Can we distinguish life-style from genetic changes? How do we identify migration in the context of changing climate, diet, means of subsistence, activity?

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dietary reconstruction by bringing dental attrition and pathology into the picture, along with stable isotope analysis link

supplementary online material  Antiquity  no longer available, but recreated in the following files:  craniometry, dates (with one correction), metric data, non-metric data, references.
note:the Melides femora were not measured by an experienced osteologist and a check against my own control sample of measurements of Melides femora demonstrated inconsistencies.  Remarks on femoral form and terrain need checking (my own methods of measurement, however, have been checked against those of Meiklejohn and those used at the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Coimbra and no inconsistencies were found).
looks at the contradiction between the opinion that Neolithic life was very hard and unhealthy and our idea of the Neolithic as a time of population increase

http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~dlubell/CA_Iberia.pdf
studying skull size and shape seems old-fashioned - but perhaps it tells you something
erratum:  there is an error on p. 844 which contradicts our article in Antiquity (71:651);  the sentence which reads "Thus the skeletal material recovered in "Neolithic" context at Samouqueira ...", should have referred instead to Gruta do Lagar (Melides), which is Neolithic but with a "Mesolithic" isotopic signature

looking at the differences between Mesolithic sites in Portugal; includes additional data on changes in dental attrition  link

two classic Mesolithic sites in Portugal are very close in time and space, but cortical density, cortical thickness and radiographic characteristics of the femora demonstrate a surprising divergence link

A new paper, in press, summarizes a lot of work on this variability   Jackes, M. Muge Mesolithic heterogeneity: comparing Moita do Sebastião and Cabeço da Arruda. Proceedings of MESO 2010, Santander. link

report of a conference

first results from a project on "late prehistoric populations of the Western Mediterranean and the Atlantic facade of Europe" sponsored by the SSHRC; includes results of size-adjusted craniometry and dental non-metric analyses as well as information on Iberian stable isotopes

a discussion on how the analysis of non-metric dental traits may help answer basic questions in skeletal biology about population affiliation and movement  link


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