Radiographic clues to fractures of distal humerus in archaeological remains

Today, distal humeral fractures occur most frequently in children and adolescents, and are usually the result of a fall onto extended arms, or less often on flexed elbows. Trauma to the distal humerus at the physis and epiphyses often produces non‐displaced or mildly displaced fractures that are difficult to recognize radiographically. To help identify these types of injuries, clinicians have developed two measurement techniques that are applied to the X‐rays of the injured bones. In a preliminary attempt to assess the usefulness of these measurement techniques for recognizing trauma in archaeological skeletal remains, 25 humeri from two Ontario ossuary samples were submitted to radiography. Clinical data on distal humeral fractures, their incidence, and mechanisms of injury were also used to interpret the lifestyles and cultural activities of the aboriginal individuals under study. While only one healed fracture was suspected after gross observation, a total of four fractures were ultimately identified using the two measurements, the humerotangential‐angle (HTA) and the anterior hunieral line (AHL). Our results provide indirect, but telling, evidence of accidental childhood injuries to distal humerus in an archaeological population. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book reviews

Ravi Arvind Palat (ed.). Pacific‐Asia and the Future of the World System. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 1993. vii + 206 pp. $US55.00 (cloth).

Eric Jones, Lionel Frost and Colin White. Coming Full Circle: An Economic History of the Pacific Rim. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. xv + 188 pp. $US49.95 (cloth), $US12.95 (paper).

Andrew MacIntyre (ed.). Business and Government in Industrialising Asia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994. xi + 312 pp. $29.95 (paper).

Michael C. Howard (ed.). Asia's Environmental Crisis. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. ix + 293 pp. $44.95 (paper).

Richard W. Baker (ed.). The ANZUS States and Their Region. Regional Policies of Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 1994. xiii + 228 pp. $US57.95.

Stephen Chee (ed.). Leadership and Security in Southeast Asia: Institutional Aspects. Singapore: ISEAS, 1991. xii + 187 pp. $US25.00 (cloth), $US17.00 (paper).

Gerald L. Curtis (ed.). Japan's Foreign Policy After the Cold War. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. xxvi + 382 pp. $US60.00 (cloth), $US22.50 (paper).

Taichi Sakaya. What is Japan? Contradictions and Transformations, trans. Steven Karpa. New York, Tokyo and London: Kodansha International, 1993. xxii + 312 pp. No price given.

Bill Brugger and Stephen Reglar. Politics, Economy and Society in Contemporary China. London: Macmillan, 1994. vii + 367 pp. $36.55 (paper).

Sung Chul Yang. The North and South Korean Political Systems: A Comparative Analysis. Boulder, CO: Westview/Seoul: Seoul Press, 1994. xiii + 983 pp. $US64.95 (cloth).

Mark L. Clifford. Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats and Generals in South Korea. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994. xiii + 357 pp. $US19.95 (paper).

Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped. A History of the Geo‐Body of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994. xvi + 228 pp. $US34.00 (cloth).

Derek Tribe. Feeding and Greening the World — The Role of International Agricultural Research. Wallingford: Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International, 1994. xiii + 274 pp. $35.50 (paper).

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker. Earth Politics. London: Zed Books, 1984. xii + 234 pp. $US59.95 (cloth), $US25.00 (paper)

Neil Middleton, Phil O'Keefe and Sam Moyo. Tears of the Crocodile: From Rio to Reality in the Developing World. London: Pluto Press, 1993. xii+ 228 pp. $US66.50 (cloth), $US19.95 (paper).

Boris Kagarlitsky. The Disintegration of the Monolith, translated by Renfrey Clarke. London and New York: Verso, 1992. x + 169 pp. No price given.

George Schöpflin. Politics in Eastern Europe, 1945–1992. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, USA: Blackwell Publishers, 1993. viii + 327 pp. $39.95 (paper).

Andrei S. Markovits and Philip S. Gorski. The German Left: Red Green and Beyond. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993. xiii + 393 pp. $45.00 (paper).

Raymond L. Garthoff. The Great Transition: American‐Soviet Relations at the End of the Cold War. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994. xiv + 834 pp. $US44.95 (cloth), $US14.95 (paper).

Richard N. Haass. Intervention: The Use of Military Force in the Post‐Cold War World. Washington, DC: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1994. x + 258 pp. $US24.95 (cloth), $US12.95 (paper).

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The State of the World's Refugees: The Challenge of Protection. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ix + 191 pp. $19.95 (paper).

Francis M. Deng. Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1993. xii + 175 pp. No price given.

Paul Wehr. Heidi Burgess and Guy Burgess (eds). Justice without Violence. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994. ix + 300 pp. $US45.00 (cloth), $US18.95 (paper).