The purpose of this 2006 book is to present non-invasive methods of measuring the biological responses to psychosocial stress in humans, in non-laboratory (field) settings. Following the pathways of Seyle's General Adaptation Syndrome, the text first describes how to assess the psychosocial stressors of everyday life and then outlines how to measure the psychological, behavioral, neurohumeral, physiological and immunological responses to them. The book concludes with practical information on assessing special populations, analyzing the often-complicated data that are collected in field stress studies and the ethical treatment of human subjects in stress studies. It is intended to be a practical guide for developing and conducting psychophysiological stress research in human biology. This book will assist students and professionals in designing field studies of stress.

This book is entirely devoted to the study of children's skeletons from archaeological and forensic contexts. It provides an extensive review of the osteological methods and theoretical concepts of their analysis. Non-adult skeletons provide a wealth of information on the physical and social life of the child from their growth, diet and age at death, to factors that expose them to trauma and disease at different stages of their lives. This book covers the factors that affect non-adult skeletal preservation; the assessment of their age, sex and ancestry; growth and development; infant and child mortality including infanticide; weaning ages and disease of dietary deficiency; skeletal pathology; personal identification and exposure to trauma from birth injuries, accidents and child abuse; providing insights for graduates and postgraduates in osteology, palaeopathology and forensic anthropology.

The First Boat People concerns how people travelled across the world to Australia in the Pleistocene. It traces movement from Africa to Australia, offering a new view of population growth at that time, challenging current ideas, and underscoring problems with the 'Out of Africa' theory of how modern humans emerged. The variety of routes, strategies and opportunities that could have been used by those first migrants is proposed against the very different regional geography that existed at that time. Steve Webb shows the impact of human entry into Australia on the megafauna using fresh evidence from his work in Central Australia, including a description of palaeoenvironmental conditions existing there during the last two glaciations. He argues for an early human arrival and describes in detail the skeletal evidence for the first Australians. This is a stimulating account for students and researchers in biological anthropology, human evolution and archaeology.

A comprehensive study of the microevolution of Caribbean populations of African descent, this 2006 book reviews the conditions endured by the slaves during their passage and in the plantations and how these conditions may have affected their own health and that of their descendants. Providing an evolutionary framework for understanding the epidemiology of common modern-day diseases such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes, it also looks at infectious diseases and their effect on the genetic make-up of Afro-Caribbean populations. Also covered are population genetics studies that have been used to understand the microevolutionary pathways for various populations, and demographic characteristics including the relationships between migration, family type and fertility. Ending with a case study of the Afro-Caribbean population of Limón, Costa Rica, this book is an essential resource for researchers working in biological anthropology, demography, and epidemiology, and for those interested in the African diaspora in the New World.

When it was published in 1996 Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia was the first book to examine the biology and lives of the prehistoric people of this region. Bringing together the most active researchers in late Pleistocene/Holocene Southeast Asian human osteology, the book deals with major approaches to studying human skeletal remains. Using analysis of the physical appearance of the region's past peoples, the first section explores issues such as the first inhabitants of the region, the evidence for subsequent migratory patterns (particularly between Southeast and Northeast Asia) and counter arguments centering on in situ microevolutionary change. This second section reconstructs the health of these people, in the context of major economic and demographic changes over time, including those caused by the adoption or intensification of agriculture. Written for archaeologists, bioarchaeologists and biological anthropologists, it is a fascinating insight into the bioarchaeology of this important region.

The emergence of the genus Homo is widely linked to the colonization of 'new' highly seasonal savannah habitats. However, until recently, our understanding of the possible impact of seasonality on this shift has been limited because we have little general knowledge of how seasonality affects the lives of primates. This book documents the extent of seasonality in food abundance in tropical woody vegetation, and then presents systematic analyses of the impact of seasonality in food supply on the behavioural ecology of non-human primates. Syntheses in this volume then produce broad generalizations concerning the impact of seasonality on behavioural ecology and reproduction in both human and non-human primates, and apply these insights to primate and human evolution. Written for graduate students and researchers in biological anthropology and behavioural ecology, this is an absorbing account of how seasonality may have affected an important episode in our own evolution.

The development of populations over time, and, on longer timescales, the evolution of species, are both influenced by a complex of interacting, underlying processes. Computer simulation provides a means of experimenting within an idealised framework to allow aspects of these processes and their interactions to be isolated, controlled, and understood. In this book, computer simulation is used to model migration, extinction, fossilisation, interbreeding, selection and non-hereditary effects in the context of human populations and the observed distribution of fossil and current hominoid species. The simulations described enable the visualisation and study of lineages, genetic diversity in populations, character diversity across species and the accuracy of reconstructions, allowing insights into human evolution and the origins of humankind for graduate students and researchers in the fields of physical anthropology, human evolution, and human genetics.

In order to gain an understanding of the dynamics of human individual and average growth patterns it is essential that the right methods are selected. There are a variety of methods available to analyse individual growth patterns, to estimate variation in different growth measures in populations and to relate genetic and environmental factors to individual and average growth. This volume provides an overview of modern techniques for the assessment and collection of growth data and methods of analysis for individual and population growth data. The book contains the basic mathematical and statistical tools required to understand the concepts of the methods under discussion and worked examples of analyses, but it is neither a mathematical treatise, nor a recipe book for growth data analysis. Aimed at junior and senior researchers involved in the analysis of human growth data, this book will be an essential reference for anthropologists, auxologists and paediatricians.

Shaping Primate Evolution is an edited collection of papers about how biological form is described in primate biology, and the consequences of form for function and behavior. The contributors are highly regarded internationally recognized scholars in the field of quantitative primate evolutionary morphology. Each chapter elaborates upon the analysis of the form-function-behavior triad in a unique and compelling way. This book is distinctive not only in the diversity of the topics discussed, but also in the range of levels of biological organization that are addressed from cellular morphometrics to the evolution of primate ecology. The book is dedicated to Charles E. Oxnard, whose influential pioneering work on innovative metric and analytic techniques has gone hand-in-hand with meticulous comparative functional analyses of primate anatomy. Through the marriage of theory with analytical applications, this volume will be an important reference work for all those interested in primate functional morphology.

Neanderthals and Modern Humans develops the theme of the close relationship between climate change, ecological change and biogeographical patterns in humans during the Pleistocene. In particular, it challenges the view that Modern Human 'superiority' caused the extinction of the Neanderthals between 40 and 30 thousand years ago. Clive Finlayson shows that to understand human evolution, the spread of humankind across the world and the extinction of archaic populations, we must move away from a purely theoretical evolutionary ecology base and realise the importance of wider biogeographic patterns including the role of tropical and temperate refugia. His proposal is that Neanderthals became extinct because their world changed faster than they could cope with, and that their relationship with the arriving Modern Humans, where they met, was subtle.

Much research on the biology of senescence is on cell-lines, nematodes or fruit flies, that are only of peripheral relevance to the problems encountered in humans. Human Senescence is a text which reviews the evolutionary biology of human senescence and life span, and the evolutionarily recent development of late-life survival. It examines how human patterns of and variability in growth and development have altered later life survival probabilities and competencies, and how survival during mid-life contributes to senescent dysfunction and alteration. Discussing possibilities of further extending human life span, it gives a better understanding of how humans came to senesce as slowly as we do over our lifespan. Bringing together gerontological, anthropological and biocultural research, it explores human variation in chronic disease, senescence and life span as outcomes of early life adaptation and the success of humankind's sociocultural evolution. It is a benchmark publication for all interested in how and why we age.

It is generally accepted that the earliest human ancestors grew more like apes than like humans today. If they did so, and we are now different, when, how and why did our modern growth patterns evolve? This book focuses on species within the genus Homo to investigate the evolutionary origins of characteristic human patterns and rates of craniofacial and postcranial growth and development, and to explore unique ontogenetic patterns within each fossil species. Experts examine growth patterns found within available Plio-Pleistocene hominid samples, and analyse variation in ontogenetic patterns and rates of development in recent modern humans in order to provide a comparative context for fossil hominid studies. Presenting studies of some of the newer juvenile fossil specimens and information on Homo antecessor, this book will provide a rich data source with which anthropologists and evolutionary biologists can address the questions posed above.

Many physical anthropologists study populations using data that come primarily from the historical record. For this volume's authors, the classic anthropological 'field' is not the glamour of an exotic locale, but the sometimes tedium of the dusty back rooms of libraries, archives and museum collections. This book tells of the way in which archival data inform anthropological questions about human biology and health. The authors present a diverse array of human biological evidence from a variety of sources including the archaeological record, medical collections, church records, contemporary health and growth data and genetic information from the descendants of historical populations. The papers demonstrate how the analysis of historical documents expands the horizons of research in human biology, extends the longitudinal analysis of microevolutionary and social processes into the present and enhances our understanding of the human condition.

Gorillas are one of our closest living relatives, the largest of all living primates, and teeter on the brink of extinction. These fascinating animals are the focus of this in-depth and comprehensive examination of gorilla biology. Gorilla Biology combines recent research in morphology, genetics and behavioural ecology to reveal the complexity and diversity of gorilla populations. The first section focuses on morphological and molecular variation and underscores the importance of understanding diverse biological patterns at all levels in testing evolutionary and adaptive hypotheses and elucidating subspecies and species diversification. Following are discussions of the ecological constraints that influence gorilla social organization and highlight their surprising flexibility. The book ends with discussions of the conservation status of gorillas and the many and increasing threats to their continued survival. Giving insight into the evolutionary biology of these unique primates, this book will be essential reading for primatologists, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists.

Primate dentitions vary widely both between genera and between species within a genus. This book is a comparative dental anatomy of the teeth of living non-human primates that brings together information from many disciplines to present the most useful and comprehensive database possible in one consolidated text. The core of the book consists of comparative morphological and metrical descriptions with analyses, reference tables and illustrations of the permanent dentitions of 85 living primate species to establish a baseline for future investigations. The book also includes information on dental microstructure and its importance in understanding taxonomic relationships between species, data on deciduous dentitions, prenatal dental development and ontogenetic processes, and material to aid age estimation and life history studies. Primate Dentition will be an important reference work for researchers in primatology, dental and physical anthropology, comparative anatomy and dentistry as well as vertebrate paleontology and veterinary science.

As our closest evolutionary relatives, nonhuman primates are integral elements in our mythologies, diets and scientific paradigms, yet most species now face an uncertain future through exploitation for the pet and bushmeat trades as well as progressive habitat loss. New information about disease transmission, dietary and economic linkage, and the continuing international focus on conservation and primate research have created a surge of interest in primates, and focus on the diverse interaction of human and nonhuman primates has become an important component in primatological and ethnographic studies. By examining the diverse and fascinating range of relationships between humans and other primates, and how this plays a critical role in conservation practice and programs, Primates Face to Face disseminates the information gained from the anthropological study of nonhuman primates to the wider academic and non-academic world.

Paleodemography is the field of enquiry that attempts to identify demographic parameters from past populations (usually skeletal samples) derived from archaeological contexts, and then to make interpretations regarding the health and well-being of those populations. However, paleodemographic theory relies on several assumptions that cannot easily be validated by the researcher, and if incorrect, can lead to large errors or biases. In this book, physical anthropologists, mathematical demographers and statisticians tackle these methodological issues for reconstructing demographic structure for skeletal samples. Topics discussed include how skeletal morphology is linked to chronological age, assessment of age from the skeleton, demographic models of mortality and their interpretation, and biostatistical approaches to age structure estimation from archaeological samples. This work will be of immense importance to anyone interested in paleodemography, including biological and physical anthropologists, demographers, geographers, evolutionary biologists and statisticians.

The human genetic make-up of Latin America is a reflection of successive waves of colonization and immigration. To date there have been few works dealing with the biology of human populations at a continental scale, and while much information is available on the genetics of Latin American populations, most data remain scattered throughout the literature. This volume examines for the first time Latin American human populations in relation to their origins, environment, history, demography and genetics, drawing on aspects of nutrition, physiology and morphology for an integrated and multidisciplinary approach. The result is a fascinating account of a people characterized by a turbulent history, marked heterogeneity and unique genetic traits. Of interest to students and researchers of genetics, evolution, biological anthropology and the social sciences, this book will also appeal to anyone concerned with the multifaceted evolution of our species and constitutes an important volume not only for anthropological genetics, but also for Latin American research.

For the past three decades the mountain gorillas of Karisoke Research Center have been the subject of many studies focusing on their behaviour and ecology. Long-term observations on known individuals, from birth to death, and data on social behaviour within and between groups have led to an understanding of many aspects of gorilla social structure. The findings have made significant contributions to models of comparative primate behavioural ecology. Mountain gorillas have also been the focus of intense conservation efforts, which have become a model for conservation programs elsewhere. While most research has focused on mountain gorillas, data on the other two recognised subspecies have increased over the past twenty years. This book highlights and summarises some of the behavioural, ecological and conservation work on mountain gorillas, and makes comparisons with findings from other study sites. It represents the most up-to-date and diverse collection of information available on this endangered ape.

Human Paleobiology provides a unifying framework for the study of human populations, both past and present, to a range of changing environments. It integrates evidence from studies of human adaptability, comparative primatology, and molecular genetics to document consistent measures of genetic distance between subspecies, species and other taxonomic groupings. These findings support the interpretation of the biology of humans in terms of a smaller number of populations characterised by higher levels of genetic continuity than previously hypothesised. Using this as a basis, Robert Eckhardt then goes on to analyse problems in human paleobiology including phenotypic differentiation, patterns of species range expansion and phyletic succession in terms of the patterns and processes still observable in extant populations. This book will be a challenging and stimulating read for students and researchers interested in human paleobiology or evolutionary anthropology.