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Sampling of archaeological human bone may not be justified, contrary to former high expectations regarding adult age assessment based on histomorphometry. The alterations in buried bone as a result of bacterial action are readily visible in the scanning electron microscope (SEM). An understanding of the chemical and structural changes to cortical bone requires work at the level of a few microns. This paper reports on problems encountered during analyses of samples of human bone from Mesolithic (ca. 8000 calBP) shell midden sites at Muge in central Portugal, and the methods used to try and overcome these problems. We believe we have shown that these Mesolithic bones are partly comprised of bacterially reprecipitated mineral, which has had collagen removed, with consequent obliteration of bone microstructure. We conclude that microbial destruction of the structure of archaeological bone can be a serious impediment to analysis of the characteristics of the population represented by those skeletal remains. Copyright

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What do we know about the effects of the transition to agriculture on human biology? A literature has grown up that gives us the impression that we know a great deal about what happened to bones and teeth when people became sedentary farmers. A review of the sources of these ideas and the evidence supporting them, especially based on work in Portugal, reveals that a reconsideration of the biological consequences of farming in Europe is overdue.

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A further discussion of age assessment and palaeodemography requires detailed reviews of methods, especially pubic symphysis techniques. Before reanalysis of changes in symphyseal form, the initial steps in distributing ages must be examined. Use of the mean values for age scores gives age distributions that are not real, but subject to systematic distortions, and cumulative percentages of skeletal samples can be shown to reflect the mean ages. Distributing skeletal ages using 95% probability distributions provides a more accurate estimation of true ages for palaeodemography and a better basis for discussions of pubic symphysis aging techniques.