EAA2021: Abstract
Abstract is part of session #505:
Title & Content
Title:
Baby Steps: a study of the shape of childhood mobility
Content:
Growth and early mobility are a heavily studied field in juvenile bioarchaeological studies. The question of shape or developmental trajectories, however, has only recently been investigated as methodological advances such as geometric morphometrics methods (GMM) have become more available.
The application of GMM allows for a novel analysis of developmental trajectories as whole bone morphology is analysed and visualised in a three-dimensional space. To determine if long bone plasticity and movement is influenced by population variation, juveniles of Anglo-Saxon to Post-Medieval foetal to 12-year-old long bones were examined; they formed a comprehensive dataset to integrate auto3dgm with traditional bioarchaeological methodologies of growth and development. This study seeks to identify how biological processes affect bone shape during ontogeny to answer, ‘what is bone shape and what do shape trajectories tell us?’
The principal findings were that long bone shape is statistically significant by site and period from foetal to 5 years old and that shape is not a linear progression but rather fluctuates during the life course. It was also found that the developmental trajectories had different potential in the extent of shape that could be achieved for each age group, and that trajectories could change as a result of developmental pathways such as nutritional or environmental stress that occurred during growth.
The application of GMM allows for a novel analysis of developmental trajectories as whole bone morphology is analysed and visualised in a three-dimensional space. To determine if long bone plasticity and movement is influenced by population variation, juveniles of Anglo-Saxon to Post-Medieval foetal to 12-year-old long bones were examined; they formed a comprehensive dataset to integrate auto3dgm with traditional bioarchaeological methodologies of growth and development. This study seeks to identify how biological processes affect bone shape during ontogeny to answer, ‘what is bone shape and what do shape trajectories tell us?’
The principal findings were that long bone shape is statistically significant by site and period from foetal to 5 years old and that shape is not a linear progression but rather fluctuates during the life course. It was also found that the developmental trajectories had different potential in the extent of shape that could be achieved for each age group, and that trajectories could change as a result of developmental pathways such as nutritional or environmental stress that occurred during growth.
Keywords:
Mobility, Development, Geometric Morphometrics, Plasticity
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authors
Main authors:
Sarah Stark1
Co-author:
Affiliations:
1 UCL