Diet and adult age‐at‐death among mobile foragers: A synthesis of bioarcheological methods
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Objectives The research explores whether the combined study of cortical bone histology, bone morphology, and dietary stable isotopes can expand insights into past human health and adaptations, particularly dietary sufficiency and life span. Materials and methods Midthoracic rib cortices from 54 South African Late Holocene adult skeletons (28 M, 24 F, two sex undetermined) are assessed by transmitted‐light microscopy for cross‐sectional area measurements, osteon area (On.Ar), osteon population density, and presence/absence of secondary osteon variants. Values for δ13Cbone collagen, δ15Nbone collagen, 14C dates, Southwestern and Southern Cape geographic regions, body size measures, estimated ages‐at‐death from both morphological and histological methods are integrated into analyses, which include Spearman correlations, χ2 tests and Kruskal–Wallis ANOVAs. Results There is reduced On.Ar variability with higher δ15N (r = −.41, p = .005); rib %cortical area and δ15N are negatively correlated in the Southern Cape group (r = −.60, p = .03). Osteon variants are more common in older adults; histological ages at death are significantly older than those determined from gross morphology. Discussion We found bone tissue relationships with measures of diet composition, but indicators of dietary adequacy remain elusive. Relationships of tissue quality and isotopes suggest that some Southern Cape adults lived long lives. Osteon variants are associated with age‐at‐death; some association with diet remains possible. Gross morphological methods appear to underestimate adult ages‐at‐death, at least among small‐bodied adults.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".