. Recent excavation of a prehistoric cemetery in a rockshelter on Orrak Island dating from ca 1000 BC-AD 200, combined with nearly contemporaneous surface finds in caves on both Orrak and other nearby islands, shed light on the earliest known burial practices in Palau. Interment in limestone caves and rockshelters was then replaced in succession by burial in earthwork terraces, beneath stone platforms, in middens, within limestone slab crypts and at least one known stone sarcophagus, and finally in Western or Asian-style gravesites with headstones.Here we present the first major synthesis of mortuary patterns in Palau from the earliest periods of known settlement (ca. 1000 BC) to modern times. Understanding how these burial practices change over time provides valuable insight into changing sociocultural practices within Palauan society, including how contact with outsiders during the historical period drastically altered traditional mortuary behaviours.