Same island, different diet: Cultural evolution of food practice on Öland, Sweden, from the Mesolithic to the Roman Period

The Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in north-west Europe has been described as rapid and uniform, entailing a swift shift from the use of marine and other wild resources to domesticated terrestrial resources. Here, we approach the when, what and how of this transition on a regional level, using empirical data from Öland, an island in the Baltic Sea off the Swedish east coast, and also monitor changes that occurred after the shift. Radiocarbon dating and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of bones and teeth from 123 human individuals, along with faunal isotope data from 27 species, applying to nine sites on Öland and covering a time span from the Mesolithic to the Roman Period, demonstrate a great diversity in food practices, mainly governed by culture and independent of climatic changes. There was a marked dietary shift during the second half of the third millennium from a mixed marine diet to the use of exclusively terrestrial resources, interpreted as marking the large-scale introduction of farming. Contrary to previous claims, this took place at the end of the Neolithic and not at the onset. Our data also show that culturally induced dietary transitions occurred continuously throughout prehistory. The availability of high-resolution data on various levels, from intra-individual to inter-population, makes stable isotope analysis a powerful tool for studying the evolution of food practices.     

In the shadow of Moundville: A bioarchaeological view of the transition to agriculture in the central Tombigbee valley of Alabama and Mississippi

Biocultural patterns surrounding the emergence of agriculture from 11 sites in the central Tombigbee River valley (500–1200 AD), 50–100 km west of the emerging Moundville polity, suggest that while food production may have alleviated some ecological stress, it came at a cost. Markers of childhood arrest indicate earlier weaning, likely creating a cycle of rising fertility and competition, but surviving adults appear better off following intensification. Health disparities at farmsteads, including more prevalent anemia, growth defects, lower limb infections, and accidental trauma, are consistent with increasingly competing demands of domestic and corporate modes of production. Although these agricultural settlements in the hinterlands were not severely compromised as predicted by a strictly top down model of provisioning, health risks assumed by farmsteads may have resulted from provisioning to centers and/or corporate lineages while simultaneously mitigating larger risks (e.g., raiding). The greater health risks assumed by farmstead females suggest that they had less control over production and decision-making than women buried at centers, while height and upper body strength at mound centers, in addition to rare but extreme trauma, point to identities that were mapped not only onto the landscape, but onto the bodies of men and women occupying elite spaces.     

Ethnic belonging of the children born out of rape in postconflict Bosnia‐Herzegovina and Rwanda

Sexual violence has been used as a weapon of war in ethnic conflicts, and forced impregnations have been central to this strategy. Scholars however disagree on whether the cultural assimilation to the maternal group influences these children's identities, or whether they are perceived as belonging to the enemy group (Carpenter; Nikolic‐Ristanovic). Drawing on preliminary qualitative findings collected in 2013 in Rwanda and Bosnia‐Herzegovina, this paper analyses the ethnic identification imposed by the enemy group, the mothers and their community on the children born out of rape. It first explores how the mothers' ethnic identities are often subordinated to their fathers' ethnic background, and how this then justifies their social exclusion from their maternal ethnic group. This paper suggests that sexual violence is extremely effective in ensuring the continuation of the ethnic conflict in the aftermath of the violence by attacking the children's senses of belonging.