Rebecca L Gowland
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 83746 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Rebecca L Gowland |
| PRENOMES | Rebecca L |
| SOBRENOME | Gowland |
| ASSINATURA | GOWLAND R L |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5909-6460 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 61 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 413 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 59 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2001 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 13 |
Biopower, Necropolitics, and the Afterlives of Infants
Conclusions/Afterword
Anthropology cannot remain passive within a world facing intersecting crises of climate change, inequality, pandemics, nationalism, AI-driven misinformation, and threats to human rights and academic freedom. Drawing on the themes of the chapters in this volume, we emphasize anthropology’s capacity to integrate scientific and humanistic perspectives, address ethical dilemmas, and contribute to social transformation. The chapter outlines strategies…
Skeleton matter(s)
Over the last two decades, bioarchaeologists have developed more nuanced theoretical approaches to the study of past bodies. Nevertheless, much of our work continues to be rooted in a dichotomous biocultural paradigm that often does not adequately account for the complexity of the bioarchaeological evidence. Rooted in dualisms (e.g. biology/culture, body/society), our work can also unconsciously perpetuate practices that continue to enact exclusi…
Paleopathology in the JAS
Répercussions de la Peste noire sur l'alimentation à la fin du Moyen Âge
International audience
Rickets, resorption and revolution
OBJECTIVE: This study employs a Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) approach to assess the effect of vitamin D deficiency (VDD) in childhood on the risk of osteoporosis in adulthood in an archaeological sample of skeletons dating from the 18th to 19th centuries. MATERIALS: Femora and lumbar vertebrae of 65 adults aged 18+ years (26 diagnosed with residual rickets and 39 without) from an 18th-19th century Quaker burial ground at Co…
Growing Old in the Industrial Age
The elderly have been neglected within bioarchaeological discourse, partly due to limitations in current osteological techniques for identifying older adults. Historical evidence suggests that older women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were often denigrated and neglected, but this has yet to be fully explored within bioarchaeological research. This study aims to investigate elderly underrepresentation in bioarchaeological discourse, a…
Compounding vulnerabilities
Twenty-first century bioarchaeology
This article presents outcomes from a Workshop entitled "Bioarchaeology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward," which was held at Arizona State University (ASU) on March 6-8, 2020. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (ASU), and the Center for Bioarchaeological Research (CBR, ASU), the Workshop's overall goal was to explore reasons why research proposals submitted by bioarchaeologists, both g…
Modeling Health during Societal Collapse
Societal collapse results in structural breakdowns and instability, which can affect life expectancy and population health. Previous bioarchaeological studies have, however, sometimes struggled to identify correlations between sociopolitical changes and skeletal indicators of morbidity and mortality. Late Antiquity (ca. 300–700 C.E.) has often been conceptualized as a period of sociopolitical rupture marked by the collapse of the Western Roman Em…
Height and health in Roman and Post-Roman Gaul, a life course approach
Health inequality in Britain before 1750
Health inequality between the ducal class and general population was present in England from the 16 th to mid-18 th centuries, with disadvantages in mortality for ducal children in infancy and early childhood, but survival advantages in mid-childhood and adolescence. These opposing effects are obscured in life expectancy at birth data. Relatively high early-childhood mortality among ducal families before 1750 likely resulted from short birth inte…
Assessing pathological conditions in archaeological bone using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF)
Sex estimation of teeth at different developmental stages using dimorphic enamel peptide analysis
OBJECTIVES: This study tests, for the first time, the applicability of a new method of sex estimation utilizing enamel peptides on a sample of deciduous and permanent teeth at different stages of mineralization, from nonadults of unknown sex, including perinates. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 43 teeth from 29 nonadult individuals aged from 40 gestational weeks to 19 years old were analyzed. The sample included pairs of fully mineralized and j…
Desperately seeking stress
OBJECTIVES: Cortisol is a glucocorticoid hormone produced through activation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. It is known as the "stress hormone" for its primary role in the body's stress response and has been the focus of much modern clinical research. Within archaeology, only a few studies have analyzed cortisol in human remains and these have been restricted to hair (Webb et al., 2010; Webb, White, van Uum, & Longstaffe, 2015a; Webb…
Illness and inclusion
Leprosy is one of the most notorious diseases in history, widely associated with social stigma and exclusion. This study builds on previous work to reevaluate the medicohistorical evidence for social stigma in relation to leprosy. This is achieved by isotopic and palaeopathological analyses of adolescent skeletons (10-25 years old) from the Anglo-Scandinavian (10th-11th centuries AD) parish cemetery of St. John at the Castle Gate in Norwich (East…
Death metal
The use of lead was ubiquitous throughout the Roman Empire, including material for water pipes, eating vessels, medicine, and even as a sweetener for wine. The toxicity of lead is well established today, resulting in long-term psychological and neurological deficits as well as metabolic diseases. Children are particularly susceptible to the effects of lead, and it is likely that the widespread use of this deadly metal among Roman populations led …
The Mother-Infant Nexus in Anthropology
At the world's edge
Objectives A multi‐isotope study was conducted on individuals buried at Skriðuklaustur monastery (AD 1493–1554) to investigate their geographic origins and dietary composition. Comparative material from individuals excavated from Skeljastaðir, an inland farm site was also analyzed. Materials and methods Bone collagen was extracted from 50 humans (Skriðuklaustur and Skeljastaðir) and 25 animals (Skriðuklaustur) and analyzed for δ 13 C, δ 15 N, and…
Hidden dangers? Investigating the impact of volcanic eruptions and skeletal fluorosis in medieval Iceland
Volcanic emissions are known to be a serious source of pollution to humans and animals. This study aimed to examine the possible health burden of fluoride (F) exposure from volcanic eruptions in the past. Osteological analyses were performed on 186 skeletons from seven sites across Iceland with the aim of identifying skeletal changes potentially associated with osteofluorosis. Additionally, ion selective electrode (ISE) was used to investigate po…
Knock-knees
Genu valgum is a condition in which a person's knees angle inwards and touch one another creating a "knock-kneed" appearance during life and potentially causing pain and walking difficulties. The most common cause of genu valgum is medial torsion of the proximal tibia, such that the lateral side becomes more weight bearing. It is considered a feature of vitamin D deficiency and many other pathological conditions. Currently, bioarchaeologists lack…
Across the Generations
Across the Generations: The Old and the Young in Past Societies." Childhood in the Past, 12(2), pp. 129–130
North and south
OBJECTIVE: Stark health inequalities exist in the present day between the North and South of England, with people in the South, overall, experiencing better health across a range of parameters (e.g., life expectancy and number of years spent in good health). Bioarchaeological studies of skeletal remains from cemeteries across this geographical divide have the ability to provide a temporal perspective on the etiology, longevity, and nature of this…
Volcanoes, medicine, and monasticism
This study aimed to evaluate the possible use of mercury as a medical treatment at the medieval monastic hospital Skriðuklaustur (ad1494-1554) in eastern Iceland. The individuals excavated from Skriðuklaustur exhibited a wide range of pathological conditions, including the only skeletal evidence of venereal syphilis in Iceland. Skeletal remains from the Skeljastaðir cemetery (ca.ad1000-1104) in southern Iceland were also analysed in light of the …
Overview
Historical evidence has provided a rich source of information concerning the structure and experience of the medieval life-course. Archaeology has also contributed to these debates, through the material remains associated with different age groups and the structural remains of houses, but primarily via the wealth of evidence provided by the medieval cemeteries. Human skeletal remains are proving to be a particularly fruitful source of data for un…
Entangled lives
Epidemiological research since the 1980s has highlighted the consequences of early life adversity, particularly during gestation and early infancy, for adult health (the “Barker hypothesis”). The fast‐evolving field of molecular epigenetics is providing explanatory mechanisms concerning phenotypic plasticity in response to developmental stressors and the accumulation of disease risk throughout life. In addition, there is now evidence for the heri…
A Bayesian Approach to Ageing Perinatal Skeletal Material from Archaeological Sites
Morbidity in the marshes
Concerns over climate change and its potential impact on infectious disease prevalence have contributed to a resurging interest in malaria in the past. A wealth of historical evidence indicates that malaria, specifically Plasmodium vivax , was endemic in the wetlands of England from the 16th century onwards. While it is thought that malaria was introduced to Britain during the Roman occupation (AD first to fifth centuries), the lack of written mo…
Identifying migrants in Roman London using lead and strontium stable isotopes
Twenty-first century bioarchaeology
This article presents outcomes from a Workshop entitled "Bioarchaeology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward," which was held at Arizona State University (ASU) on March 6-8, 2020. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (ASU), and the Center for Bioarchaeological Research (CBR, ASU), the Workshop's overall goal was to explore reasons why research proposals submitted by bioarchaeologists, both g…
Immaculate conceptions
Childhood Health in the Roman World
Very few studies to date have presented contextualised interpretations of bioarchaeological evidence from Roman urban environments. This paper compares and contrasts the osteological data for childhood health from two urban centres, one at the centre and the other at the margins of the Roman Empire - Rome and London. We synthesise recently published and newly recorded data on childhood indicators of physiological stress (e.g. cribra orbitalia and…
Dedicated Followers of Fashion? Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Socio-Economic Status, Inequality, and Health in Urban Children from the Industrial Revolution (18th-19th C), England
The 18th and 19th centuries in England were characterised by a period of increasing industrialisation of its urban centres. It was also one of widening social and health inequalities between the rich and the poor. Childhood is well-documented as being a stage in the life course during which the body is particularly sensitive to adverse socio-economic environments. This study therefore aims to examine the relationship between health and wealth thr…
Brief and precarious lives
This study compares the infant mortality profiles of 128 infants from two urban and two rural cemetery sites in medieval England. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of urbanization and industrialization in terms of endogenous or exogenous causes of death. In order to undertake this analysis, two different methods of estimating gestational age from long bone lengths were used: a traditional regression method and a Bayesian method. The r…
Occupational Mobility in 19th Century Rural England
Identified skeletal collections have been widely used to test methods for recording entheseal changes (EC). These studies have all used the occupation provided with the death certificate or equivalent as the occupation during life. However, the variety of tasks undertaken within occupations, the range of occupational tasks and how these changed over the life course is rarely discussed. The aim of this paper is to highlight the value of using hist…
Detecting plague
The archaeological definition of a plague should be possible from skeletal populations, because the age profile of a population afflicted by a catastrophe will be different to that of a community exposed to a more normal mortality. The authors show how this can be done using a Bayesian statistical analysis
Coming of age in R oman B ritain
OBJECTIVES: Puberty is a key transitional phase of the human life course, with important biological and social connotations. Novel methods for the identification of the pubertal growth spurt and menarche in skeletal remains have recently been proposed (Shapland and Lewis, 2013, 2014). In this study we applied the methods to two Romano-British cemetery samples (1st-early 5th centuries AD) in order to investigate the timing of puberty during this p…
The abrasion of modern and archaeological bones by mobile sediments
Sex estimation of teeth at different developmental stages using dimorphic enamel peptide analysis
OBJECTIVES: This study tests, for the first time, the applicability of a new method of sex estimation utilizing enamel peptides on a sample of deciduous and permanent teeth at different stages of mineralization, from nonadults of unknown sex, including perinates. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 43 teeth from 29 nonadult individuals aged from 40 gestational weeks to 19 years old were analyzed. The sample included pairs of fully mineralized and j…
North and south
OBJECTIVE: Stark health inequalities exist in the present day between the North and South of England, with people in the South, overall, experiencing better health across a range of parameters (e.g., life expectancy and number of years spent in good health). Bioarchaeological studies of skeletal remains from cemeteries across this geographical divide have the ability to provide a temporal perspective on the etiology, longevity, and nature of this…
The use of non‐adult vertebral dimensions as indicators of growth disruption and non‐specific health stress in skeletal populations
OBJECTIVE: Traditional methods of detecting growth disruption have focused on deficiencies in the diaphyseal length of the long bones. This study proposes the implementation of vertebral measurements (body height and transverse diameter of the neural canal) from non-adults (0-17 years) as a new methodology for the identification of growth disruption. METHODS: Measurements of vertebral body height and transverse diameter were taken from 96 non-adu…
Death on the frontier
Death metal
The use of lead was ubiquitous throughout the Roman Empire, including material for water pipes, eating vessels, medicine, and even as a sweetener for wine. The toxicity of lead is well established today, resulting in long-term psychological and neurological deficits as well as metabolic diseases. Children are particularly susceptible to the effects of lead, and it is likely that the widespread use of this deadly metal among Roman populations led …
Elder Abuse
The elderly are the most neglected demographic in archaeology. In today's youth-obsessed society, the elderly are consistently denigrated, particularly those perceived to be physically or mentally frail. A related and growing concern in contemporary populations is the physical abuse of the elderly, believed to be an escalating phenomenon. This study is the first to examine the risk factors, social context and patterns of trauma associated with el…
Volcanoes, medicine, and monasticism
This study aimed to evaluate the possible use of mercury as a medical treatment at the medieval monastic hospital Skriðuklaustur (ad1494-1554) in eastern Iceland. The individuals excavated from Skriðuklaustur exhibited a wide range of pathological conditions, including the only skeletal evidence of venereal syphilis in Iceland. Skeletal remains from the Skeljastaðir cemetery (ca.ad1000-1104) in southern Iceland were also analysed in light of the …
From the mouths of babes’
At the world's edge
Objectives A multi‐isotope study was conducted on individuals buried at Skriðuklaustur monastery (AD 1493–1554) to investigate their geographic origins and dietary composition. Comparative material from individuals excavated from Skeljastaðir, an inland farm site was also analyzed. Materials and methods Bone collagen was extracted from 50 humans (Skriðuklaustur and Skeljastaðir) and 25 animals (Skriðuklaustur) and analyzed for δ 13 C, δ 15 N, and…
Across the Generations
Across the Generations: The Old and the Young in Past Societies." Childhood in the Past, 12(2), pp. 129–130
Towards a Best Practice for the Use of Active Non-contact Surface Scanning to Record Human Skeletal Remains from Archaeological Contexts
Active surface scanners emit light or a laser stripe to record the exterior surface of an object or landscape, providing results in three dimensions. The use of active surface scanners to record anthropological and archaeological contexts has increased within the last few years, creating a number of sub-contexts within these disciplines and allowing a further development of certain applications, such as quantitative analysis, the use of replicas …
The Children of the Reformation
CHILDHOOD IS A TIME of rapid biological growth and development, and a stage of the life course during which bodies are particularly sensitive to social and environmental stressors. As a consequence, events which may impact upon a child’s care and treatment can become physically embodied within their bones and teeth. The skeletal remains of children have been neglected within archaeological discourse until recently, but they are, in fact, a partic…
Playing Dead
A Bayesian Approach to Ageing Perinatal Skeletal Material from Archaeological Sites
The Social Identity of Health in Late Roman Britain
The Kephala Tholos at Knossos
This paper publishes the results of excavations of the Kephala Tholos tomb and its immediate vicinity, north of the palace of Knossos, carried out by R. W. Hutchinson in 1938–9. It presents the ceramic and osteological data from the excavations and an architectural study of the tomb structure. The analysis addresses the contentious issue of the dating of the construction of the Tholos, arguing for an LM II date on the basis of the material eviden…
Detecting plague
The archaeological definition of a plague should be possible from skeletal populations, because the age profile of a population afflicted by a catastrophe will be different to that of a community exposed to a more normal mortality. The authors show how this can be done using a Bayesian statistical analysis
Brief and precarious lives
This study compares the infant mortality profiles of 128 infants from two urban and two rural cemetery sites in medieval England. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of urbanization and industrialization in terms of endogenous or exogenous causes of death. In order to undertake this analysis, two different methods of estimating gestational age from long bone lengths were used: a traditional regression method and a Bayesian method. The r…
Estimation of adult skeletal age-at-death
We examine the statistical assumptions underlying different techniques of estimating the age-at-death of a skeleton from one or more age indicators. The preferred method depends on which property of the distribution of the data in the reference sample is preserved in the skeleton to be aged. In cases where the conditional distribution of age given indicator is preserved, we provide 'look-up' tables giving essentially unbiased age estimates and pr…
The abrasion of modern and archaeological bones by mobile sediments
Childhood Health in the Roman World
Very few studies to date have presented contextualised interpretations of bioarchaeological evidence from Roman urban environments. This paper compares and contrasts the osteological data for childhood health from two urban centres, one at the centre and the other at the margins of the Roman Empire - Rome and London. We synthesise recently published and newly recorded data on childhood indicators of physiological stress (e.g. cribra orbitalia and…
Morbidity in the marshes
Concerns over climate change and its potential impact on infectious disease prevalence have contributed to a resurging interest in malaria in the past. A wealth of historical evidence indicates that malaria, specifically Plasmodium vivax , was endemic in the wetlands of England from the 16th century onwards. While it is thought that malaria was introduced to Britain during the Roman occupation (AD first to fifth centuries), the lack of written mo…
Occupational Mobility in 19th Century Rural England
Identified skeletal collections have been widely used to test methods for recording entheseal changes (EC). These studies have all used the occupation provided with the death certificate or equivalent as the occupation during life. However, the variety of tasks undertaken within occupations, the range of occupational tasks and how these changed over the life course is rarely discussed. The aim of this paper is to highlight the value of using hist…
Ideas of Childhood in Roman Britain
The Children of the Reformation
CHILDHOOD IS A TIME of rapid biological growth and development, and a stage of the life course during which bodies are particularly sensitive to social and environmental stressors. As a consequence, events which may impact upon a child’s care and treatment can become physically embodied within their bones and teeth. The skeletal remains of children have been neglected within archaeological discourse until recently, but they are, in fact, a partic…
An unusual exostotic lesion of the maxillary sinus from Roman Lincoln
Gendered Differences in Accidental Trauma to Upper and Lower Limb Bones at Aquincum, Roman Hungary
The proximal ulna as an additional diagnostic feature of advanced rheumatoid arthritis
The use of non‐adult vertebral dimensions as indicators of growth disruption and non‐specific health stress in skeletal populations
OBJECTIVE: Traditional methods of detecting growth disruption have focused on deficiencies in the diaphyseal length of the long bones. This study proposes the implementation of vertebral measurements (body height and transverse diameter of the neural canal) from non-adults (0-17 years) as a new methodology for the identification of growth disruption. METHODS: Measurements of vertebral body height and transverse diameter were taken from 96 non-adu…
Entangled lives
Epidemiological research since the 1980s has highlighted the consequences of early life adversity, particularly during gestation and early infancy, for adult health (the “Barker hypothesis”). The fast‐evolving field of molecular epigenetics is providing explanatory mechanisms concerning phenotypic plasticity in response to developmental stressors and the accumulation of disease risk throughout life. In addition, there is now evidence for the heri…
‘Til Poison Phosphorous Brought them Death’
Poor preservation of antibodies in archaeological human bone and dentine
The growth of proteomics-based methods in archaeology prompted an investigation of the survival of non-collagenous proteins, specifically immunoglobulin G (IgG), in archaeological human bone and dentine. Over a decade ago reports were published on extracted, immunoreactive archaeological IgG, and the variable yields of IgG molecules detected by Western blots of 1D and 2D SDS-PAGE gels. If IgG can indeed be recovered from archaeological skeletal m…
Death on the frontier
Experimental abrasion of water submerged bone
Data presented here demonstrates the utility of quantitative analysis of sediment-induced microabrasion on bone's surface. Fresh sheep (Ovis aries) bone, acting as a human analogue, was bombarded by mobile sediments from silt, sand and gravel classes (ranging 20 μm–3.35 mm) in a series of flume-based experiments. Controlled bombardment produced unique abrasion patterns on bone which were recordable using scanning electron microscopy. Imaging abra…
Identifying migrants in Roman London using lead and strontium stable isotopes
Immaculate conceptions
Coming of age in R oman B ritain
OBJECTIVES: Puberty is a key transitional phase of the human life course, with important biological and social connotations. Novel methods for the identification of the pubertal growth spurt and menarche in skeletal remains have recently been proposed (Shapland and Lewis, 2013, 2014). In this study we applied the methods to two Romano-British cemetery samples (1st-early 5th centuries AD) in order to investigate the timing of puberty during this p…
Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies (40 obras) · Archaeology (27 obras) · History (25 obras) · Medicine (25 obras) · Geography (24 obras) · Sociology (24 obras) · Paleopathology and ancient diseases (22 obras) · Demography (19 obras) · Bioarchaeology (10 obras) · Pathology (10 obras)