A Companion to Biological Anthropology
The discipline of biological anthropology—the study of the variation and evolution of human beings and their evolutionary relationships with past and living hominin and primate relatives—has undergone enormous growth in recent years. Advances in DNA research, behavioral anthropology, nutrition science, and other fields are transforming our understanding of what makes us human.
A Companion to Biological Anthropology provides a timely and comprehensive account of the foundational concepts, historical development, current trends, and future directions of the discipline. Authoritative yet accessible, this field-defining reference work brings together 37 chapters by established and younger scholars on the biological and evolutionary components of the study of human development. The authors discuss all facets of contemporary biological anthropology including systematics and taxonomy, population and molecular genetics, human biology and functional adaptation, early primate evolution, paleoanthropology, paleopathology, bioarchaeology, forensic anthropology, and paleogenetics.
Updated and expanded throughout, this second edition explores new topics, revisits key issues, and examines recent innovations and discoveries in biological anthropology such as race and human variation, epidemiology and catastrophic disease outbreaks, global inequalities, migration and health, resource access and population growth, recent primate behavior research, the fossil record of primates and humans, and much more.
A Companion to Biological Anthropology, Second Edition is an indispensable guide for researchers and advanced students in biological anthropology, geosciences, ancient and modern disease, bone biology, biogeochemistry, behavioral ecology, forensic anthropology, systematics and taxonomy, nutritional anthropology, and related disciplines.
Notes on Contributors x Acknowledgments xx Foreword xxii 1 The Breadth and Vision of Biological Anthropology 1 Clark Spencer Larsen Part I: History 13 2 Foundation and History of Biological Anthropology 15 Michael A. Little and Jane E. Buikstra Part II: The Present and the Living 39 3 Evolution: What It Means and How We Know 41 Kenneth M. Weiss and Anne V. Buchanan 4 Systematics, Taxonomy, and Phylogenetics: Ordering Life, Past and Present 55 Alexis Uluutku and Bernard Wood 5 Diversity, Ancestry, and Evolution: The Genetics of Human Populations 73 John H. Relethford 6 Human Population Genomics: Diversity and Adaptation 87 Dennis H. O’Rourke 7 Race, Racism, and Racial Thinking: Implications for Biological Anthropology 103 Rachel Caspari 8 Human Life History Evolution: Growth, Development, and Senescence 122 Douglas E. Crews and Barry Bogin 9 Climate-Related Human Biological Variation 140 Cynthia M. Beall 10 Infectious Disease and Epidemiology: Dealing with the Present and Preparing for Future New Epidemics 167 Lisa Sattenspiel and Carolyn Orbann 11 Evolutionary Insights into the Social and Environmental Drivers of Health Inequality: The Example of theGlobal Epidemic of Overweight and Cardiovascular Diseases 184 Christopher W. Kuzawa and Melissa B. Manus 12 Ancient DNA and Disease 199 Anne Stone 13 Paleogenomics: Ancient DNA in Biological Anthropology 210 C. Eduardo Guerra Amorim 14 Demography, Including Paleodemography 223 Lyle W. Konigsberg George R. Milner, and Jesper L. Boldsen 15 Nutritional Anthropology: Contemporary Themes in Food, Diet, and Nutrition 244 Darna L. Dufour and Barbara A. Piperata 16 Ongoing Evolution: Are We Still Evolving? 262 Fabian Crespo 17 Primates Defined 277 W. Scott McGraw 18 Primate Behavior, Social Flexibility, and Conservation 300 Karen B. Strier 19 Behavioral Ecology: Background and Illustrative Example 314 James F. O’Connell and Kristen Hawkes 20 Brain, Cognition, and Behavior in Humans and Other Primates 329 Elaine N. Miller and Chet C. Sherwood Part III: The Past and the Dead 345 21 Taphonomy and Biological Anthropology 347 Luis L. Cabo, Dennis C. Dirkmaat, and Andrea M. Zurek-Ost 22 Primate Origins: The Earliest Primates and Euprimates and Their Role in the Evolution of the Order 365 Mary T. Silcox and Sergi López-Torres 23 Catarrhine Origins and Evolution 381 David R. Begun 24 The Human Journey Begins: Origins and Diversity in Early Hominins 400 Scott W. Simpson 25 Early Homo: Systematics, Paleobiology, and the First Out-of-Africa Dispersals 421 G. Philip Rightmire 26 Panmixis in Middle and Late Pleistocene Human Subspecies: The Genetic/Genomic Revolution inPaleoanthropology 440 Fred H. Smith and Whitney M. Karriger 27 Bioarchaeology: Transformations in Lifestyle, Morbidity, and Mortality 458 George R. Milner and Clark Spencer Larsen 28 Paleopathology: A Twenty-first Century Perspective 474 Jane E. Buikstra 29 Forensic Anthropology: Current Issues 494 Douglas H. Ubelaker 30 Diet reconstruction and Ecology 510 Margaret J. Schoeninger and Laurie J. Reitsema 31 Current Concepts in Bone Biology 527 Mary E. Cole, James H. Gosman, and Samuel D. Stout 32 Deducing Attributes of Dental Growth and Development from Fossil Hominin Teeth 544 Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg 33 Skull: Function – New Directions 559 Qian Wang and Rachel A. Menegaz 34 Dental Microwear Analysis: Wear We Are Going, Wear We Have Been 572 Christopher W. Schmidt and Peter S. Ungar 35 Primate Locomotion: A Comparative and Developmental Perspective 587 Michael C. Granatosky and Jesse W. Young 36 Teaching Biological Anthropology: Pedagogy of Human Evolution and Human Variation 603 Briana Pobiner Index 622
CLARK SPENCER LARSEN is Distinguished University Professor at Ohio State University, USA. He is the founding editor of the book series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past and has served as president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Over the course of his career, he has authored and edited more than 35 books and monographs, including Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton, Second Edition (2015) and Our Origins: Discovering Biological Anthropology, Fifth Edition (2020), and was the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
