Osteoarchaeological research is focused on profiling and understanding human remains of the past. The goal is to gather as much information as possible from the human remains. The first steps, and...Show moreOsteoarchaeological research is focused on profiling and understanding human remains of the past. The goal is to gather as much information as possible from the human remains. The first steps, and arguably the most important ones, are the estimation of sex, age and stature. These form the base of any osteoarchaeological research and help build a profile of the research population. The determination of an individual’s sex, age and stature will always be an estimation and can never be determined with 100% accuracy. This also means the process of building a profile is very time consuming. This difficulty is often exaggerated by the preservation of the human remains and methodology used. Osteoarchaeology also suffers greatly from inter and intraobserver variation. These problems become more severe when the sample size gets larger or when more traits are examined. Due to these problems, osteoarchaeological research can be very difficult and is never an exact science. Researchers are constantly trying to develop new methods to reduce the amount of time it takes to estimate sex, age and stature and to get the highest accuracy rates possible. For sex estimation, the skull and pelvis are regarded as the two most reliable aspects of the human skeleton. Several different methods have been developed focusing on these two aspects. New methods are often developed on a regional reference population. To implement such a method in a different region or country it is necessary to test its effectiveness on skeletal material with known data. In this thesis, a mathematical approach to sex estimation called the Diagnose Sexuelle Probabiliste method (DSP) is tested on a skeletal collection from the Middenbeemster, the Netherlands. Archival data was available for 118 individuals, of which 99 were eligible for the DSP method. The DSP method uses 4 to 10 measurements of the os coxa to estimate the chance of the individual being male or female. The big upside of this method, compared to other commonly used methods, is its ease of use. No extensive knowledge of the human skeleton is needed to gather the required measurement data for the method to be used. Even so, the creators of the method claim high accuracy levels and imply that DSP is equally, if not more, reliable than other existing methods. The results of this thesis indicate that, on Dutch populations, the DSP method is as accurate and robust as the creators claim. For the 99 individuals, DSP was able to estimate the sex of 85 of them (86%), with an accuracy of 97.6%. Only 2 individuals were incorrectly estimated to be male. From the measurements of the remaining 14 individuals the DSP method could not estimate the sex with enough certainty, leaving these individuals as undetermined. The DSP method proves to be robust and very accurate on Dutch skeletal material and should be considered a viable method for the estimation of sex. The ease of use of this method, compared to other sex estimation methods, is its strongest aspect. The method is not time consuming and can be performed without extensive knowledge on the subject, which could save a lot of time and effort in (osteo)archaeological research in the Netherlands.Show less
Magic has been a much-debated topic over the last centuries. This thesis discusses the disappearance and return of magic in academic discourse and evaluates it through a theoretical framework for...Show moreMagic has been a much-debated topic over the last centuries. This thesis discusses the disappearance and return of magic in academic discourse and evaluates it through a theoretical framework for scientific inquiry. Finally, it aims to evaluate the use of magic as an interpretative theme in archaeology. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw many new theories and approaches to the subject. Influential anthropologists and sociologists released theories that were mainly based on evolutionist ideals. The rejection of these ideals, the problematic classification of witchcraft, sorcery and magic, and its adoption in modern media contributed to the disappearance of magic in academic discourse. In archaeology, these changes can be seen by studying Palaeolithic art. The return can be seen from 1990 to 2010 by its adoption in more archaeological research. These studies primarily focussed on the Mediterranean and failed to incorporate materiality fully. The full return of magic can be observed in the 2010s when publications specifically focused on the materiality of magic over a larger geographical and cultural area. This return resulted from a paradigm shift in anthropology where magic was now studied from a magical Worldview or consciousness instead of a rational Western worldview. An increase in material culture studies with the adoption of object agency and recognising the marginalisation of magic also contributed to the return. Object agency also contributed significantly to recognising the importance of portable artefacts in Palaeolithic art. The rise of material culture studies, its adoption of Latour’s Actor-Network Theory, and the shift in anthropology can be explained as two paradigm shifts vital for the return of magic in academic discourse. Magic can serve as a quality of practices and materials that can highlight certain features of materiality, potency, and verbal or ritual performance that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Magic is a tool to understand ancient practices and materials better. Archaeology has much to contribute to studying magic through material studies and archaeological contextsShow less
When researching the Ancient Nubians, historians often have to rely on the Ancient Egyptian sources to gather information. These sources can be subjective and nationalistic however, resulting in a...Show moreWhen researching the Ancient Nubians, historians often have to rely on the Ancient Egyptian sources to gather information. These sources can be subjective and nationalistic however, resulting in a negative preconception of Ancient Nubian communities. This can also be seen in the field of osteoarchaeology, where fractures found on Nubian individuals often automatically are connected to acts of interpersonal violence. Other, more positive explanations such as the practice of sports within the communities, are not often reviewed. This study looked at the remains of the human remains collection of Abu Fatima to try and find a connection between fractures in the hands and wrists and the practice of contact sports instead of interpersonal violence. For this research, 39 individuals were studied to determine the amount and types of injuries found in the remains of their hands and wrist. The collection was also compared to two Nubian collections connected to interpersonal violence (the Kerma collection and the collection from the NDRS project) and two modern individuals known to participate in Boxing from the Hammam Todd collection. As osteological studies connected to violence and sports often focus on injuries in the craniofacial area, if any injuries were found on the individuals their cranium was also studies in order to gather more information regarding the injury patterns. Different types of fractures and other signs of traumas were found on the human remains of Abu Fatima. Five parry fractures were found, all in the left arm. 17 metacarpal fractures were documented. There were no fractures in the carpal bones, but there were secondary signs of trauma such as osteoarthritis and ankylosis in hands that also showed other signs of trauma such as fractures. Two fractures were found on proximal phalanges. Three other phalanges showed signs of secondary trauma as a result of a fracture in an other bone in the hand. Lastly, four individuals showed signs of fractures on their cranium. The results showed that 10 of the 39 individuals showed signs of trauma in their hands or lower arms. These results implicate that the individuals from Abu Fatima suffered less traumatic hand injuries than the individuals from the rural sites of the NDRS project, but more injuries than the individuals from the capital city of Kerma. The injuries found in the human remains of the Abu Fatima collection do not support the hypothesis of a practice of contact sports within the community of Abu Fatima with certainty. The injury patterns found in the individuals from the Abu Fatima collection show similarities with both modern boxing individuals as the individuals from Kerma and NDRS, which are connected to interpersonal violence. A new theory has been introduced connecting the fractures in this research to the practice of Ancient stick fighting, a sport very popular in Ancient Nubia which has not yet been studied on possible injury patterns.Show less
