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Bioarchaeology (osteoarchaeology, osteology or palaeo-osteology [1]) in Europe describes the study of biological remains from archaeological sites. In the United States it is the scientific study of human remains from archaeological sites.
Bioarchaeology stems from the practice of human osteology which is the anatomical study of skeletal remains. [1] Mortuary archaeology, as well as the overarching field it resides in, aims to generate an understanding of disease, migration, health, nutrition, gender , status, and kinship among past populations. [ 1 ]
Archaeobiology, the study of the biology of ancient times through archaeological materials, is a subspecialty of archaeology.It can be seen as a blanket term for paleobotany, animal osteology, zooarchaeology, microbiology, and many other sub-disciplines.
Both terms are synonymous, though paleoethnobotany (from the Greek words palaios [παλαιός] meaning ancient, ethnos [έθνος] meaning race or ethnicity, and votano [βότανο] meaning plants) is generally used in North America and acknowledges the contribution that ethnographic studies have made towards our current understanding of ...
Lead, strontium and oxygen isotope analysis can also test human remains to estimate the diets and even the birthplaces of a study's subjects. Provenance analysis has the potential to determine the original source of the materials used, for example, to make a particular artifact.
Whereas chemistry, biology and physics, saw a rapid uptake in applications of isotope analysis in the 1950s and 1960s, following the commercialisation of the mass spectrometer. [2] It wasn't until the 1970s, with the publication of works by Vogel and Van Der Merwe (1977) and DeNiro and Epstein (1978; 1981) that isotopic analysis became a ...
Archaeological subfields are typically characterised by a focus on a specific method, type of material, geographical, chronological, or other thematic categories. Among academic disciplines, archaeology, in particular, often can be found in cross-disciplinary research due to the inherent multidisciplinary and geographical nature of the field in general.
Palaeoarchaeology (or paleoarcheology) is the archaeology of deep time. [1] Paleoarchaeologists' studies focus on hominin fossils ranging from around 7,000,000 to 10,000 years ago, [2] and human evolution and the ways in which humans have adapted to the environment in the past few million years.