Body size, skeletal biomechanics and habitual behaviour: a bioarchaeological approach to social and economic change in the Neolithic and Copper Age central Mediterranean
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The central Mediterranean during the 4th-3rd millennia BC is traditionally considered a period of economic and social transformation between the Neolithic and Bronze Age, characterised by agricultural intensification, technological innovation, and the emergence of gendered society. This project directly investigates these social and economic processes through a bioarchaeological approach which investigates body size, as reflective of physiological and nutritional stress, and long bone skeletal biomechanics, as reflective of habitual behaviour. This research uses metric data derived from 3D models of humeri, femora and tibiae in 17 human skeletal assemblages from across the central Mediterranean and features comparative analysis with a large sample of individuals spanning the Upper Palaeolithic to Modern periods. The application of 3D scanning also enabled the use of novel methods in the analysis of fragmented skeletal remains. The analysis of body size documents a pronounced reduction in body mass and stature during the Neolithic, followed by a gradual recovery in the Copper and Bronze Ages. The results suggest that the transition to agriculture was initially challenging for early farming groups in the central Mediterranean, resulting in increased physiological and nutritional stress. The biomechanical analysis of the humerus found that the intensification of agriculture in the Copper Age was characterised by a wider range of manual behaviours, reflecting the introduction of diverse economic tasks and craft specialisation. The analysis of the humerus also found no evidence for sexual division of labour in the Copper Age, contrasting with the widely accepted models of social change that have been proposed for the period. The analysis of the lower limb observed a decline in robusticity following the Neolithic, indicating that Copper Age groups were less terrestrially mobile than Neolithic groups. The results of this thesis demonstrate the effectiveness of a bioarchaeological approach in exploring social and economic change in prehistory and provide a framework for future research on the Copper Age of the central Mediterranean.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".