Osteoarthritis and body mass

Osteoarthritis is the second most common pathology found in anthropological collections. Although a great deal is known about osteoarthritis, it is not yet known whether in skeletal populations there is a correlation between osteoarthritis and body mass. In this study, lower limb and spinal osteoarthritis scores were taken to determine whether body mass and femoral length correlate with osteoarthritis on weight bearing joints. Osteoarthritis was measured using a four-point ordinal scale on a sample of 114 adult prehistoric Californian Amerinds. Body mass was calculated from femoral head breadth; femoral length was measured using standard procedures; and age and sex were determined through standard osteological procedures. Using Spearman correlations, body mass and femoral length did not correlate significantly with any of the osteoarthritis variables. Age correlated significantly with nearly all of the osteoarthritis variables (hip, r = 0.507; knee, r = 0.528; cervical, r = 0.513; thoracic, r = 0.647; lumbar, r = 0.507, P-values < 0.001); and body mass and femoral length correlated with sex (r-values = 0.835 and 0.654, P-values < 0.001). With age and sex controls, body mass negatively correlated with the hip osteoarthritis variable (r = −0.202, P < 0.05), but not with any of the other osteoarthritis variables. Results concur with previous findings in the anthropological literature and highlight complexities of osteoarthritis etiology.     

‘Partner in his Calamities’: Pastors' Wives,Married Nuns and the Experience of Clerical Marriage in the Early German Reformation

This essay examines what factors led the first clerical wives to marry former Catholic clergy and nuns to marry in the first decade of the Reformation in Germany and seeks to explain the difference that social class, geography and gender made in those decisions. In contrast to the later Reformation, when pastors married same or higher social status women, the majority of women who married former priests and monks during the 1520s were often lower or, in the case of nuns, significantly higher social status than their husbands. Women married clergy for a variety of reasons that were counterintuitive to typical marital strategies for economic security and social networking, since clergy had neither in the 1520s. While sharing a common experience, clerical wives' reasons for marriage to a pastor varied greatly depending on class, local decision about the Reformation and numerous personal factors. Using a variety of sources including letters, civic records, court testimony and published pamphlets, this article demonstrates that these women did exhibit a limited agency that ultimately helped shape larger social and political acceptance of clerical marriage.     

Elemental analysis and characterization of ochre sources from Southern Arizona

Iron oxides and other associated minerals (ochre) were widely used in ancient times, however, the use and procurement of these materials is not well understood and there has been little research on the elemental characterization of the material compared to other artifact classes. To assess the possibility of identifying ochre differences between locations, the original potential geological sources should be thoroughly characterized. This paper describes the collection of potential geologic sources of ochre in the Tucson basin of Arizona, sampling of those sources, instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), and subsequent multivariate analysis of the data. This paper has several goals, including characterizing geochemical trends within and between ochre sources, identifying the important elements in geochemical characterization of ochre, and establishing a database for further investigations. This preliminary study indicates that the inter- and intra-source variations in geological sources of ochre in the Tucson basin region can be differentiated. Future analysis of iron oxide artifacts will be performed to examine correlations between artifacts and sources and provide a basis for further deductions concerning ancient ochre procurement.     

Ancient DNA in human bones from Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Greece and Crete

Attempts were made to detect ancient DNA (aDNA) in samples of 88 human skeletons from eight Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in Greece and Crete. Ancient DNA was absent in specimens from Nea Nikomedia, Lerna, Karaviádena (Zakro), Antron Grave Circle A and Mycenae Grave Circle A. For each of three skeletons from Antron Grave Circle B that were sampled, polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) gave products for nuclear but not mitochondrial DNA, but amplicon yield was low and inconsistent with replicate PCRs failing to give reproducible results. With specimens from Mycenae Grave Circle B, evidence for mitochondrial aDNA was obtained for four of the 22 skeletons that were studied, and at Kouphovouno evidence for mitochondrial and/or nuclear aDNA was obtained with eight of the 20 skeletons that were examined. We conclude that, although aDNA might be present in some Eastern Mediterranean skeletons from later centuries of the Bronze Age, it is not commonly found in material from this period and is likely to be absent from older material.     

The conjugal debt and medieval canon law

Marriage in Western European society was the preserve of the Christian Church throughout the later middle ages. The law of the Church played a significant role in the formation of doctrine concerning that institution, including the sexual relationship of spouses. Adopting a debt-model of conjugal relations, the canonists maintained that each partner owed marital coitus to the other. The lawyers emphasized the mutually binding character of this obligation, and consistently dejended the right of spouses to exact their marital due, insisting that this duty could be abrogated only by mutual consent. As heirs to an ascetic patristic tradition, however, the lawyers tended to be suspicious of fleshly pleasure. A peculiar and ambivalent doctrine resulted from this tension between an appreciation of the intrinsic goodness of the married state and a distrust of sex, one of its major constituents.     

‘Pillagers’ and ‘brigands’ in the hundred years war

The sufferings of French non-combatants, particularly peasants, during the Hundred Years War have been described and deplored from the fourteenth century to the twentieth. A concern for the victims has often left little room for a careful study of the aggressors, thepillars andbrigands of the contemporary records. This article seeks to identify these latter, to distinguish them from each other and from the noble warriors, often called ‘men-at-arms’. It will be shown that the first, brutal, contact between armed men and unarmed ‘civilians’ was not, as the contemporary moralists suggested, between noble and non-noble, but between non-noble and non-noble: between common soldiers and bandits, on the one hand, and peasant victims, on the other. The chivalrous and adventurous war of knights and squires was sustained on the day-to-day level, by the activity of foraging pillagers. Brigandage was a consequence of their activity, not another name for it.