Book Reviews

THE BIOARCHAEOLOGY OF CHILDREN: PERSPECTIVES FROM

BIOLOGICAL AND FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY. By Mary E.Lewis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007.255 pp. ISBN 0-52183-602-6. $130.00 (hardcover).

The remains of children are generally underrepre-sented in the archaeological record, with the conse-quence that many anthropologists are afforded little ex-posure to preadolescent morphology, especially that ofthe fetal or neonatal skeleton. The opposite situationprevails in Ireland, where archaeological excavationscontinue to recover fetuses and infants of medieval andlater date from clandestine burial grounds. These sites,known as Cı́llı́ni, dot the Irish landscape in their thou-sands; working with skeletal samples from them pro-vides one of the main benefits of contract archaeology inthe Emerald Isle. With this experience in mind, Iapproached the Lewis volume with great interest.

The first one-third of the book deals with fundamen-tals. Chapter 1 considers what is meant by the child inhistorical context, including confusion over nomencla-ture. Chapter 2 highlights the archaeological dataset,taphonomy and fetal bone survival, and age-differentialburial practices. Chapters 3 and 4 review the basics ofnonadult aging, determination of sex and ancestry, andfundamentals of growth and development. The remain-ing two-thirds of the book deals with osteoarchaeologicalevidence (or lack thereof) for mortality rates, malnutri-tion, weaning and feeding practices, infanticide, trauma,child abuse, and pathological conditions afflicting thenonadult skeleton. Whilst there are several publishedworks dedicated to nonadult archaeology and skeletalbiology, this is the first volume that attempts to inte-grate the disparate multidisciplinary threads into a com-prehensive biocultural picture. By any standard this isan unenviable task, and Lewis does not shy from high-lighting the many problems that have bedeviled suchattempts in the past. She juxtaposes the biases underlin-ing social and biological research in recent decades, not-ing that western views of childhood have tended to colorsocial interpretations, particularly in perceptions of gen-der roles and the underestimation of childhood maturity.The modern mindset tends to view children as passiverather than active agents, though she notes the manythousands of children serving in current armed conflictssuggest that the young are anything but. Biases aside,Lewis makes a strong case for the research potential ofnonadults, noting that both the social and biological sci-ences have now ‘‘reached a level of sophistication thatshould encourage communication and integration of thedisciplines’’ (p. 19).

Given the scale of the task, was Lewis successful?Well, yes and no. There is much to recommend in thevolume. The text is well written, accessible to the non-specialist, and possessed of considerable scope. Aspectsof the biological and the cultural are well integrated,and whilst some might view the outcome as too deter-ministic in nature, it does try to present a rounded viewof behavioral reconstruction. The fact that Lewis is pas-

sionate about her ‘‘little waifs’’ is abundantly clear, andshe takes pains to debunk a number of myths includingthe erroneous notion that skeletal remains of fetuses,infants, and children do not survive in the burial envi-ronment. Such fallacies still prevail, as evidenced by a2005 Irish case where police were assured by patholo-gists that fetal bones from a 1970s clandestine burialwould not survive such a lengthy time in the ground;hopefully sales of Lewis’s book will circumvent suchviews in future. On a related note, I was pleased withher deconstruction of archaeological evidence for obstet-ric mortality. Here she argues for the use of objectivetaphonomic criteria to differentiate obstetric death frompostmortem deposition, rather than accepting the pres-ence of fetal bones within an adult abdomen as primafacie evidence for death in childbirth.

The volume has a few weaknesses. Beyond a handfulof typographical errors and the repetition of citations inthe bibliography, my strongest complaint is that thebook is too short and includes little new data. Manyissues, most notably those relating to longstanding sta-tistical or methodological problems of aging, are dealtwith in a superficial manner or flagged as being of inter-est but not given the attention they deserve. I also foundher treatment of results from conference abstracts asthough they were peer-reviewed articles a bit worri-some; one or two instances, fine, but 41 cases smacksof bibliographical padding. Unfortunately, the inclu-sion of long lists of published sources of reference data(but not a summary of the data itself) rather rein-forced this idea; a shame, as a tad more effort wouldhave made this an indispensable reference source.

The book is at its strongest discussing pathologicalconditions in the nonadult skeleton, and this is whereLewis seems most comfortable; indeed, around 40% ofthe book is given over to paleopathology. However, Iwas dismayed that in discussing nonadult pathology,Lewis focuses almost exclusively on pathogenic or defi-ciency-related conditions, namely syphilis, tuberculo-sis, rickets, scurvy, and anemia. Archaeologically rec-ognized developmental defects such as anencephaly,cleft palate, and spina bifida are mentioned only inpassing and not in pathological context. The widertopic of developmental field defects and their underly-ing causes is ignored. In choosing to exclude an entireclass of data, the book misleads the reader as to thewider range of childhood abnormalities present in thearchaeological record and, more importantly, fails tofully highlight the range of conditions likely to influ-ence fetal and infant viability. Given that congenitaldefects are the second most common cause of neonataldeath in clinical practice (after prematurity andcomplications of preterm birth), understanding theirincidence and expression is paramount if we are tryingto make sense of child mortality in the past. To com-pound the omission, I was concerned at the absenceof several core references from an otherwise extensivebibliography. This exclusion includes the ‘‘bible’’ ofdevelopmental defects in paleopathology, EthneBarnes’s Developmental Defects of the Axial Skeletonin Paleopathology (University Press of Colorado,1994), which should be required reading for anyone

VVC 2007 WILEY-LISS, INC.

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 135:245–248 (2008)

working with nonadult pathologies and abnormalvariation.

Complaints aside, the volume is deserving of praise,and I have no doubt that it will be of great value in itspresent form to both students and professionals. Thebook fills a substantial void in the current academicresource, although I think it falls a little short of beingthe essential reference work that it was intended tobe; for that I look forward to the revised and expandedsecond edition with eager anticipation.

PAT RANDOLPH-QUINNEY

Unit of Anatomy and Forensic AnthropologySchool of Life SciencesUniversity of DundeeDundee, UK

DOI 10.1002/ajpa.20705Published online 4 September 2007 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com).

MEN: EVOLUTIONARY AND LIFE HISTORY. By Richard G.Bribiescas Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.2006. 306 pp. ISBN 0-674-02293-5. $28.95 (cloth).

As a research area, male reproductive ecology hasbeen slow to get off the ground, and it is not entirelyclear why. As has been said of the demographic perspec-tive out of which it has grown, male reproductive ecologyis like a good mystery: it has life, death, and everythingin between, including sex and violence (if you areinclined to the behavioral) and muscle (if you are moreinclined to the physiological). Yet, an evolutionary under-standing of male reproductive biology has yielded fewlarger insights into either male physiology or men moregenerally, as this slim volume by one of its prime practi-tioners attests.

For his part, Bribiescas approaches the topic of malereproductive effort and life history in two sections. Thefirst section covers the selective background, life historytheory, and evolutionary history of males in general andhuman males more specifically. The second goes througheach life stage: fetal, infant, adolescent, adult, and sen-escent, pointing out the subtle ways in which exposureto testosterone biases somatic investment. For instance,the male brain comes out of the womb with a slightlysmaller left hemisphere, which may reflect the develop-mental effects of testosterone. Between birth and 6months, male infants also show elevated testosteronelevels, which may make male development slightly moreresponsive to environmental conditions. Compared tofemales, males develop more muscle mass at puberty,engage in riskier behavior as young adults, and aremore likely to get sick as adults, all the result of thephysiological effects of testosterone.

As Bribiescas’s clear examples, drawn primarilyfrom work in the United States, suggest, the singlemost important element holding back the developmentof a model of male reproductive ecology may be a lackof empirical data from ecologically relevant popula-tions. In energy-limited populations, we expect the ele-vated energy demands associated with testosterone tohave demonstrable consequences. The functionalimpact of elevated testosterone postnatally may be afew IQ points in our society, but in populations thatexperience periodic starvation it may be a matter oflife and death. Similarly, the energetic impact of tes-tosterone on growth in adolescent boys in Westernpopulations may simply result in increased food con-sumption. In energy-limited populations, on the other

hand, the energetic cost of testosterone may bereflected in a trade-off between increased height andreduced development of muscle mass. With aging, tes-tosterone may play a role in heart disease in industri-alized populations by altering lipid profiles. In con-trast, among undernourished populations, testosteronemay be implicated in response to infectious disease bypromoting immune response.

The role of testosterone as an allocater of energy inall aspects of the human male life course is a simpletestable hypothesis. Life-history theory is well designedto take account of the scheduling of such costs, which,as Bribiescas argues, may be more tied up in the de-velopment and maintenance of muscle mass than inthe reproductive system per se. But more data, someof it just now coming out, is needed to test how pheno-typic outcomes—whether muscle mass, immune func-tion, or relationship status—may be related to testos-terone in subsistence populations where energy isclearly limited.

But perhaps more importantly, as the book makesclear, without comparative data on the great apes, malereproductive ecology lacks a real evolutionary perspec-tive. The argument that humans have evolved bothbiparental care and substantial fat stores to maintainlarge brains and high reproductive rates in the face offluctuating food supplies applies to males just as it doesto females. Thus testosterone and the reproductiveeffort it represents should be intimately related to vari-ation in both body composition and pair bonding. Incontrast, among the great apes, where males providelittle if any parental care, we might expect to see tes-tosterone related more directly to somatic effort andmale–male behavioral competition. In particular, amongmale orangutans, who experience substantial seasonalfluctuation in food availability in the wild, testosteronemay be closely related to fat and survival issues. Incontrast, among both chimpanzees and gorillas, who ex-perience much less pronounced environmental fluctua-tion, testosterone may be related less directly to so-matic investment and more directly to reproductivebehavior.

Bribiescas ends the book with a quote from an eight-year-old boy who has just watched the funeral of a gangmember: ‘‘We are all going to die sometime’’ (p. 225).Indeed, life is short and leaves us with many mysteries.With this book, Bribiescas has given us a basic introduc-tion to the male mystery by arguing for the key role oftestosterone in allocating energy throughout the male

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life course. Now we need to address the basic question ofwhere and when the elements of a specifically humanmale life history began to emerge. In my opinion, malereproductive ecology is truly in its infancy, and there isstill plenty of time for the field to develop a moredetailed description of the evolution of human malereproductive physiology and its adaptation to variationin ecological and social conditions. I hope that the nextincarnation of this book will be able to provide amore substantial vision of male reproductive ecology.Until then, the current version will serve to whet theappetite.

BENJAMIN CAMPBELL

Department of AnthropologyHarvard UniversityCambridge, Massachusetts

DOI 10.1002/ajpa.20706Published online 4 September 2007 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com).

DEMOGRAPHY IN ARCHAEOLOGY. By Andrew Chamberlain.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. 235pp. ISBN 0-521-59651-3. $29.99 (paper).

Demography in Archaeology is a much-needed sum-mary of paleodemography, a field that strives to recon-struct the structure and dynamics of past populationsfrom archaeological data. The book introduces basic de-mographic concepts and theory and summarizes the var-ious sets of data and the methodological and analyticalapproaches used in paleodemography, historical demo-graphy, and ethnographic demography. Chamberlain alsodiscusses demographic studies of fossil hominids, theapplication of modern molecular data to demographicstudies, and the evidence for and demographic effects ofdisease in the past (i.e., paleopathology). He covers abroad variety of topics related to paleodemography in aclear and well organized book.

Throughout the book, Chamberlain provides succinctexplanations of important demographic, archaeological,and paleodemographic concepts. For example, the des-criptions of demographic concepts, theory, and methodsin Chapter 2 are both accessible and highly informative.These descriptions are not overly simplified, and Cham-berlain does not shy away from explaining demographicmodels or from using statistical formulae (e.g, hazardsmodels for mortality, logistic growth curves for popula-tion growth, etc.). However, this section is an introduc-tion to these topics and therefore emphasizes clarity andreadability; readers are not overwhelmed with a confus-ing amount of detail but, rather, are provided with suffi-cient references should they desire more technicaldetails or exhaustive descriptions.

Particularly impressive is the discussion in Chapter 4of recently developed paleodemographic estimationmethods such as Bayesian age estimation and maximumlikelihood estimation methods for adult age (e.g., transi-tion analysis and the latent trait method). Upon firsthearing of such methods, many students and researchersfind them to be counterintuitive and confusing, and itcan be a challenge to explain these methods to the stat-istically naı̈ve. Chamberlain’s descriptions are informa-tive but not overwhelmingly technical, and they providereaders with a basic understanding that will undoubt-edly help them when presented with more advancedliterature.

Chamberlain makes explicit the fundamental prob-lems associated with paleodemographic methods and an-

alytical procedures. Such problems include infant under-numeration because of taphonomic and excavationbiases and the problem of age mimicry, whereby adultage estimates are biased toward the age distribution ofknown-age reference samples. These problems, andothers, complicate our attempts to make straightforwardinferences about past populations based on observationsof skeletal samples. However, Chamberlain is clearly,though cautiously, optimistic that the solutions to theseproblems either already exist or are attainable in thenear future. This is an important message, giventhe unfortunate opinion held by some researchers thatthe problems associated with paleodemography are in-surmountable or that their solutions are too complex tobe worth the attempt. The reader of Demography inArchaeology is left with the impression that the recon-struction of demographic patterns of past populations isboth possible and extremely important, but also thatsuch work should only be done using appropriately rig-orous methods. Though not perfect, skeletal samples ‘‘to-gether with evidence of the size of settlements and cal-culations of carrying capacity, constitute essential sour-ces of information for archaeological demography’’ (p.12).

For the most part, the book does not assume priorknowledge of the subject matter, and most terms andconcepts that are not common knowledge are definedvery well. This is one reason this book would be an idealtextbook. However, one minor weakness of the book is ageneral lack of definitions or explanations of genetic andpopulation genetic terms and concepts. For example, inChapter 5, Chamberlain mentions effective populationsize, heritability, and coalescent theory without definingthe terms, and yet these concepts are no more commonknowledge than are incidence and prevalence, both ofwhich he does clearly define. Readers might thereforeneed a basic understanding of genetics to fully under-stand these sections.

This book is ideal for advanced undergraduate andgraduate students and professors and researchers whoare unfamiliar with the field and need a broad, straight-forward overview of paleodemography. It would make anexcellent core textbook for an advanced undergraduateor graduate course in paleodemography. It has manyillustrations, most of which are simple black-and-whitetables and graphs (e.g., age-at-death distributions, popu-lation growth rates, etc.) that complement the writtendescriptions. Readers obtain from the book a basic un-

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derstanding of the fundamental concepts of paleodemog-raphy; for paleodemography courses, instructors can(and should) assign additional readings from those pro-vided in the book’s list of references. Adding to its valueas a textbook, Demography in Archaeology is both quiteaffordable and a pleasure to read.

Demography in Archaeology provides an up-to-dateoverview of paleodemography, presenting the mostrecent methodological and analytical advances in thefield and concrete examples of the applications of thosenew approaches. The book presents paleodemography asa field that is not without problems but that ultimately

has much to contribute to our understanding of life inthe past.

SHARON N. DEWITTE

Department of AnthropologyUniversity at AlbanyAlbany, New York

DOI 10.1002/ajpa.20707Published online 4 September 2007 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com).

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