Humans, Volume 5, Issue 1 (March 2025) – 9 articles

This paper explores the co-constitution of systems of social distinction, culinary habits, and political economies. During the Depression in British Honduras (Belize), unemployment, hunger, and malnutrition ignited panic, unrest, and uprising. At the same time, agents of a mahogany company and the colonial government displaced an entire Maya farming community. Why was Maya farming not considered a pillar of the colony’s economy? For more than a century, colonial administrators had made scarce attempts to stimulate domestic food production and distribution, and stimulating corn production was not even considered. Corn had become racialized, called “Indian corn”, and was considered disgusting, unhealthy, and the cause of high Indian mortality rates. A visceral disgust for corn was hard to disentangle from British disgust for Indians more generally. The racialization of corn emerged alongside and reinforced colonial economic policies of structural underdevelopment, all of which ensured that when Belize City residents were standing in food lines, the abundant harvests of Indian corn were nowhere within reach. Full article

In this paper, we revisit the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in western Scotland and the links between early European farmers and middens in light of new aDNA, radiocarbon, and stable isotopic evidence. New carbon and nitrogen stable isotopic data for food sources (plant and animal remains) from a Mesolithic site are presented, and dietary FRUITS models are recalculated based on these data. We also respond to recent criticisms of the Bayesian approach to diet reconstruction. Results support the view that Neolithic people had at most a minimal contribution of marine foods in their diet and also point to a dual population model of transition in western Scotland. A significant aspect of the transition in coastal western Scotland is the co-occurrence of Neolithic human remains with shell-midden deposits, which appears to contradict stable isotopic evidence indicating a minimal contribution of marine resources to the diet of early farming communities in the region. Finally, we highlight the need for further research to fully address these issues, including (1) targeted isotopic analyses of potential plant and animal resources, (2) single-entity radiocarbon and ZooMS analyses of animal bones and artefacts from shell middens, and (3) further aDNA analyses of the remains of Late Mesolithic and Neolithic people. Full article

This article, based on systems thinking, explores how community organizations in Montreal providing newcomers support through the various stages of their settlement process operate within a local municipal system and a broader provincial system, both promoting integration and intercultural relations. On a local scale, the City of Montreal has set itself the goal of raising public awareness of the benefits of cultural diversity and wishes to encourage positive interactions in the public space. For those interviewed during our research, this municipal model of integration does not necessarily align with Quebec’s unique and unofficial integration model, interculturalism, which can be perceived as a political project supporting the French-speaking majority’s interests and which may seem incompatible with the social justice values espoused by community organizations. This article is based on verbatim excerpts gathered from individual and group in-depth interviews conducted with 37 community workers in the spring of 2023. Full article

This study evaluates the applicability of Demirjian and Willems’ methods for age estimation in Portuguese children aged 6–9 years based on orthopantomographs (OPGs). The main objective was to compare the precision of both methods in estimating chronological age (CA). This study analyzed 160 OPGs, equally distributed by sex, and the dental age (DA) was calculated twice, using both methodologies. The findings reveal that Demirjian’s method consistently overestimated the chronological age by an average of 1.47 years for males and 1.45 years for females. Similarly, the Willems method also overestimated the age but to a lesser extent, with mean differences of 1.18 years for males and 0.91 years for females. Statistical analysis confirmed that both methods significantly overestimate age, with the most considerable discrepancies observed in 8-year-old individuals. Despite the Willems method providing slightly more accurate results, neither method was reliable, particularly for male subjects. This study highlights the need for further refinement of these methods, considering their tendency to overestimate age, especially in specific age groups. This research improves age estimation techniques in forensic and clinical settings, especially within the Portuguese pediatric population. Full article

Is there a qualitative difference between apes’ and humans ‘ability to estimate others’ mental states’, a.k.a. ‘Theory-of-Mind’? After opting for the idea that expectations are empty profiles that recognize a particular content when it arrives, I apply the same description to ‘vicarious expectations’—very probably present in apes. Thus, (empty) vicarious expectations and one’s (full) contents are distinguished without needing meta-representation. Then, I propose: First, vicarious expectations are enough to support apes’ Theory-of-Mind (including ‘spontaneous altruism’). Second, since vicarious expectations require a profile previously built in the subject that activates them, this subject cannot activate any vicarious expectation of mental states that are intrinsically impossible for him. Third, your mental states that think of me as a distal individual are intrinsically impossible states for me, and therefore, to estimate them, I must estimate your mental contents. This ability (the original nucleus of the human Theory-of-Mind) is essential in the human lifestyle. It is involved in unpleasant and pleasant self-conscious emotions, which respectively contribute to ‘social order’ and to cultural innovations. More basically, it makes possible human (prelinguistic or linguistic) communication, since it originally made possible the understanding of others’ mental states as states that are addressed to me, and that are therefore impossible for me. Full article

The development of transhumant livestock farming in the Iberian Peninsula from the Late Middle Ages onward is one of the most thoroughly studied aspects of economic history, as it laid the foundation for the prosperity of the Kingdom of Castile throughout the Early Modern period. In contrast, there is very little information about livestock activity in the earlier period of al-Andalus, the part of the peninsula under Islamic rule from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. This lack of information is due to epistemological reasons, as the absence of written sources makes archaeological data on pastoralism highly elusive. Additionally, historiographical reasons have led to the belief that livestock farming played a secondary role in the Andalusi economy. Given the current state of research, this work is significant as it presents convincing archaeological evidence of Andalusi livestock farming as early as the 11th century, linked to rural communities where sheep herding for wool production was the primary activity. Full article

The excavation of residential areas is a growing focus of research in Andean archaeology. Studies reveal that interpreting household remains from some prehispanic societies can be complex because of the nature of abandonment ritual, which may involve burnt offerings, the placement of valuables on floors, or the purposeful destruction of ceramic vessels that are distributed in patterned ways. The goods that constitute these offering practices can be confused with post-occupation refuse, especially when excavation units are relatively small. In this paper, I discuss the importance of assessing site formation processes in residential spaces and illustrate how different modes of household abandonment can make comparative analysis a complex exercise. I describe and compare several examples from Wari-affiliated residences at the sites of Cerro Baúl and Cerro Mejía, located in the department of Moquegua, Peru, to show how ritual depositions corresponding to house abandonment might affect the interpretation of daily domestic life. In particular, I examine how ritual assemblages have been interpreted as evidence of feasting to support propositions regarding the Wari political economy. I advocate that archaeologists interested in domestic areas, lifeways, and the political economy engage in large-scale horizontal excavations to ensure they can correctly distinguish between the remains of quotidian practices, the goods associated with ritual depositions, and refuse resulting from feasting, which is best substantiated with features and facilities to host empowering events. Full article

Understanding the composition and diagenetic processes of the deposition environment is pivotal to understanding why bone undergoes preservation or diagenesis. This research explores the complex nexus of diagenesis at the extremes of preservation, via the interdependent chemical, and short- and long-term microbial processes that influence diagenesis. These processes include dissolution, ion exchange, hydrolysis, recrystallisation, waterlogging, acidity and alkalinity, soil composition, redox potential, bacterial activity, and microbiome composition. Diagenetic processes are discussed in relation to typical sites and sites with extremes of preservation. Understanding site conditions that impact diagenetic processes is critical to understanding the visual features presented in recovered skeletal material, ensuring an appropriate post-mortem interval is assigned, and for subsequent post hoc analysis of bone. Full article

Traditional models of interaction in northern Sudan have innate Egyptological, elite, and urban biases which have relegated certain areas to mere peripheries of more ‘established’ and ‘central’ sites. In order to reach a higher resolution understanding of cultural dynamics and diversity of ancient Nilotic groups, the DiverseNile project has established the bespoke concept of Contact Space Biography which we present in the following article. We challenge existing approaches to cultural contact in the region by adopting a bottom-up approach which moves away from well-established categorisation of sites in our study area. In particular by reconstructing landscape biographies of the Bronze Age in the Middle Nile beyond established cultural categories in order to provide new insights into the ancient dynamics of social spaces, which include landscape features and non-human activities. In the following we instead consider such areas as complex social spaces intertwined with, an often changing, landscape by presenting our findings from the study of cemetery and settlement sites. Overall, the concept of Contact Space Biography effectively combines models of contact spaces, the idiosyncrasies of a changing landscape and the technological and industrial prerogatives of those living in and accessing this region. Full article