Culturally modified skeletal remains from the site of Huamelulpan, Oaxaca, Mexico

Christensen, Alexander F.; Winter, Marcus

doi:10.1002/(sici)1099-1212(199709/10)7:5<467::aid-oa390>3.0.co;2-1

Cited by 20 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Trepanations are also recorded from other South American countries, such as Bolivia (Juengst and Chávez, 2015), Colombia (Gomez, 1973) and Mexico (Christensen and Winter, 1997;Velascosuarez et al, 1992;Wilkinson, 1975). Some trephined skulls have also been found in North or North-eastern Africa (Martin, 2013;Nikita et al, 2013;Pahl, 1993), Anatolia (Erdal and Erdal, 2011), Russia (Krivoshapkin et al, 2014) and East Asia (Han and Chen, 2007).…”

Section: Figmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survival after trepanation—Early cranial surgery from Late Iron Age Switzerland

Moghaddam

Mailler-Burch

Kara

et al. 2015

International Journal of Paleopathology

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Trepanation is defined as the intentional perforation of the cranial vault with removal of a piece of skull bone. In Europe, trepanation is known to have been practiced at least since the Neolithic, and it can still be found today in East African native tribes. Two skulls with lesions from the Late Iron Age site Münsingen-Rain (420-240 BC) were investigated. The aim of this study was to analyse the lesions and to determine whether they were caused by surgical interventions. Both individuals were analysed by current morphologic-anthropological methods and radiological examinations were performed with a multislice CT-scanner. Additionally, this work surveys trepanations reported in Switzerland and calculates survival rates. In Switzerland, 34 individuals with trepanations have been published. As a tendency, the survival rate appears to be relatively high from the Neolithic to Late Antiquity but then decreases until Pre-Modern times. The 78% survival rate in Late Iron Age Switzerland indicates that the surgery was often performed successfully. Skull injuries sustained in conflicts could have been a reason for trepanation during the Iron Age.

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Section: Figmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survival after trepanation—Early cranial surgery from Late Iron Age Switzerland

Moghaddam

Mailler-Burch

Kara

et al. 2015

International Journal of Paleopathology

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“…In some cases, human remains may represent a domestic offering instead of a mortuary interment (Caso 1942; Chase and Chase 1998; Christenson and Winter 1997). Most human remains at El Palmillo were recovered from burials, usually as complete (or nearly complete) skeletons, either extended, flexed, or positioned as a bundle.…”

Section: Offerings and Domestic Ritualmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In some cases, the human remains were partial, but we could determine fairly confidently that the lack of elements was due to post-depositional events, such as erosion or later disturbances to the burial deposit and thus that the deceased individual was interred in a mortuary ritual. There are a few contexts at El Palmillo, however, where the extremely partial nature of the human remains appears intentional, such as when we uncovered a lone skull, with or without several vertebrae, or a few hand or foot bones in contexts similar to those where we generally find offerings (Caso 1942:173; Chase and Chase 1998:300, 309; Christenson and Winter 1997:474). These deposits were categorized as domestic offerings when the rest of the skeletal remains were not present in the specific context and the missing bones were not lost to post-depositional taphonomic or erosional processes.…”

Section: Offerings and Domestic Ritualmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestic Offerings at El Palmillo

2008

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Although the topic has received recent attention, relatively little is known about how pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican communities were internally organized and interconnected. In this paper, we examine that question from the perspective of the Classic-period settlement of El Palmillo, in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Previous studies of the valley have postulated that communities often were (and still are) subdivided into barrios, although the modes of integration for those segments are less fully defined. Along these lines, we have previously identified commoner and higher-status houses at El Palmillo (along with associated artifactual and architectural inventories). We also have noted that different commoner houses were involved in distinct suites of craft activity, thereby indicating a degree of economic interdependence among these units. Here we expand our analysis to domestic offerings, which we found to vary across the excavated houses. Adapting a perspective from Durkheim's distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity, we find an expected organic (hierarchical) relationship between the offering assemblages of the higher-status residences and the offerings in commoner house lots. At the same time, we see another axis of variation in domestic offerings that appears more organic (nonhierarchical) in nature. The latter axis of variation at El Palmillo has a clear spatial component, in support of previous hypotheses that barrios or spatially defined social segments were important in Valley of Oaxaca pre-Hispanic communities. At El Palmillo, the definitional features of these social segments appear to have been ideological as well as economic.

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“…There are a number of studies attempting to use the micromorphology of cut marks to differentiate between tool types (Greenfield, 1999;West and Louys, 2007; and even the directionality of cuts on bone and handedness (Bromage and Boyde, 1984). Some work describing cut mark distribution and morphology has been carried out on specimens from archaeological populations in the study of cannibalistic behavior (Degusta, 1999;Hurlbut, 2000;Potter and Chuipka, 2010), human trophy-taking (Sledzik and Ousley, 1991;Christensen and Winter, 1997;Williams et al, 2001;Andrushko et al, 2005) and judicial execution practices (Waldron, 1996;. Their study quantified parameters commonly used in earlier qualititative studies and these were used to infer hand position and distinguish between tool types with a degree of reliability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors suggest that geometric morphometrics should be tested on similar experimental datasets, and that their own method should be tried on larger datasets. Some work describing cut mark distribution and morphology has been carried out on specimens from archaeological populations in the study of cannibalistic behavior (Degusta, 1999;Hurlbut, 2000;Potter and Chuipka, 2010), human trophy-taking (Sledzik and Ousley, 1991;Christensen and Winter, 1997;Williams et al, 2001;Andrushko et al, 2005) and judicial execution practices (Waldron, 1996;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An investigation of the use of discriminant analysis for the classification of blade edge type from cut marks made by metal and bamboo blades

Bonney

2014

American J Phys Anthropol

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Analysis of cut marks in bone is largely limited to two dimensional qualitative description. Development of morphological classification methods using measurements from cut mark cross sections could have multiple uses across palaeoanthropological and archaeological disciplines, where cutting edge types are used to investigate and reconstruct behavioral patterns. An experimental study was undertaken, using porcine bone, to determine the usefulness of discriminant function analysis in classifying cut marks by blade edge type, from a number of measurements taken from their cross-sectional profile. The discriminant analysis correctly classified 86.7% of the experimental cut marks into serrated, non-serrated and bamboo blade types. The technique was then used to investigate a series of cut marks of unknown origin from a collection of trophy skulls from the Torres Strait Islands, to investigate whether they were made by bamboo or metal blades. Nineteen out of twenty of the cut marks investigated were classified as bamboo which supports the non-contemporaneous ethnographic accounts of the knives used for trophy taking and defleshing remains. With further investigation across a variety of blade types, this technique could prove a valuable tool in the interpretation of cut mark evidence from a wide variety of contexts, particularly in forensic anthropology where the requirement for presentation of evidence in a statistical format is becoming increasingly important.

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Culturally modified skeletal remains from the site of Huamelulpan, Oaxaca, Mexico

Cited by 20 publications

References 11 publications

Survival after trepanation—Early cranial surgery from Late Iron Age Switzerland

Survival after trepanation—Early cranial surgery from Late Iron Age Switzerland

Domestic Offerings at El Palmillo

An investigation of the use of discriminant analysis for the classification of blade edge type from cut marks made by metal and bamboo blades

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