Ancient cemeteries are often characterized by a considerable number of infants and young children. Sex differences in childhood mortality, however, could rarely be studied up to now, mainly because there were only few proven traits for sexual determination of immature skeletons. Based on a historic sample of sixty-one children of known sex and age from Spitalfields, London (37 boys, 24 girls), sexually distinctive traits in the mandible and ilium are presented for morphognostic diagnosis. Besides other features, boys typically show a more prominent chin, an anteriorly wider dental arcade, and a narrower and deeper sciatic notch than girls. Most of the traits presented in this study allow individuals between birth and five years of age to be successfully allocated to either sex in 70-90% of the cases.

This study presents results and recommendations arising from a blind test of the revised age estimation method for the auricular surface as proposed by Buckberry and Chamberlain ([2002] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 119:321-329). Auricular surfaces of 167 individuals from St. Bride's, London, a documented skeletal assemblage spanning the late 17th to early 19th century, were analyzed for the following traits: transverse organization, surface texture appearance, macroporosity, microporosity, and morphological changes to the apex. Composite scores of trait expressions were found to generally correlate with age and to show a positive association with known chronological age (P < 0.01). However, when composite scores were combined to define auricular surface phases, which ultimately assign age estimations, only three distinct developmental stages, compared with seven suggested by Buckberry and Chamberlain ([2002] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 119:321-329), could be identified and statistically supported, all showing a considerable degree of individual variation in age. The most well-defined stage in the St. Bride's assemblage was the new stage III, where the majority of individuals were older than 60 years, whereas middle-aged adults displayed a large variation in composite scores. These results provide little hope for a promising application of age-at-death estimation of auricular surface morphology traits with higher resolution, but rather suggest indications of broad stages of life.

The Canaanites inhabited the Levant region during the Bronze Age and established a culture that became influential in the Near East and beyond. However, the Canaanites, unlike most other ancient Near Easterners of this period, left few surviving textual records and thus their origin and relationship to ancient and present-day populations remain unclear. In this study, we sequenced five whole genomes from ∼3,700-year-old individuals from the city of Sidon, a major Canaanite city-state on the Eastern Mediterranean coast. We also sequenced the genomes of 99 individuals from present-day Lebanon to catalog modern Levantine genetic diversity. We find that a Bronze Age Canaanite-related ancestry was widespread in the region, shared among urban populations inhabiting the coast (Sidon) and inland populations (Jordan) who likely lived in farming societies or were pastoral nomads. This Canaanite-related ancestry derived from mixture between local Neolithic populations and eastern migrants genetically related to Chalcolithic Iranians. We estimate, using linkage-disequilibrium decay patterns, that admixture occurred 6,600–3,550 years ago, coinciding with recorded massive population movements in Mesopotamia during the mid-Holocene. We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age. In addition, we find Eurasian ancestry in the Lebanese not present in Bronze Age or earlier Levantines. We estimate that this Eurasian ancestry arrived in the Levant around 3,750–2,170 years ago during a period of successive conquests by distant populations.

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This study compares associations between demographic profiles, long bone lengths, bone mineral content, and frequencies of stress indicators in the preadult populations of two medieval skeletal assemblages from Denmark. One is from a leprosarium, and thus probably represents a disadvantaged group (Naestved). The other comes from a normal, and in comparison rather privileged, medieval community (AEbelholt). Previous studies of the adult population indicated differences between the two skeletal collections with regard to mortality, dental size, and metabolic and specific infectious disease. The two samples were analyzed against the view known as the "osteological paradox" (Wood et al. [1992] Curr. Anthropol. 33:343-370), according to which skeletons displaying pathological modification are likely to represent the healthier individuals of a population, whereas those without lesions would have died without acquiring modifications as a result of a depressed immune response. Results reveal that older age groups among the preadults from Naestved are shorter and have less bone mineral content than their peers from AEbelholt. On average, the Naestved children have a higher prevalence of stress indicators, and in some cases display skeletal signs of leprosy. This is likely a result of the combination of compromised health and social disadvantage, thus supporting a more traditional interpretation. The study provides insights into the health of children from two different biocultural settings of medieval Danish society and illustrates the importance of comparing samples of single age groups.

During the medieval period, hundreds of thousands of Europeans migrated to the Near East to take part in the Crusades, and many of them settled in the newly established Christian states along the Eastern Mediterranean coast. Here, we present a genetic snapshot of these events and their aftermath by sequencing the whole genomes of 13 individuals who lived in what is today known as Lebanon between the 3rd and 13th centuries CE. These include nine individuals from the “Crusaders’ pit” in Sidon, a mass burial in South Lebanon identified from the archaeology as the grave of Crusaders killed during a battle in the 13th century CE. We show that all of the Crusaders’ pit individuals were males; some were Western Europeans from diverse origins, some were locals (genetically indistinguishable from present-day Lebanese), and two individuals were a mixture of European and Near Eastern ancestries, providing direct evidence that the Crusaders admixed with the local population. However, these mixtures appear to have had limited genetic consequences since signals of admixture with Europeans are not significant in any Lebanese group today—in particular, Lebanese Christians are today genetically similar to local people who lived during the Roman period which preceded the Crusades by more than four centuries.

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