Anthropology

Ancient cremated human remains, despite being deformed, still retain sexually diagnostic physical features, according to a study released January 30, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Claudio Cavazzuti of Durham University, UK and colleagues.

A study carried out in Bajondillo Cave (in the town of Torremolinos, in the province of Malaga) by an international team made up of researchers from Spain, Japan and the U.K. revealed that modern humans replaced Neanderthals 44,000 years ago.

Genomic analyses can reveal the geographic origins of indigenous Aboriginal Australian remains currently held in museums, a new study reports.

A team led by UC Davis researchers have come up with a new way to estimate the biological sex of human skeletal remains based on protein traces from teeth.

The early medieval period, from the 5th to the 10th centuries, is often called the Dark Ages. But in the age of legendary heroes such as Siegfried, even the middle and lower classes were healthier than their descendants in later centuries – even as late as the 19th-century industrial age.

The remains of a medieval skeleton has shown the first physical evidence that a fern plant could have been used for medicinal purposes in cases such as alopecia, dandruff and kidney stones.

Art often imitates life, but when University of Cincinnati anthropologist and geologist Kenneth Tankersley investigated a 2000-year-old carved statue on a tobacco pipe, he exposed a truth he says will rewrite art history.

Buried alive. Butchered. Decapitated. Hacked. Mutilated. Killed. Archaeologist Samuel K. Lothrop did not obfuscate when describing what he thought had happened to the 220 bodies his expedition excavated from Panama's Playa Venado site in 1951.

Researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) have uncovered a previously unconfirmed population boom across South East Asia that occurred 4,000 years ago, thanks to a new method for measuring prehistoric population growth.

In the realm of evolutionary biology and survival of the fittest, cooperation is a risky business. Yet humans do it on a scope and a scale unmatched by any group in the animal world.

Evidence from the teeth of Anglo Saxon children could help identify modern children most at risk from conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

Turtles served as more than tasty treats for many Native American tribes throughout North America.

A new analysis of human hair taken from the remains of one of the members of the Franklin expedition, is providing further evidence that lead poisoning was just one of many different factors contributing to the deaths of the crew, and not the primary cause, casting new doubt on the theory that has been the subject of debate amongst scientists and historians for decades.

New analysis of the remains of 38 people who lived and died in the town of Sigtuna during the 10th, 11thand 12thcentury reveals high genetic variation and a wide scale migration.

Researchers analysing the teeth of Britons from the Iron Age to the modern day have unlocked the potential for using proteins in tooth tartar to reveal what our ancestors ate.