Dr. Katherine A Miller Wolf

Previous studies of bodily ornaments from burial contexts have often fixated on notions of wealth, social inequality, and prestige. Although such considerations are often pertinent, our work provides a complementary perspective incorporating Indigenous and ladino (mestizo) medical-spiritual understandings of bodily ornaments. We find that this perspective is best understood through a focus on children. In particular, this paper examines the marine shell, bone, ceramic, and stone bracelets and necklaces of children from Late and Terminal Classic burials at the Maya site of Ucanal, Petén, Guatemala, and compares them to burials from a range of time periods in the same region of the eastern Maya Lowlands. In addition, by incorporating ethnographic and ethnohistoric research on Indigenous Maya and ladino practices, we underscore the relational understandings of Maya ornaments worn by children and their role in the articulation of caring relations between parents and their precious children, in repelling spiritual forces and winds carrying illnesses, and in the making of social persons. While attention and respect for Indigenous medical-spiritual practices are slowly but increasingly recognized in contemporary medical practices in Guatemala, Mexico, and elsewhere, archaeological perspectives also benefit from such perspectives on children and their well-being.

Human societies create and maintain structures in which individuals and groups experience varying degrees of inequity and suffering that may be skeletally and dentally embodied. It is necessary to foreground these social and structural impacts for forensic anthropologists to eschew biologically deterministic interpretations of human variation and overly individualistic interpretations of health and disease. We thus propose a ‘Structural Vulnerability Profile’ (SVP), akin to the Structural Vulnerability Assessment Tool of medical anthropology [1], to be considered along with the traditional ‘biological’ profile estimated by forensic anthropologists. Assembling an SVP would involve examining and assessing skeletal/dental biomarkers indicative of embodied social inequity—the lived experiences of social marginalization that can get ‘under the skin’ to leave hard-tissue traces. Shifting our emphasis from presumably hereditary variation to focus on embodied social marginalization, the SVP will allow forensic anthropologists to sensitively reconstruct the lived experiences of the people we examine.
•Traditionally, forensic anthropology emphasizes heredity and individual behavior in interpretations of biological variation.•A structural vulnerability perspective shifts the focus to the ‘upstream factors’ that structure human variation.•These influences include social, political, economic, and environmental determinants of health.•We propose a Structural Vulnerability Profile—SVP—akin to medical anthropology’s Structural Vulnerability Assessment Tool.•The SVP explicitly frames analyses of human skeletal and dental variation within the context of embodied experiences.

Ucanal was a major Maya center during the Terminal Classic period (830-1000 CE) with complex social, political, and economic relation-ships emerging after the "collapse" of the Classic Maya civilization. Recent excavations revealed unusual and surprising mortuary patterns that deviate from other cities. Most notably, large deposits of bone have been recovered spread across plaza floors and in dense, concentrated groups. Deposits contain isolated human skeletal remains that were relatively easy to remove from the body of a living or recently deceased person like teeth, the patella, and bones of the arms, hands, and feet. Moreover, many of the bones show evidence of subsequently being "worked" and in the process of being transformed into another object – something most often seen with faunal remains. Given the unique nature of this assemblage, a primary objective was to estimate sex and age of the isolated elements to reconstruct what may have occurred at the site. A total of 31 patella from Ucanal were examined and six metrics were collected from each bone (e.g. Buikstra and Ubelaker, 1994; Sakaue, 2008), veriܪed with IOE data, and statistically evaluated to reveal sexual dimorphism among the patella (t-test and Mann-Whitney’s U). The method was verified with comparative samples of patella from collections derived from other regional sites (Ambergris Caye, San Juan, Cac Balam, and Ek Luum). Sex can be estimated from the patella alone for the ancient Maya samples and the method has great potential use for isolated, poorly preserved remains from other similar contexts.

Early scholarship on the disruption to political dynasties at the end of the Classic period in the Maya Lowlands argued that political collapse and the new material culture associated with it were due to the invasion of Putun/Chontal peoples from the Gulf Coast. One of the sites thought to have been targeted by such an invasion was Ucanal, Petén, Guatemala. Although no excavations had been undertaken at the site when the Putun invasion hypothesis was formulated, recent archaeological research at Ucanal provides an opportunity to re-visit the question of foreigners. This paper examines residential settlement histories and isotopic values from human teeth at Ucanal to better understand the changes that occurred during the Terminal Classic period. Our research indicates that while the possibility of foreign rule remains, the invasion hypothesis cannot fully capture the complex dynamics, multi-directional movements, and pluralistic influences of this time period. Ucanal was a thriving, heterogenous city with connections to multiple regions and peoples. Individuals born outside the Ucanal region were indeed present at the site, although the ways in which foreign identities were constituted were as much about peoples’ practices and performances of self (and others) as about where they were born.

Colonialism came late to northern Guatemala. The Spanish began to establish missions in the Peten Lakes region in the early 1700s, nearly 200 years after initial contact with the Mayas. Excavations in 2011–2012 at the Mission San Bernabé revealed European goods, nonnative animal species, and burial patterns that marked a new lifestyle. Who lived at the Mission San Bernabé, and where did they come from? The Spanish resettled indigenous populations to facilitate the colonization process; however, isotopic data are inconsistent with large population movements. Instead, strontium and oxygen isotope values in the tooth enamel and bones of individuals buried at the mission suggest a mostly local population. The data suggest in-migration from Belize, a region under nominal Spanish control, but with pre-Hispanic ties to the Peten. Changes did not come from migrants crossing a border; instead, the border itself moved and brought the colonial world to the Peten Mayas.

Archaeologists strive to understand ancient lifeways, and bioarchaeological data provide honest and immutable evidence of the realities of ancient society in the bodies of the dead. Given the importance of human remains in the archaeological record, a major component of the author's work has been devoted to the ethical responsibilities of bioarchaeologists in the treatment of the collections studied. However, the curation of skeletal remains is often challenging because the conservation and storage of these delicate materials may be afterthoughts in archaeological plans, being inadequately or incorrectly stored and sometimes treated to the same conservation conditions as more robust artifacts and samples. This article offers guidelines and recommendations for skeletal curation based on observations of curation challenges in a large collection in the subtropical Maya region. The collection was not well managed and human remains were not prioritized in the conservation program. The challenges and mitigations are presented here.

In small developing countries like Belize, lack of funding for archaeological research and post excavation curation remains one of our greatest challenges to preserving our tangible cultural heritage. The state of curation of human remains and artefact collections at St. John's College in Belize City is a perfect example of what can go wrong in the absence of a properly funded and managed curation program both at the national and the institutional level. This article highlights the rediscovery of a historically significant group of over 70 human remains in the biological collection of Friar Deickman, which had been forgotten in an attic after his death in 2003. We outline the process of, and accomplishments in improving the curation conditions of these individuals while uncovering their importance to Belizean history in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. Preliminary analysis reveals life histories of slavery and indentured servitude of individuals of African, Maya, European, and possible mixed African and European descent. We emphasize the importance of ethical responsibility in properly curating excavated human remains, and the challenges researchers face when poor curation results in lost provenience. We offer suggestions for scientific analysis in recovering information lost as a result of poor excavation or curation methods.

The articles in this issue present bioarchaeological case studies from across the globe, including North and Central America, East Asia, Europe, and the Near East. Some bioarchaeology projects are new and others are decades old, but common challenges emerge as researchers apply conservation standards to real situations in the field: a lack of training or resources for long-term curation of human remains, the lag between excavation and analysis of remains, and environmental challenges that include melting permafrost, tropical storms, and a variety of pests such as molds, fungi, bats, snakes, and insects. The studies also address ethical considerations about the use of digital images of human remains, molecular and isotopic methods that require the destruction of human tissue samples, the ability of fast-paced cultural resource management (CRM) projects to address the needs of descendant communities, and the responsibility that we have to the people we study. Techniques for addressing these challenges include new computer programs, more advanced photographic software, and research on the effects of conservation techniques that provide new "standards" for bioarchaeologists. We highlight the importance of each contribution and discuss the future of conservation in bioarchaeology.

Isotopic data are regularly employed to investigate and reconstruct migration, diet, and other anthropological questions about the past. Here we present new radiogenic strontium isotope values for western Honduras that have been understudied in relation to mobility among the ancient Maya in Mesoamerica. We employ biologically available isotopic compositions (87Sr/86Sr) derived from local fauna and plants to create a baseline for these regions to determine the degree of movement into populations at Late Classic (600–820 CE) Copan, Honduras. Our results demonstrate that while movement certainly occurred within the Maya region, it also may have included areas beyond the perceived physical and cultural boundaries of the Maya world. We focus on the biogeochemical data to highlight how paleomobility (87Sr/86Sr) data should be used cautiously to understand mobility across Mesoamerica, and to consider how non-Maya peoples were likely part of Maya communities.
•New baseline 87Sr/86Sr values are presented to assess paleomobility in Mesoamerica.•Results suggest migration occurred regularly within and beyond the ancient Maya world.•Biologically available isotopic compositions derived from local fauna living on identifiable geological zones were used to investigate mobility in the past.