Richard S Meindl
Biographic Data
| ID | 84231 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Richard S Meindl |
| GIVEN NAMES | Richard S |
| FAMILY NAME | Meindl |
| SIGNATURE | MEINDL R S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Kent State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1354 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
On the evolution of limestone-tempered pottery in the American Midwest
During the Middle and Late Woodland periods in the American Midwest some small-scale societies transitioned from grit to limestone as the primary clay temper. Limestone offers experimentally demonstrated benefits to vessel manufacture, including decreased wall thickness, but given the society-wide changes in mobility and exchange that also occurred, we investigated whether the use of limestone temper resulted in a different vessel weight relative…
Relative Heating Effectiveness and the Decline of the Soapstone Cooking Vessel in Eastern North America
During the North American Late Archaic Period, people produced ceramic vessels from clay and stone vessels from soapstone. While both ceramic and soapstone vessels proliferated across eastern North America, the former evolved and endured into the subsequent periods, while the latter declined. Here, we conducted an experiment to assess heating effectiveness between soapstone and ceramic vessels. We examined heating rate, ability to boil, heat rete…
The foot of the human–chimpanzee last common ancestor was not African ape-like
Current Evidence Supports Welling as an Outcrop-Related Base Camp
Seeman, Morris, and Summers misrepresent or misunderstand the arguments we have made, as well as their own previous work. Here, we correct these inaccuracies. We also reiterate our support for hypothesis-driven and evidence-based research
The non-invention of the ceramic arrowhead in world archaeology
Controlled experiments support the role of function in the evolution of the North American copper tool repertoire
Controlled ballistics tests of ground, percussion-flaked, and pressure-flaked projectile point impact durability
Locomotor pattern fails to predict foramen magnum angle in rodents, strepsirrhine primates, and marsupials
Ectocranial suture closure in Pan troglodytes and Gorilla gorilla
The order in which ectocranial sutures undergo fusion displays species‐specific variation among primates. However, the precise relationship between suture closure and phylogenetic affinities is poorly understood. In this study, we used Guttman Scaling to determine if the modal progression of suture closure differs among Homo sapiens , Pan troglodytes , and Gorilla gorilla . Because DNA sequence homologies strongly suggest that P. troglodytes and …
The case is unchanged and remains robust
Plio-Pleistocene Hominid Limb Proportions
Sexual dimorphism in Australopithecus afarensis was similar to that of modern humans
The substantial fossil record for Australopithecus afarensis includes both an adult partial skeleton [Afar Locality (A.L.) 288-1, “Lucy”] and a large simultaneous death assemblage (A.L. 333). Here we optimize data derived from both to more accurately estimate skeletal size dimorphism. Postcranial ratios derived from A.L. 288-1 enable a significant increase in sample size compared with previous studies. Extensive simulations using modern humans, c…
The Maka femur and its bearing on the antiquity of human walking
MAK‐VP‐1/1, a proximal femur recovered from the Maka Sands (ca. 3.4 mya) of the Middle Awash, Ethiopia, and attributed to Australopithecus afarensis , is described in detail. It represents the oldest skeletal evidence of locomotion in this species, and is analyzed from a morphogenetic perspective. X‐ray, CT, and metric data are evaluated, using a variety of methods including discriminant function. The specimen indicates that the hip joint of A. a…
Fetal age
Accurate identification of fetal age is important in a wide variety of circumstances. Seventeen anthropometric and radiographic measurements were taken on fetuses between 15 and 42 weeks of gestational age, both with and without pathologic conditions. A full evaluation including radiographic, karyotypic, gross anatomic, and histologic examination of the fetus and placenta identified 72 individuals as nondysmorphic with no signs of chronic uterova…
Recent Advances in Method and Theory in Paleodemography
Current methods in skeletal biology have improved significantly our ability to estimate the demographic parameters of extinct populations. Gross morphological and histological age indicators have been developed and tested in a variety of contexts, revealing great variation in the levels of accuracy of age prediction of each indicator. Primary attention is given here to the best-performing hard-tissue indicators of age and to composite methods of …
Testing the test of the multifactorial aging method
Histomorphological and geometric properties of human femoral cortex in individuals over 50
Cortical area, area moment of inertia, and polar moment of inertia were determined from the midshafts of a series of 62 femurs (34 female and 28 male) from a U. S. white population, ages 51–95. The density of osteons and osteon fragments (per mm 2 ) was also determined. Neither osteon nor osteon fragment density was significantly correlated with age. These variables were correlated, however, with normalized cortical and endosteal areas, normalize…
Test of the multifactorial aging method using skeletons with known ages‐at‐death from the grant collection
The multifactorial aging method has been shown to be a highly reliable method of skeletal aging because it incorporates age information from as many age indicators as are available for each skeleton (Lovejoy et al.; Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 68 :1–14, 1985). The present study was a blind test to assess its accuracy on a skeletal sample composed of 55 individuals with verified death certificates (Grant Collection, University of Toronto). Three autho…
Independent test of the fourth rib aging technique
The sternal surface of the 4th rib has been suggested as a useful predictor of adult age‐at‐death (Iscan et al.: Journal of Forensic Sciences 29:1094–1104, 1984; American Journal of Physical Anthropology 65:141–156, 1984). We tested its ability to do so in two tests. In the first, we developed a method of seriation and target age assignment for the 4th rib so that inaccuracy and bias of the method could be assessed by decade. We found that the 4t…
Response of bone and enamel formation to nutritional supplementation and morbidity among malnourished Guatemalan children
The effects of changes in nutritional and health status upon bone and enamel development are examined in a sample of 63 rural Guatemalan children (24 females, 39 males). The number of ossified hand‐wrist centers at 3 years and the number of linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH) in ∼0–3 year zones of developing teeth were used to monitor the response of bone mineralization and enamel matrix formation to illness and nutritional supplementation. Numbers o…
Further evidence on relative dental maturation and somatic developmental rate in hominoids
New data on hominoid dental development are presented. Individual bivariate pairings of all mandibular teeth were made for African apes and humans. Data were analyzed with a full linear regression model. No statistically significant differences were found among apes, although a consistent pattern of earlier incisal development was observed in Pan relative to Gorilla . This is concordant with an earlier fusion of the premaxillary:maxillary suture …
Relative dental development in hominoids and its failure to predict somatic growth velocity
Estimates of age‐at‐death are a function of the sidereal growth rate of the tissue(s) being employed to gauge development, and cannot be made without a priori knowledge of that growth rate. The latter cannot be determined from any inherent differences in pattern in the developing tissues of extant taxa. Such similarities and/or differences are usually the result of functional specialization and are independent of somatic developmental rate. The p…
Reliability of age at death in the hamann‐todd collection
The blind test procedures used by Lovejoy et al., ( Am. J. Phys. Anthropol . 68:1–14, 1985a) have been criticized because they used the Hamann‐Todd collection as their known‐age population. It has been suggested that variation within this sample was reduced by selection procedures designed to ensure accuracy of age at death. Powerful statistical tests for differences in dispersion of ages for pubic symphyseal stages were applied to comparisons be…
Hominoid dental maturation
Hypothesis
European populations have both a particularly long history of pulmonary tuberculosis and extremely high frequencies of cystic fibrosis (CF). While carriers of the recessive gene are asymptomatic for CF disease, their fibroblasts produce excessive amounts of hyaluronic acid, whose role in successful isolation of virulent pathogens appears to be especially adaptive in host resistance to the human strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. CF heterozygos…
Chronological metamorphosis of the auricular surface of the ilium
A new method for the determination of adult skeletal age at death based upon chronological changes in the auricular surface of the ilium is presented. Formal stages have been constructed following extensive tests and refinements in observations made of such changes. Two completely “blind” tests were conducted to assess the accuracy and bias of the new method. Results show that the system is equally accurate to pubic symphyseal aging (although som…
Ectocranial suture closure
A new method for estimation of age‐at‐death based on the degree of suture closure is presented. The method employs simple ectocranial scoring of specific sites on the external table. Composite scores for two groups of sutures, lateral‐anterior and vault systems, which are used to provide estimates of age‐at‐death, have been developed from a sample of 236 crania from the Hamann‐Todd Collection. A variety of tests show that the lateralanterior sutu…
Multifactorial determination of skeletal age at death
Traditional methods of estimating skeletal age at death have relied solely on the pubic symphyseal face or on this indicator combined with others in nonsystematic ways. A multifactorial method is presented that uses a principal components weighting of five indicators (pubic symphyseal face, auricular surface, radiographs of proximal femur, dental wear, and suture closure). This method has been tested by completely blind assessment of age in two s…
The Maka femur and its bearing on the antiquity of human walking
MAK‐VP‐1/1, a proximal femur recovered from the Maka Sands (ca. 3.4 mya) of the Middle Awash, Ethiopia, and attributed to Australopithecus afarensis , is described in detail. It represents the oldest skeletal evidence of locomotion in this species, and is analyzed from a morphogenetic perspective. X‐ray, CT, and metric data are evaluated, using a variety of methods including discriminant function. The specimen indicates that the hip joint of A. a…
Recent Advances in Method and Theory in Paleodemography
Current methods in skeletal biology have improved significantly our ability to estimate the demographic parameters of extinct populations. Gross morphological and histological age indicators have been developed and tested in a variety of contexts, revealing great variation in the levels of accuracy of age prediction of each indicator. Primary attention is given here to the best-performing hard-tissue indicators of age and to composite methods of …
Accuracy and direction of error in the sexing of the skeleton
Determinations of sex by subjective assessment of the skulls from a skeletal series of known sex were compared to fully independent assessments based on pelves of the same specimens. Within‐sex correlations of cranial and pelvic morphologies measured on an android‐gynecoid scale were smaller than expected. Subjective assessment by means of the skull compared favorably to that of the linear discriminant functions of Giles and Elliot; however, the …
Response of bone and enamel formation to nutritional supplementation and morbidity among malnourished Guatemalan children
The effects of changes in nutritional and health status upon bone and enamel development are examined in a sample of 63 rural Guatemalan children (24 females, 39 males). The number of ossified hand‐wrist centers at 3 years and the number of linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH) in ∼0–3 year zones of developing teeth were used to monitor the response of bone mineralization and enamel matrix formation to illness and nutritional supplementation. Numbers o…
Hominoid dental maturation
Plio-Pleistocene Hominid Limb Proportions
Test of the multifactorial aging method using skeletons with known ages‐at‐death from the grant collection
The multifactorial aging method has been shown to be a highly reliable method of skeletal aging because it incorporates age information from as many age indicators as are available for each skeleton (Lovejoy et al.; Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 68 :1–14, 1985). The present study was a blind test to assess its accuracy on a skeletal sample composed of 55 individuals with verified death certificates (Grant Collection, University of Toronto). Three autho…
Controlled ballistics tests of ground, percussion-flaked, and pressure-flaked projectile point impact durability
Further evidence on relative dental maturation and somatic developmental rate in hominoids
New data on hominoid dental development are presented. Individual bivariate pairings of all mandibular teeth were made for African apes and humans. Data were analyzed with a full linear regression model. No statistically significant differences were found among apes, although a consistent pattern of earlier incisal development was observed in Pan relative to Gorilla . This is concordant with an earlier fusion of the premaxillary:maxillary suture …
Relative dental development in hominoids and its failure to predict somatic growth velocity
Estimates of age‐at‐death are a function of the sidereal growth rate of the tissue(s) being employed to gauge development, and cannot be made without a priori knowledge of that growth rate. The latter cannot be determined from any inherent differences in pattern in the developing tissues of extant taxa. Such similarities and/or differences are usually the result of functional specialization and are independent of somatic developmental rate. The p…
Reliability of age at death in the hamann‐todd collection
The blind test procedures used by Lovejoy et al., ( Am. J. Phys. Anthropol . 68:1–14, 1985a) have been criticized because they used the Hamann‐Todd collection as their known‐age population. It has been suggested that variation within this sample was reduced by selection procedures designed to ensure accuracy of age at death. Powerful statistical tests for differences in dispersion of ages for pubic symphyseal stages were applied to comparisons be…
The non-invention of the ceramic arrowhead in world archaeology
Locomotor pattern fails to predict foramen magnum angle in rodents, strepsirrhine primates, and marsupials
Independent test of the fourth rib aging technique
The sternal surface of the 4th rib has been suggested as a useful predictor of adult age‐at‐death (Iscan et al.: Journal of Forensic Sciences 29:1094–1104, 1984; American Journal of Physical Anthropology 65:141–156, 1984). We tested its ability to do so in two tests. In the first, we developed a method of seriation and target age assignment for the 4th rib so that inaccuracy and bias of the method could be assessed by decade. We found that the 4t…
Population studies in the Connecticut valley
Controlled experiments support the role of function in the evolution of the North American copper tool repertoire
Components of longevity
Perte de matière osseuse et problèmes d'alimentation dans une population adulte de Nubie soudanaise (en anglais)
Martin D.L., Armelagos G.J., Mielke J.H., Meindl R.S. Perte de matière osseuse et problèmes d'alimentation dans une population adulte de Nubie soudanaise (en anglais). In: Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, XIII° Série. Tome 8 fascicule 3, 1981. pp. 307-319
On the evolution of limestone-tempered pottery in the American Midwest
During the Middle and Late Woodland periods in the American Midwest some small-scale societies transitioned from grit to limestone as the primary clay temper. Limestone offers experimentally demonstrated benefits to vessel manufacture, including decreased wall thickness, but given the society-wide changes in mobility and exchange that also occurred, we investigated whether the use of limestone temper resulted in a different vessel weight relative…
Current Evidence Supports Welling as an Outcrop-Related Base Camp
Seeman, Morris, and Summers misrepresent or misunderstand the arguments we have made, as well as their own previous work. Here, we correct these inaccuracies. We also reiterate our support for hypothesis-driven and evidence-based research
Ectocranial suture closure in Pan troglodytes and Gorilla gorilla
The order in which ectocranial sutures undergo fusion displays species‐specific variation among primates. However, the precise relationship between suture closure and phylogenetic affinities is poorly understood. In this study, we used Guttman Scaling to determine if the modal progression of suture closure differs among Homo sapiens , Pan troglodytes , and Gorilla gorilla . Because DNA sequence homologies strongly suggest that P. troglodytes and …
Testing the test of the multifactorial aging method
Population studies in the Connecticut valley
Paleodemography of the Libben Site, Ottawa County, Ohio
The Libben site, a Late Woodland ossuary and occupation site from the Great Black Swamp of northern Ohio has yielded a well-preserved skeletal sample of 1327 articulated individuals. The outstanding preservation and completeness of the site and the utilization of an exhaustive aging methodology make this the largest and most comprehensively censused North American prehistoric cemetery. Survivorship data indicate a robust, successful population. L…
Perte de matière osseuse et problèmes d'alimentation dans une population adulte de Nubie soudanaise (en anglais)
Martin D.L., Armelagos G.J., Mielke J.H., Meindl R.S. Perte de matière osseuse et problèmes d'alimentation dans une population adulte de Nubie soudanaise (en anglais). In: Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'anthropologie de Paris, XIII° Série. Tome 8 fascicule 3, 1981. pp. 307-319
Components of longevity
A revised method of age determination using the os pubis, with a review and tests of accuracy of other current methods of pubic symphyseal aging
All current standardized methods of age determination using the os pubis were tested by blind assessment of a skeletal sample with documented ages (from the Todd collection; N = 96). No demographic data (sex, age, race, age composition) were known to the assessors prior to completion of the test. Results showed the Todd method to be more reliable than more recent component techniques and that all systems tended to underage. Therefore, modificatio…
Multifactorial determination of skeletal age at death
Traditional methods of estimating skeletal age at death have relied solely on the pubic symphyseal face or on this indicator combined with others in nonsystematic ways. A multifactorial method is presented that uses a principal components weighting of five indicators (pubic symphyseal face, auricular surface, radiographs of proximal femur, dental wear, and suture closure). This method has been tested by completely blind assessment of age in two s…
Chronological metamorphosis of the auricular surface of the ilium
A new method for the determination of adult skeletal age at death based upon chronological changes in the auricular surface of the ilium is presented. Formal stages have been constructed following extensive tests and refinements in observations made of such changes. Two completely “blind” tests were conducted to assess the accuracy and bias of the new method. Results show that the system is equally accurate to pubic symphyseal aging (although som…
Ectocranial suture closure
A new method for estimation of age‐at‐death based on the degree of suture closure is presented. The method employs simple ectocranial scoring of specific sites on the external table. Composite scores for two groups of sutures, lateral‐anterior and vault systems, which are used to provide estimates of age‐at‐death, have been developed from a sample of 236 crania from the Hamann‐Todd Collection. A variety of tests show that the lateralanterior sutu…
Accuracy and direction of error in the sexing of the skeleton
Determinations of sex by subjective assessment of the skulls from a skeletal series of known sex were compared to fully independent assessments based on pelves of the same specimens. Within‐sex correlations of cranial and pelvic morphologies measured on an android‐gynecoid scale were smaller than expected. Subjective assessment by means of the skull compared favorably to that of the linear discriminant functions of Giles and Elliot; however, the …
Hypothesis
European populations have both a particularly long history of pulmonary tuberculosis and extremely high frequencies of cystic fibrosis (CF). While carriers of the recessive gene are asymptomatic for CF disease, their fibroblasts produce excessive amounts of hyaluronic acid, whose role in successful isolation of virulent pathogens appears to be especially adaptive in host resistance to the human strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. CF heterozygos…
Reliability of age at death in the hamann‐todd collection
The blind test procedures used by Lovejoy et al., ( Am. J. Phys. Anthropol . 68:1–14, 1985a) have been criticized because they used the Hamann‐Todd collection as their known‐age population. It has been suggested that variation within this sample was reduced by selection procedures designed to ensure accuracy of age at death. Powerful statistical tests for differences in dispersion of ages for pubic symphyseal stages were applied to comparisons be…
Hominoid dental maturation
Relative dental development in hominoids and its failure to predict somatic growth velocity
Estimates of age‐at‐death are a function of the sidereal growth rate of the tissue(s) being employed to gauge development, and cannot be made without a priori knowledge of that growth rate. The latter cannot be determined from any inherent differences in pattern in the developing tissues of extant taxa. Such similarities and/or differences are usually the result of functional specialization and are independent of somatic developmental rate. The p…
Further evidence on relative dental maturation and somatic developmental rate in hominoids
New data on hominoid dental development are presented. Individual bivariate pairings of all mandibular teeth were made for African apes and humans. Data were analyzed with a full linear regression model. No statistically significant differences were found among apes, although a consistent pattern of earlier incisal development was observed in Pan relative to Gorilla . This is concordant with an earlier fusion of the premaxillary:maxillary suture …
Test of the multifactorial aging method using skeletons with known ages‐at‐death from the grant collection
The multifactorial aging method has been shown to be a highly reliable method of skeletal aging because it incorporates age information from as many age indicators as are available for each skeleton (Lovejoy et al.; Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 68 :1–14, 1985). The present study was a blind test to assess its accuracy on a skeletal sample composed of 55 individuals with verified death certificates (Grant Collection, University of Toronto). Three autho…
Independent test of the fourth rib aging technique
The sternal surface of the 4th rib has been suggested as a useful predictor of adult age‐at‐death (Iscan et al.: Journal of Forensic Sciences 29:1094–1104, 1984; American Journal of Physical Anthropology 65:141–156, 1984). We tested its ability to do so in two tests. In the first, we developed a method of seriation and target age assignment for the 4th rib so that inaccuracy and bias of the method could be assessed by decade. We found that the 4t…
Response of bone and enamel formation to nutritional supplementation and morbidity among malnourished Guatemalan children
The effects of changes in nutritional and health status upon bone and enamel development are examined in a sample of 63 rural Guatemalan children (24 females, 39 males). The number of ossified hand‐wrist centers at 3 years and the number of linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH) in ∼0–3 year zones of developing teeth were used to monitor the response of bone mineralization and enamel matrix formation to illness and nutritional supplementation. Numbers o…
Histomorphological and geometric properties of human femoral cortex in individuals over 50
Cortical area, area moment of inertia, and polar moment of inertia were determined from the midshafts of a series of 62 femurs (34 female and 28 male) from a U. S. white population, ages 51–95. The density of osteons and osteon fragments (per mm 2 ) was also determined. Neither osteon nor osteon fragment density was significantly correlated with age. These variables were correlated, however, with normalized cortical and endosteal areas, normalize…
Testing the test of the multifactorial aging method
Recent Advances in Method and Theory in Paleodemography
Current methods in skeletal biology have improved significantly our ability to estimate the demographic parameters of extinct populations. Gross morphological and histological age indicators have been developed and tested in a variety of contexts, revealing great variation in the levels of accuracy of age prediction of each indicator. Primary attention is given here to the best-performing hard-tissue indicators of age and to composite methods of …
Fetal age
Accurate identification of fetal age is important in a wide variety of circumstances. Seventeen anthropometric and radiographic measurements were taken on fetuses between 15 and 42 weeks of gestational age, both with and without pathologic conditions. A full evaluation including radiographic, karyotypic, gross anatomic, and histologic examination of the fetus and placenta identified 72 individuals as nondysmorphic with no signs of chronic uterova…
The Maka femur and its bearing on the antiquity of human walking
MAK‐VP‐1/1, a proximal femur recovered from the Maka Sands (ca. 3.4 mya) of the Middle Awash, Ethiopia, and attributed to Australopithecus afarensis , is described in detail. It represents the oldest skeletal evidence of locomotion in this species, and is analyzed from a morphogenetic perspective. X‐ray, CT, and metric data are evaluated, using a variety of methods including discriminant function. The specimen indicates that the hip joint of A. a…
Sexual dimorphism in Australopithecus afarensis was similar to that of modern humans
The substantial fossil record for Australopithecus afarensis includes both an adult partial skeleton [Afar Locality (A.L.) 288-1, “Lucy”] and a large simultaneous death assemblage (A.L. 333). Here we optimize data derived from both to more accurately estimate skeletal size dimorphism. Postcranial ratios derived from A.L. 288-1 enable a significant increase in sample size compared with previous studies. Extensive simulations using modern humans, c…
The case is unchanged and remains robust
Plio-Pleistocene Hominid Limb Proportions
Biology (22 works) · Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies (19 works) · Medicine (16 works) · Geography (12 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (12 works) · Archaeology (10 works) · Demography (10 works) · Evolutionary biology (10 works) · Paleontology (10 works) · Mathematics (9 works)