As part of the Festival of British Archaeology, Archaeology here at Southampton will be hosting a day of hands-on activities and demonstrations on Saturday 23rd July.

We are planning lots for everyone to do, take part in and/or watch, including:

• Prehistoric butchery
• Medieval shipwrighting using our axe collection
• Cave art
• Human bones
• Prehistoric metallurgy demonstration
• Flint knapping and axe making
• Mini-excavation
• Build-a-burial
• Geophysics
• Human Origins and a chance to meet the monkey men!
• Minecraft
• Maritime archaeology

Events will be running from 10am to 4pm at Avenue Campus (just off Highfield Road, SO17 1BF – plenty of parking available onsite).

Free entry!

The post Fun for all at the Archaeovillage Activities Day appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.

Archaeology is leading the way in the Being Human Festival here at University of Southampton. This year’s theme “Religion and Me” is key to a whole lot of archaeology – from the Palaeolithic and Venus figurines, through Roman idols, to studies of the conversion to Islam  in the Middle east, archaeology is right at the centre of Being Human!

What does it mean to be human? How much is religion a key part of life? Come to our events and find out more! In addition to our talks and evening events, we are hosting a one day study day on Roman religion (Saturday 21st November) and an activity & events day for all the family on Sunday 22nd November. Come along and join us!

The post Being Human: Religion and Me appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.

What does it mean to be human? How much is religion a key part of life? Come to our events and find out more! In addition to our talks and evening events, we are hosting a one day study day on Roman religion (Saturday 21st November) and an activity & events day for all the family on Sunday 22nd November. Come along and join us!

The post Being Human: Religion and Me appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.

What does it mean to be human? How much is religion a key part of life? Come to our events and find out more! In addition to our talks and evening events, we are hosting a one day study day on Roman religion (Saturday 21st November) and an activity & events day for all the family on Sunday 22nd November. Come along and join us!

The post Being Human: Religion and Me appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.

To celebrate the start of a new academic year here at Southampton, we have launched a new website to showcase some of our bioarchaeology, palaeopathology and osteology research. This launch is happening that very same week that aspects of our collaborative research with Historic England and Bioengineering (here at Southampton) are being talked about at the European Union in Brussels!

But why are we called BOS? Bioarchaeology & Osteoarchaeology at Southampton – but that much is obvious…
Bos, however, is also the genus name for cow – and this highlights the fact that we work with both humans and animals.
Although most of our research students work on questions relating to human groups and human populations, we also question the interactions between humans and animals – such as how diseases spread from one group to another, or how foods are produced and consumed.

This website is a work-in-progress – please keep checking back to find out more of what we are doing! We will be demonstrating some of the research we do, our teaching and our outreach work with local schools.

Our staff and students are very much involved in both national and international organisations in the field, such as BABAO and the Paleopathology Association.

The post Bioarchaeology & Osteoarchaeology @ Southampton appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.

But why are we called BOS? Bioarchaeology & Osteoarchaeology at Southampton – but that much is obvious…
Bos, however, is also the genus name for cow – and this highlights the fact that we work with both humans and animals.
Although most of our research students work on questions relating to human groups and human populations, we also question the interactions between humans and animals – such as how diseases spread from one group to another, or how foods are produced and consumed.

This website is a work-in-progress – please keep checking back to find out more of what we are doing! We will be demonstrating some of the research we do, our teaching and our outreach work with local schools.

Our staff and students are very much involved in both national and international organisations in the field, such as BABAO and the Paleopathology Association.

https://pathbrite.com/BOS/profile

The post Bioarchaeology & Osteoarchaeology @ Southampton appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.

But why are we called BOS? Bioarchaeology & Osteoarchaeology at Southampton – but that much is obvious…
Bos, however, is also the genus name for cow – and this highlights the fact that we work with both humans and animals.
Although most of our research students work on questions relating to human groups and human populations, we also question the interactions between humans and animals – such as how diseases spread from one group to another, or how foods are produced and consumed.

This website is a work-in-progress – please keep checking back to find out more of what we are doing! We will be demonstrating some of the research we do, our teaching and our outreach work with local schools.

Our staff and students are very much involved in both national and international organisations in the field, such as BABAO and the Paleopathology Association.

https://pathbrite.com/BOS/profile

The post Bioarchaeology & Osteoarchaeology @ Southampton appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.

Today is (apparently) International Left Handers Day….

There are few lefties among the Archaeology staff… Prof Jon Adams (our UG admissions tutor) for one – he is usually recognizable when diving as the only left handed underwater archaeologist (just see the films of the excavation and lifting of the Mary Rose). More famously (?) Leonardo da Vinci was a leftie. So why is this?

Population-level right-handedness is a defining characteristic of being human. But, despite extensive research, we still don’t know how or when it emerged in human evolution. And anyway, what is right-handedness? Recent doctoral research undertaken by one of the members of CAHO has shown that there are skeletal asymmetries in both arm and hand bones that demonstrate that the right side dominance was present early in the evolution of the genus Homo, and was definitely present by the time that Neanderthals evolved. Dr Lisa Cashmore & Dr Natalie Uomini provided an excellent review of the evidence from tool-use, production, and cave art to confirm that right-hand preference was established in Neanderthals and was maintained until the present. They have also demonstrated that great apes can provide real-life models for the understanding of hand preference. What is particularly noteworthy is that great apes, like humans, do exhibit hand preferences, especially when undertaking complex tasks. Certainly in my own experience, I play cards like a leftie – but am a rightie for almost everything else! Dr Lisa Cashmore has also proposed that when referring to ‘handedness’ it is better to use the terms ‘hand preference’ and ‘hand use’  so as to avoid confusion with different definitions of handedness.

So how do we actually try to assess hand preference in past populations or individuals? Traditionally this has simply been undertaken by looking at the lengths, breadths and cross-sectional morphologies of the long bones in the arms. Where the right side was bigger / longer / wider / had more muscle attachment development than the left side, this was assumed to mean that the individual was a right-hander. But is it as simple as this? Whereas the main focus of previous research on asymmetry and hand preference was on the bones of the upper limb, rather than those of the hand, we decided to study the bones of the hands (the metacarpals and phalanges). To start this research, a method of actually assessing musculoskeletal stress marker (MSM) development in hand bones had to be developed.  During her PhD working with me, Lisa Cashmore developed a presence/
absence scoring system was developed for twelve sites of muscle origin and insertion in the metacarpals and phalanges, which was then used to determine bilateral asymmetry in the hands. When we then compared these scores of hand preference with MSM scores from the upper arm bones (humeri) of the same individuals clear differences in the expression of MSM development and asymmetry could be seen between these two parts of the upper limb. Our results suggest that we should not simply continue to use measurements or scores from the humerus as a proxy for the upper limb as a whole and imply that important information regarding behavioural asymmetry in the hands is being lost because of the continual exclusion of this anatomical unit from such research. Instead we need to look at the hands too! Maybe we will find more lefties out there in the bioarchaeological record.   #lefthandersday

To read our research, please see:

The post Left Handers Day & Lefties: how can we identify handedness (or hand preference)? appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.

There are few lefties among the Archaeology staff… Prof Jon Adams (our UG admissions tutor) for one – he is usually recognizable when diving as the only left handed underwater archaeologist (just see the films of the excavation and lifting of the Mary Rose). More famously (?) Leonardo da Vinci was a leftie. So why is this?

Population-level right-handedness is a defining characteristic of being human. But, despite extensive research, we still don’t know how or when it emerged in human evolution. And anyway, what is right-handedness? Recent doctoral research undertaken by one of the members of CAHO has shown that there are skeletal asymmetries in both arm and hand bones that demonstrate that the right side dominance was present early in the evolution of the genus Homo, and was definitely present by the time that Neanderthals evolved. Dr Lisa Cashmore & Dr Natalie Uomini provided an excellent review of the evidence from tool-use, production, and cave art to confirm that right-hand preference was established in Neanderthals and was maintained until the present. They have also demonstrated that great apes can provide real-life models for the understanding of hand preference. What is particularly noteworthy is that great apes, like humans, do exhibit hand preferences, especially when undertaking complex tasks. Certainly in my own experience, I play cards like a leftie – but am a rightie for almost everything else! Dr Lisa Cashmore has also proposed that when referring to ‘handedness’ it is better to use the terms ‘hand preference’ and ‘hand use’  so as to avoid confusion with different definitions of handedness.

So how do we actually try to assess hand preference in past populations or individuals? Traditionally this has simply been undertaken by looking at the lengths, breadths and cross-sectional morphologies of the long bones in the arms. Where the right side was bigger / longer / wider / had more muscle attachment development than the left side, this was assumed to mean that the individual was a right-hander. But is it as simple as this? Whereas the main focus of previous research on asymmetry and hand preference was on the bones of the upper limb, rather than those of the hand, we decided to study the bones of the hands (the metacarpals and phalanges). To start this research, a method of actually assessing musculoskeletal stress marker (MSM) development in hand bones had to be developed.  During her PhD working with me, Lisa Cashmore developed a presence/
absence scoring system was developed for twelve sites of muscle origin and insertion in the metacarpals and phalanges, which was then used to determine bilateral asymmetry in the hands. When we then compared these scores of hand preference with MSM scores from the upper arm bones (humeri) of the same individuals clear differences in the expression of MSM development and asymmetry could be seen between these two parts of the upper limb. Our results suggest that we should not simply continue to use measurements or scores from the humerus as a proxy for the upper limb as a whole and imply that important information regarding behavioural asymmetry in the hands is being lost because of the continual exclusion of this anatomical unit from such research. Instead we need to look at the hands too! Maybe we will find more lefties out there in the bioarchaeological record.   #lefthandersday

To read our research, please see:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oa.1254/abstract;jsessionid=48FBDC00E6888549FDA98CD612D4C1B4.f01t02

The post Left Handers Day & Lefties: how can we identify handedness (or hand preference)? appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.

There are few lefties among the Archaeology staff… Prof Jon Adams (our UG admissions tutor) for one – he is usually recognizable when diving as the only left handed underwater archaeologist (just see the films of the excavation and lifting of the Mary Rose). More famously (?) Leonardo da Vinci was a leftie. So why is this?

Population-level right-handedness is a defining characteristic of being human. But, despite extensive research, we still don’t know how or when it emerged in human evolution. And anyway, what is right-handedness? Recent doctoral research undertaken by one of the members of CAHO has shown that there are skeletal asymmetries in both arm and hand bones that demonstrate that the right side dominance was present early in the evolution of the genus Homo, and was definitely present by the time that Neanderthals evolved. Dr Lisa Cashmore & Dr Natalie Uomini provided an excellent review of the evidence from tool-use, production, and cave art to confirm that right-hand preference was established in Neanderthals and was maintained until the present. They have also demonstrated that great apes can provide real-life models for the understanding of hand preference. What is particularly noteworthy is that great apes, like humans, do exhibit hand preferences, especially when undertaking complex tasks. Certainly in my own experience, I play cards like a leftie – but am a rightie for almost everything else! Dr Lisa Cashmore has also proposed that when referring to ‘handedness’ it is better to use the terms ‘hand preference’ and ‘hand use’  so as to avoid confusion with different definitions of handedness.

So how do we actually try to assess hand preference in past populations or individuals? Traditionally this has simply been undertaken by looking at the lengths, breadths and cross-sectional morphologies of the long bones in the arms. Where the right side was bigger / longer / wider / had more muscle attachment development than the left side, this was assumed to mean that the individual was a right-hander. But is it as simple as this? Whereas the main focus of previous research on asymmetry and hand preference was on the bones of the upper limb, rather than those of the hand, we decided to study the bones of the hands (the metacarpals and phalanges). To start this research, a method of actually assessing musculoskeletal stress marker (MSM) development in hand bones had to be developed.  During her PhD working with me, Lisa Cashmore developed a presence/
absence scoring system was developed for twelve sites of muscle origin and insertion in the metacarpals and phalanges, which was then used to determine bilateral asymmetry in the hands. When we then compared these scores of hand preference with MSM scores from the upper arm bones (humeri) of the same individuals clear differences in the expression of MSM development and asymmetry could be seen between these two parts of the upper limb. Our results suggest that we should not simply continue to use measurements or scores from the humerus as a proxy for the upper limb as a whole and imply that important information regarding behavioural asymmetry in the hands is being lost because of the continual exclusion of this anatomical unit from such research. Instead we need to look at the hands too! Maybe we will find more lefties out there in the bioarchaeological record.   #lefthandersday

To read our research, please see:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oa.1254/abstract;jsessionid=48FBDC00E6888549FDA98CD612D4C1B4.f01t02

The post Left Handers Day & Lefties: how can we identify handedness (or hand preference)? appeared first on Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds.