South African physical anthropology has followed a strange pathway divorced from its sister field... more South African physical anthropology has followed a strange pathway divorced from its sister field of sociocultural anthropology. Physical anthropology was a research subject in the museums and medical schools which focused heavily on the nature of racial types. Its practitioners believed that it was a pure science which should not concern itself with ‘unscientific’ political issues. The separation of social and physical anthropology and the emphasis on typology were only broken in the 1970s, but this came too late for the subject to meaningfully engage in the sociopolitical development of the country either in support or in rejection of apartheid. There was a resurgence of self-defined ethnicity after the first democratic election in 1994. This was driven by claims for land by those dispossessed during apartheid but most specifically amongst the Khoesan descendants who were disposed of their land and culture in the Colonial period. The new heritage legislation of 1999 has been developed particularly to deal with these issues of claims for heritage, and very precise controls have been placed over the excavation of human remains. Although facilitating reburial is a central plank in the new legislation, physical anthropology continues to be an important academic subject that is helping to provide knowledge about the past peoples in South Africa’s ancient heritage.
The oldest contemporary human mitochondrial lineages arose in Africa. The earliest divergent exta... more The oldest contemporary human mitochondrial lineages arose in Africa. The earliest divergent extant maternal offshoot, namely haplogroup L0d, is represented by click-speaking forager peoples of southern Africa. Broadly defined as Khoesan, contemporary Khoesan are today largely restricted to the semidesert regions of Namibia and Botswana, whereas archeological, historical, and genetic evidence promotes a once broader southerly dispersal of click-speaking peoples including southward migrating pastoralists and indigenous marine-foragers. No genetic data have been recovered from the indigenous peoples that once sustained life along the southern coastal waters of Africa prepastoral arrival. In this study we generate a complete mitochondrial genome from a 2,330-year-old male skeleton, confirmed through osteological and archeological analysis as practicing a marine-based forager existence. The ancient mtDNA represents a new L0d2c lineage (L0d2c1c) that is today, unlike its Khoe-language ba...
One of the biggest surprises in the rise of apartheid in South Africa in the 1940s was that, unli... more One of the biggest surprises in the rise of apartheid in South Africa in the 1940s was that, unlike in prewar Germany, it was not rooted in the physical anthropology of the previous decades. The engineers of apartheid were, for the most part, Afrikaans-speaking ethnologists operating out of the Afrikaans-medium universities, where little or no physical anthropology was taught. The University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town, both English-medium schools based on the traditions of British academia, were the centers of biological anthropology. Although none of the early practitioners from these schools were directly involved in the implementation of the apartheid policy, their strict typological approach to human variation provided a solid growth medium in which the government policies could develop without credible scientific opposition.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) intended the Cape of Good Hope to be a refreshment stop for sh... more The Dutch East India Company (VOC) intended the Cape of Good Hope to be a refreshment stop for ships travelling between the Netherlands and its eastern colonies. The indigenous Khoisan, however, did not constitute an adequate workforce, therefore the VOC imported slaves from East Africa, Madagascar and Asia to expand the workforce. Cape Town became a cosmopolitan settlement with different categories of people, amongst them a non-European underclass that consisted of slaves, exiles, convicts and free-blacks. This study integrated new strontium isotope data with carbon and nitrogen isotope results from an 18th-19th century burial ground at Cobern Street, Cape Town, to identify non-European forced migrants to the Cape. The aim of the study was to elucidate individual mobility patterns, the age at which the forced migration took place and, if possible, geographical provenance. Using three proxies, 87Sr/86Sr, δ13Cdentine and the presence of dental modifications, a majority (54.5%) of the...
The debate between the proponents of the Recent African Origin and the Multiregional Evolution mo... more The debate between the proponents of the Recent African Origin and the Multiregional Evolution models for the origin of anatomically modern humans has not been of great importance to the interpretation of late Pleistocene human fossils in South Africa. The main reason is that both models propose that evidence of anatomically moderns should happen in South Africa at an early date. A more important issue to the African context is whether or not those early transitions to modernity were accompanied by the development of the distinctive local populations known today as the Khoisan. Serogenetic evidence suggests a relative antiquity for the origins of living Khoisan peoples, but this may simply reflect the longer time that anatomically modern peoples have lived in the sub-continent. A search for features of distinctive Khoisan morphology in the early remains may be of more value as it might indicate the presence of a local adaptive pattern to the special environment conditions of the region.
Recent genomic data have revealed multiple interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans, b... more Recent genomic data have revealed multiple interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans, but there is currently little genetic evidence regarding Neanderthal behaviour, diet, or disease. Here we describe the shotgun-sequencing of ancient DNA from five specimens of Neanderthal calcified dental plaque (calculus) and the characterization of regional differences in Neanderthal ecology. At Spy cave, Belgium, Neanderthal diet was heavily meat based and included woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep (mouflon), characteristic of a steppe environment. In contrast, no meat was detected in the diet of Neanderthals from El Sidrón cave, Spain, and dietary components of mushrooms, pine nuts, and moss reflected forest gathering. Differences in diet were also linked to an overall shift in the oral bacterial community (microbiota) and suggested that meat consumption contributed to substantial variation within Neanderthal microbiota. Evidence for self-medication was detected in an El Sidrón Neander...
Human skeletal remains from sub-Saharan Africa are virtually non-existent for the period when gen... more Human skeletal remains from sub-Saharan Africa are virtually non-existent for the period when genetic models indicate the first modern human emigration from this region. The skull from Hofmeyr, South Africa, which has been dated to c. 36ka, is one of the only specimens known from this critical part of the late Pleistocene. The Hofmeyr skull was largely intact at the time of its discovery but has suffered post-recovery mishandling, with the resultant loss of most of the lower facial skeleton, the mandibular angle, the right mastoid process, and much of the occipital. Given the potential significance of this specimen, we have undertaken its restoration and reconstruction so as to provide a more complete picture of the cranial morphology of the late Pleistocene population from which it derived. On the basis of photographs, measurements, and morphological description recorded prior to its having been damaged, we reconstructed some of the missing bone in modeling clay on a high resolution plastic cast of the cranium. The original specimen was CT scanned, as was the cast with the reconstructed maxilla and mastoid; these scans were employed in the final computer reconstruction of the skull. Virtual reconstruction of the remainder of the cranium was accomplished using mirror-imaging and reference-based methods, employing 3D geometric morphometrics from a sample of recent human crania to compute coordinate-based estimates of the missing parts. This reconstruction provides a more complete picture of the Hofmeyr cranium and serves as a basis for more comprehensive morphometric comparisons.
Page 1. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Int. J. Osteoarchaeol. 8: 390411 (1998) Muscle... more Page 1. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Int. J. Osteoarchaeol. 8: 390411 (1998) Muscle Marking Morphology and Labour Intensity in Prehistoric Khoisan Foragers STEVEN E. CHURCHILLa,* AND ALAN G. MORRISb ...
... work was initiated by Alan Morris (Department of Anatomy, Medical School, University of Cape ... more ... work was initiated by Alan Morris (Department of Anatomy, Medical School, University of Cape Town) and led to the systematic excavation and recov-ery of sixty-three intact graves and various scatters of bone, representing a total of 121 individuals (Apollonio 1998; Constant ...
South African physical anthropology has followed a strange pathway divorced from its sister field... more South African physical anthropology has followed a strange pathway divorced from its sister field of sociocultural anthropology. Physical anthropology was a research subject in the museums and medical schools which focused heavily on the nature of racial types. Its practitioners believed that it was a pure science which should not concern itself with ‘unscientific’ political issues. The separation of social and physical anthropology and the emphasis on typology were only broken in the 1970s, but this came too late for the subject to meaningfully engage in the sociopolitical development of the country either in support or in rejection of apartheid. There was a resurgence of self-defined ethnicity after the first democratic election in 1994. This was driven by claims for land by those dispossessed during apartheid but most specifically amongst the Khoesan descendants who were disposed of their land and culture in the Colonial period. The new heritage legislation of 1999 has been developed particularly to deal with these issues of claims for heritage, and very precise controls have been placed over the excavation of human remains. Although facilitating reburial is a central plank in the new legislation, physical anthropology continues to be an important academic subject that is helping to provide knowledge about the past peoples in South Africa’s ancient heritage.
The oldest contemporary human mitochondrial lineages arose in Africa. The earliest divergent exta... more The oldest contemporary human mitochondrial lineages arose in Africa. The earliest divergent extant maternal offshoot, namely haplogroup L0d, is represented by click-speaking forager peoples of southern Africa. Broadly defined as Khoesan, contemporary Khoesan are today largely restricted to the semidesert regions of Namibia and Botswana, whereas archeological, historical, and genetic evidence promotes a once broader southerly dispersal of click-speaking peoples including southward migrating pastoralists and indigenous marine-foragers. No genetic data have been recovered from the indigenous peoples that once sustained life along the southern coastal waters of Africa prepastoral arrival. In this study we generate a complete mitochondrial genome from a 2,330-year-old male skeleton, confirmed through osteological and archeological analysis as practicing a marine-based forager existence. The ancient mtDNA represents a new L0d2c lineage (L0d2c1c) that is today, unlike its Khoe-language ba...
One of the biggest surprises in the rise of apartheid in South Africa in the 1940s was that, unli... more One of the biggest surprises in the rise of apartheid in South Africa in the 1940s was that, unlike in prewar Germany, it was not rooted in the physical anthropology of the previous decades. The engineers of apartheid were, for the most part, Afrikaans-speaking ethnologists operating out of the Afrikaans-medium universities, where little or no physical anthropology was taught. The University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town, both English-medium schools based on the traditions of British academia, were the centers of biological anthropology. Although none of the early practitioners from these schools were directly involved in the implementation of the apartheid policy, their strict typological approach to human variation provided a solid growth medium in which the government policies could develop without credible scientific opposition.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) intended the Cape of Good Hope to be a refreshment stop for sh... more The Dutch East India Company (VOC) intended the Cape of Good Hope to be a refreshment stop for ships travelling between the Netherlands and its eastern colonies. The indigenous Khoisan, however, did not constitute an adequate workforce, therefore the VOC imported slaves from East Africa, Madagascar and Asia to expand the workforce. Cape Town became a cosmopolitan settlement with different categories of people, amongst them a non-European underclass that consisted of slaves, exiles, convicts and free-blacks. This study integrated new strontium isotope data with carbon and nitrogen isotope results from an 18th-19th century burial ground at Cobern Street, Cape Town, to identify non-European forced migrants to the Cape. The aim of the study was to elucidate individual mobility patterns, the age at which the forced migration took place and, if possible, geographical provenance. Using three proxies, 87Sr/86Sr, δ13Cdentine and the presence of dental modifications, a majority (54.5%) of the...
The debate between the proponents of the Recent African Origin and the Multiregional Evolution mo... more The debate between the proponents of the Recent African Origin and the Multiregional Evolution models for the origin of anatomically modern humans has not been of great importance to the interpretation of late Pleistocene human fossils in South Africa. The main reason is that both models propose that evidence of anatomically moderns should happen in South Africa at an early date. A more important issue to the African context is whether or not those early transitions to modernity were accompanied by the development of the distinctive local populations known today as the Khoisan. Serogenetic evidence suggests a relative antiquity for the origins of living Khoisan peoples, but this may simply reflect the longer time that anatomically modern peoples have lived in the sub-continent. A search for features of distinctive Khoisan morphology in the early remains may be of more value as it might indicate the presence of a local adaptive pattern to the special environment conditions of the region.
Recent genomic data have revealed multiple interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans, b... more Recent genomic data have revealed multiple interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans, but there is currently little genetic evidence regarding Neanderthal behaviour, diet, or disease. Here we describe the shotgun-sequencing of ancient DNA from five specimens of Neanderthal calcified dental plaque (calculus) and the characterization of regional differences in Neanderthal ecology. At Spy cave, Belgium, Neanderthal diet was heavily meat based and included woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep (mouflon), characteristic of a steppe environment. In contrast, no meat was detected in the diet of Neanderthals from El Sidrón cave, Spain, and dietary components of mushrooms, pine nuts, and moss reflected forest gathering. Differences in diet were also linked to an overall shift in the oral bacterial community (microbiota) and suggested that meat consumption contributed to substantial variation within Neanderthal microbiota. Evidence for self-medication was detected in an El Sidrón Neander...
Human skeletal remains from sub-Saharan Africa are virtually non-existent for the period when gen... more Human skeletal remains from sub-Saharan Africa are virtually non-existent for the period when genetic models indicate the first modern human emigration from this region. The skull from Hofmeyr, South Africa, which has been dated to c. 36ka, is one of the only specimens known from this critical part of the late Pleistocene. The Hofmeyr skull was largely intact at the time of its discovery but has suffered post-recovery mishandling, with the resultant loss of most of the lower facial skeleton, the mandibular angle, the right mastoid process, and much of the occipital. Given the potential significance of this specimen, we have undertaken its restoration and reconstruction so as to provide a more complete picture of the cranial morphology of the late Pleistocene population from which it derived. On the basis of photographs, measurements, and morphological description recorded prior to its having been damaged, we reconstructed some of the missing bone in modeling clay on a high resolution plastic cast of the cranium. The original specimen was CT scanned, as was the cast with the reconstructed maxilla and mastoid; these scans were employed in the final computer reconstruction of the skull. Virtual reconstruction of the remainder of the cranium was accomplished using mirror-imaging and reference-based methods, employing 3D geometric morphometrics from a sample of recent human crania to compute coordinate-based estimates of the missing parts. This reconstruction provides a more complete picture of the Hofmeyr cranium and serves as a basis for more comprehensive morphometric comparisons.
Page 1. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Int. J. Osteoarchaeol. 8: 390411 (1998) Muscle... more Page 1. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Int. J. Osteoarchaeol. 8: 390411 (1998) Muscle Marking Morphology and Labour Intensity in Prehistoric Khoisan Foragers STEVEN E. CHURCHILLa,* AND ALAN G. MORRISb ...
... work was initiated by Alan Morris (Department of Anatomy, Medical School, University of Cape ... more ... work was initiated by Alan Morris (Department of Anatomy, Medical School, University of Cape Town) and led to the systematic excavation and recov-ery of sixty-three intact graves and various scatters of bone, representing a total of 121 individuals (Apollonio 1998; Constant ...
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