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Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Biological and Physical Anthropology

A Stable Isotope Analysis Of Faunal Remains From Special Deposits On Ontario Iroquoian Tradition Sites, Laura Booth Dec 2014

A Stable Isotope Analysis Of Faunal Remains From Special Deposits On Ontario Iroquoian Tradition Sites, Laura Booth

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The deliberate interment of bears, deer, and dogs on Ontario Iroquoian Tradition sites (900-1650 AD) suggests these animals had social and ideological meaning. This thesis uses stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis from bone collagen of faunal remains from both special and refuse contexts on eight sites in Southern Ontario to investigate the possible relationship between an animal’s burial context, diet, and value. Results indicate that most animals consumed a diet typical for their species regardless of context, suggesting the ideological value of specially deposited animals was augmented through human-animal interactions other than dietary manipulation. Bears from the Dorchester site …


Collapse Of An Ecological Network In Ancient Egypt, Justin Yeakel, Mathias Pires, Lars Rudolf, Nathaniel Dominy Oct 2014

Collapse Of An Ecological Network In Ancient Egypt, Justin Yeakel, Mathias Pires, Lars Rudolf, Nathaniel Dominy

Dartmouth Scholarship

The dynamics of ecosystem collapse are fundamental to determining how and why biological communities change through time, as well as the potential effects of extinctions on ecosystems. Here, we integrate depictions of mammals from Egyptian antiquity with direct lines of paleontological and archeological evidence to infer local extinctions and community dynamics over a 6,000-y span. The unprecedented temporal resolution of this dataset enables examination of how the tandem effects of human population growth and climate change can disrupt mammalian communities. We show that the extinctions of mammals in Egypt were nonrandom and that destabilizing changes in community composition coincided with …


Primate Energy Eexpenditure And Life History, Herman Pontzer, David A. Raichlen, Adam D. Gordon, Kara K. Schroepfer-Walker, Brian Hare, Matthew C. O’Neill, Kathleen M. Muldoon Jan 2014

Primate Energy Eexpenditure And Life History, Herman Pontzer, David A. Raichlen, Adam D. Gordon, Kara K. Schroepfer-Walker, Brian Hare, Matthew C. O’Neill, Kathleen M. Muldoon

Dartmouth Scholarship

Humans and other primates are distinct among placental mammals in having exceptionally slow rates of growth, reproduction, and aging. Primates’ slow life history schedules are generally thought to reflect an evolved strategy of allocating energy away from growth and reproduction and toward somatic investment, particularly to the development and maintenance of large brains. Here we examine an alternative explanation: that primates’ slow life histories reflect low total energy expenditure (TEE) (kilocalories per day) relative to other placental mammals. We compared doubly labeled water measurements of TEE among 17 primate species with similar measures for other placental mammals. We found that …