 So, Celeste Hillcott is going to be speaking on behalf of herself and Sabrina Agrawal and Meno Uglant, who is actually from Leiden, and this is all taking place, I guess, in the Netherlands. And it is about some of her work on her dissertation, obviously with her colleagues, and she called a multivariate approach to activity pattern analysis. The case, it sounds like a mystery story, a case of Mindenmeester in other words. So, thank you, Celeste. So, this presentation is actually on the initial three-quarters of my dissertation project, which aims at examining aspects of social identity in the post-minivial population of skeletons from the cemetery of Mindenmeester in the Netherlands. I am going to do this through the examination of skeleton markers of bone growth and maintenance and activity-related stress. So, the town of Mindenmeester was an extremely important dairy farming community in North Holland, and what I'm hoping is that a bio-archeological study of its community will provide a great deal of information on not only the daily lives of the inhabitants, but will also shed light on the development of the dairy presentry on the coastal provinces of the Netherlands. So, the social construction of identity does not revolve around any one concept, but is intricately informed by gender, social status, class, ethnicity, and age. So, what is significant is how the body represents a contextually dependent materiality that through the incorporation of the life course perspective and biocultural analyses can eliminate information about not only the connection between an individual and the different stages of their life and identity, but can also reveal how they were situated within the context of the larger society in which they existed. The challenge at this point is that social constructions are unique to every culture and time period, and can be difficult to elucidate without historical documentation on the culture and time period in question. So, here enters bio-archeology. Since physiological changes in skeletons can correspond to alterations in sociocultural identity, if remains are analyzed in social context, cultural comparisons can be made. Bio-archeologists can also identify bio-cultural events that may be particularly culturally or socially important. For example, by identifying the time of weaning or puberty, bio-archeologists may be able to also identify and define socially defined age grades. This focus on culturally contextualizing human remains is what has been termed the bio-cultural approach, which is ultimately the interest in reconstructing the biological footings of the skeletal body and cultural framework that have together created the social spaces and social creatures that inhabit them. Bio-cultural analyses offer a unique perspective in the examination of such a complex and dynamic system by being positioned to not only consider the biological agents, but also their interactions with nature, culture, and one another. Therefore, by acknowledging the dynamic and complex factors inherent in the human body, incorporation of life course theory and the bio-cultural approach allow anthropologists to study the ontogeny and life histories of individuals and groups via contextualization that equally incorporates biologically and culturally influencing factors in order to better inform on past cultural frameworks. Then the complex history of the Netherlands has shaped and reshaped not only the country's social, political, and economic face, but also its physical landscape. The extremely variable geography and soils throughout the Netherlands combined with the effects of what was known as the Little Ice Age, that happened from 1300 to 1850, presented numerous difficulties for any sort of intensification of agriculture. In the provinces of Holland specifically, especially in northern Holland, the challenge was to occupy the extensive peat bogs, which were both a blessing because they provided a very cheap source of fuel. They were also an impediment to any sort of arable farming or animal husbandry because they were so soggy. This part of the Netherlands is literally below sea level. So any sort of arable land is at a premium. So, windmills. During the 14th and 15th centuries, there was what was known as a low-technology agricultural revolution, which involved the implementation of lay farming to reduce shallow land and the introduction of windmills for actually draining and pumping water away from fields. Between 1610 and 1640, intense lake drainage and land reclamation was accomplished through the introduction of green canals, which, if you look carefully, you can kind of see that what looks like city streets to us in concentric rains are actually all canals. So by taking water away and forming dyes, they were actually able to reclaim land that they could build and farm upon. Green canals are also known as holders, and these use turnable windmills to drain an area. So by around 1650, Holland's farmland had increased by a third and a large new class of farmers had emerged. Despite the success of these innovations and alterations, much of the soil in North Holland was still unsuitable for arable farming, and instead the occupants focused on cattle and dairy farming, cultivating nitrogen-rich clover to feed the animals as well as enrich the soil. These changes allowed for a commercial orientation to agriculture to develop in the Netherlands, and this actually fed the demands of the growing city of Amsterdam, which was also home to the numerous trading ships of the Dutch East India Company, which had been established in 1602 and went widely throughout the world. So agriculture became the largest sector in the Dutch economy, but was heavily impacted both positively and negatively during the Thirty Years' War, such as the War of Standard Succession, the Fourth Age of the Dutch War, the French Revolution, and finally the Holy House Wars. So as you can see essentially from 1618 to 1815, which are relevant to the collection I'm going to be looking at, there is a series of political strength. Despite the significant hardships that the shifting political climate had on the arable farming areas of the Netherlands, the specialized deer farming areas remained mostly unaffected due to the irreplaceable demand for their exports. Towards the end of the 18th century, England became Europe's largest food importer and was supplied heavily from the nearby Netherlands, but at the beginning of the 19th century, 20% of Dutch dairy products alone were being exported. Midden beenster. The small town of Midden beenster is located in the modern municipality of Beekster in the province of North Holland. 10 kilometers from the western coast of Lake Markenare and 20 kilometers to the east of the North Sea. So very, very close to bodies of water, really below sea level. The Beekster folder was completed in 1612 during the intense land reclamation previously mentioned. And despite the unstable political climate and the economic climate of the 17th and 18th centuries, for much of the North Sea area, Beekster became and has remained one of the largest dairy farming villages in Holland. And it's internationally famous still for its namesake, Beekster cheese. Just for a note, kind of on the general geographical location, Beekster is very close to Gouda, or Gouda as they will tell you. So during the summer of 2011, the cemetery used by the colonizing farming community of the Beekster folder from 1617 to 1866 was excavated as part of a joint rescue project by Holandia archeologon at the laboratory for human osteoarcheology at Leiden University. More than 500 individuals were recovered representing all ages and many an excellent preservation. The majority of the graves are from the 19th century and were carefully laid out and numbered with historical records of the individuals interred there. With information sometimes including name, sex, age, occasionally occupation, family relations, or even nationality if they had immigrated. So the minimapster skeletal sample provides the unique opportunity to examine age and gender-related divisions of activity and labor during this changing and challenging historical period. Further, the variety of historical documentation about Dutch culture, as well as the historical documentation on this specific cemetery, and the individuals interred there make this uniquely poised to inform questions about rural Dutch society as well as the development of social identities over the life course during the 18th and 19th centuries in Northern Holand. Information about individuals, subgroups, and entire populations can be derived through a variety of both micro and macroscopic bioarcheological analyses. The potential of skeletal biology to provide a wealth of information previously considered unattainable has become increasingly important to the field of archeology. Since many aspects of past life ways leave no material evidence in the archeological record. Bioarcheologists specifically integrate knowledge of skeletal biology with archeological and historical context to approach anthropological questions. It is actually only recently that there has been a movement away from a focus on descriptive and typological categorizations of skeletal variation and towards an emphasis on context and the complementary nature of biological and cultural approaches. Specifically, we are trying to interpret behavior from the human skeleton in order to reconstruct past social situations. Logical analyses can contribute to the formation of inferences about behavioral activity patterns of past populations via the examination of gross morphological changes of the skeleton. Advancements during the last two decades in research on skeletal variations have linked variability and morphology to the reconstruction of general patterns of activity, including the potential for inferring sociocultural implications. In general, specific activities are less likely to be recognized than the organization of general patterns of activities and levels of stress associated with them. However, both individual and population level differences can be identified through the analysis of morphological variability, which may eliminate facets of social organization such as sex and age-based divisions of labor or the presence of distinct structures. Intra-population changes over time can also be examined and may suggest changes in activity patterns. While intra-population comparisons can be used to help clarify the role of environment on activities as reflected in morphological variability, a living individual is actually a living tissue just like your skin, muscles, or organs. This means that over the course of your life, your bones are constantly reacting to a variety of influences. Nutrition, disease, exercise, stress, even disuse. So some of these influences may not be strong enough or happen repetitively enough to actually leave a significant mark on your skeleton, while others may be so dramatic that they will permanently affect a bone, such as a terrible break that's not properly treated. This is referred to as the concept of dynamic plasticity, which is the anatomical ability of bone to adapt to environmental changes, both physiological and behavioral, during life through permanent morphological alteration. Thus, for bone, form reflects function. So clinical and osteological studies have provided evidence that spells morphology, patterns in non-pathological osteoarthritis, characteristics of the size and robusticity of muscle insertion sites, also known as embezzial changes or ECs, cross-sectional geometry of long bones, and the presence degree of expression of a variety of non-genetic, non-metric traits. So, for example, these would be expansion of a particular surface area or the set that's linked to squatting. These, in turn, can be correlated with general patterns of activity. So these four main categories of skeletal activity pattern analyses that employ a form of life's function premise are biomechanics, musculoskeletal insertion studies, or embezzial changes, of non-pathological osteoarthritis and non-genetic non-metric traits. A whole-body life course approach which combines a variety of activity pattern analyses provides the strongest support for activity-related morphological variations and their development during life. In the study of the historic Mimster population, these activity pattern analyses were employed. However, I will only be discussing the last three of these in this presentation. Emphasis are the regular attachment areas for muscles insert into bone. The development and degree of expression of these bony manifestations has been linked to forceful and repetitive activities involving specific groups of muscles. So essentially, the more you use a group of muscles, the bigger they get and their force that is their attachment area on bone. Protocols for scoring robustness of the embezzial changes are insertion sites specific, and range from one slight, which you can see on the left, to three severe. This, for example, is the three grades of the Brachialis insertion, which is right here on your arm. In addition to examining the robustness of embezzial insertions, I also recorded the degree, in addition, of stress lesions, which include pitting and furrowing of an attachment area, which appear to be associated with continuous microtrauma. It's also the category of ossification exostoses, which essentially are bony projections that form when an abrupt macrotama, such as a muscle rupture, causes new bone formation to be incorporated into tendon or ligament tissue. In addition to demonstrating relatively generalized activity patterns, analyses of embezzial changes have been successfully used to identify group-level differences in activities, such as divisions of labor based on sex and age, or both of these things, degrees of task specialization, such as food processing techniques, even effects of the physical environment, such as differences in terrain on locomotory behaviors. Research into osteoarthritis has found that changes related to biomechanical stress versus the effects of age, genetics, ancestry, nutrition, et cetera, are most likely to appear on an affidicular joint surfaces, so joint spear appendages. Therefore, I followed a standard ordinal scoring methodology for the three categories of subcontinue porosity, which would be all the forest nature that you can see on this joint surface. Lipping, when you get bony growths at the margins of joint surfaces, or evenation, which happens when you have complete dissolution of articular cartilage and just bone-on bone rubbing against each other, which creates a polished, shiny, crude surface. Probably extremely painful. Nonmetric traits are skeletal variants that have both a genetic and non-genetic disposition. Traits from the second category have been directly correlated to activities. In this study, eighth non-genetic geometric traits were examined based upon the strength of previous research, supporting their correlation with the habitual movement, as well as the goal of representing a variety of areas and most movements of the body. As an example, these are the three grades of the trait which is the blurring of the lateral margin to the outside margin of the distal femur as a result of habitual squatting, so you can see here, there's still a very clear margin in grade one and in grade two. It tends to blur away a little bit, and by three with severe gray, you have total blurring of the margin. From 27 different muscle insertion sites per side, chosen from across the body again in order to represent a wide range of movement and ascertain information on repetitive activities, micro, and macro trauma. I also examined 12 different surfaces per side, representing the major affidicular joints for any signs of osteoarthritis. And finally, I looked for eight different non-genetic non-metric traits, which again were chosen based upon the strengths of previous research supporting their correlation with a habitual movement. In total, 87 non-pathological adult individuals with definite sex characteristics were examined. Age groups were divided into four categories, early young adult, late young adult, mature adult, and the old adult, and sex and age were checked against historical records when possible. And more and more records are being confirmed, so it's kind of an ever-changing process. But the majority of the individuals enhance my ability to have very narrow age categories. So my results. Due to the ordinal nature of the data, clearly slight to severe is rather qualitative. Non-parametric statistical tests were run to check for asymmetry as well as potential correlations between each point the data was collected on in each of the categories of age, sex, and body size. To look for age differences, partial correlations were run controlling for sex and body size. Similarly, or look for sex differences, partial correlations were run controlling for age and body size. So rather than bore you guys to tears with endless statistical tables, I've tried to sum up my results as succinctly as possible. Early young adults are notable for having the lowest and visceral robusticity scores for any age group while simultaneously holding four out of the five significant correlations with the stressed lesions. This data supports recent studies which have suggested that stressed lesions on emphases are not part of a continuous spectrum of robusticity as was previously thought for quite a while. Nothing significant correlated with the late young adult group while the mature adult group correlated singularly with a large number of emphysioregisticity variables from across the entire body. Notably, there are multiple correlations with adduction and lateral rotation of the leg which I will talk about. To look for sex differences classification exastoses were found to be asymmetric and correlate with age, sex and body size. When sex and body size were controlled for several entities had strong correlations with older age however when age and body size were controlled clear differences between the sexes were revealed. So males on the left females on the right very strong correlation coefficients. These trends suggest that women were starting an activity early in life that involved excessive and often traumatic extension and flexion of the left arm. While I am very hesitant to over interpret these findings I will say that these results provide potential support for the activity of cutting cheese curd with a harp. This is a traditional cheese harp and curd cutting method which you literally have a giant dad and are doing this. So a lot of flexion and extension which also lends potential support for this role as a gendered labor activity. These trends also suggest that the main difference between men and women for these specific ossification exastoses are associated with old age. The first two variables are associated with medial rotation of the right arm while the last variable is associated with lateral rotation of the left leg motions that would result in old feet facing in the same direction. Additionally a male has held the only significant osteoarthritis correlations and these were in the ankle joint as well as the only significant non-metric trait which was porias facet which is an indication of excessive extreme leg extension. So what could that mean? That's a whole lot of words, right? Honestly, I personally have no idea what could be the root cause of this pattern. It's very open to suggestions. I've gotten some very funny ones. But clearly there is a difference between the sexes in this general pattern of activity and this is the pattern of activity I'm talking about. Not necessarily with the extension being bending down like that but something that is promoting extension in addition to this movement. So general pattern of activity is supported by all three of the methodologies that I have incorporated. So my conclusions. There are significant differences in upper and lower limb activities between the sexes suggesting there was a division in type of activity. The strong correlations between age and most variables examined suggests an evenly divided level of activity between the sexes. And while there are these indications and differences in the kinds of activities being performed due to the increased demand for Dutch dairy products and therefore the need for everyone to contribute to production, the general levels of strain between the sexes were actually expected to be equivalent for men and women. So we're still seeing extreme levels of strain just a difference in the activity patterns associated with them. Further research into historic dairy farming practices may help clarify these activity patterns. But as I had said at the beginning we try not to over-interpret our findings and get too specific with them. So I am looking into traditional methods of cheese making but like I said with the curd cutting harp I'm hesitant to try and point out the same sort of thing for the males. The next step in my dissertation research my further analyses include biomechanical data specifically the cross-sectional geometric analyses of CT scans which I have already taken both humorine and ephemera of each individual. Additionally to the individuals I've already talked about I will be adding 36 subadults ranging from infant to 16 years of age. The goal is to help define age ranges during which changes in activity patterns appear in them. Since biomechanical studies about activity patterns are founded in which a bone will adapt its overall structure to changes made specifically in its load environment the use of cross-sectional geometry may be indicative of intensification and production at Middleminster while also changes in the notions of childhood and the length of this period of time in the life course are expected to be seen in changes in the cross geometric properties of the subadult samples thus reflecting notions of a shorter childhood symptomatic of labor beginning earlier in life. Acknowledgments, I want to thank Stahl for helping contribute to me being able to go to the Netherlands several times as well as my work with the Laboratory for Econosteology at Langley University the Historic Community Shop at BAMSTER which is their historical society they're doing a lot of archival research and finally the Orden-Bonded Prince Travel Grant from the Dutch Studies Department here at Berkeley. Anyone has any questions? Are you happy to choose specifically cheese making occupations or people who are involved in that or were there other occupations in there? There's I haven't actually used any of the occupations depending on archival sources for occupations can be problematic because that wasn't necessarily the occupation they had their entire life it wasn't necessarily an occupation that would show up maybe wasn't such a stressful movement as other things that they were doing on a normal basis in life for the most part a small isolated dairy farming community that there wasn't a lot of other occupations they really couldn't depend self-sufficiently on their own agriculture because literally the levels of nitrogen in the soil prevented them from being able to do any other sort of agriculture so it really is mostly just fields of grass which apparently make amazing cheese not apparently they make amazing cheese I was wondering if you had any datasets of non-dairy farming communities that you can compare and see what you can correlate some of those stresses to cheese farming people specifically for this time period in the Netherlands there was talk of different communities that have been or are being excavated and possible comparisons for the scope of my dissertation project it's too much because they haven't been cleaned or catalogued yet or anything else and would involve more trips to the Netherlands Belgium and other places so definitely something clearly the Minimixer project in general is a massive project and the MSC is coming out of it so it could be something potentially to do down the line you mentioned in the beginning about this is a water rich environment and I'm thinking about these different movements that you're using dairy farmers but could they not also have to deal with water movement and just to keep their fields where they are meaning to keep their regular activities would they not also have to maintain the renewals canals definitely which is part of the reason I was saying I'm very hesitant to over-interfer any findings because that seems to be important and with the cows the cows have to be tended once one of the holders is in rain canal systems is actually built and the water is a lot of back into the system my understanding is that there's not a lot of maintenance it's so intensive in the general building of it that there's not a lot of maintenance that goes into the upkeep of them a lot of these windmills built in the 17th century are still around and functioning not necessarily to drain land because an electric pump is far more effective but they are still around and functioning so I guess what I'm asking is the time period of your population would those with those colder water systems be in existence and functioning as you say or were they still doing other things yeah no that was Bamster wasn't an area that could be inhabited until that Bamster holder was built in 1612 so that's what initially started people moving out into the province of northern Holland before that it literally was so it was essentially uninhabitable so finally on this mystery so one of the ideas we have is mysterious to us about the people I don't you said people would give you funny things like disco dancing and it's difficult trying to I'm I don't want to jump too far into actual dairy farming techniques and everything so I have all of my data together because I don't want to try and be driving results in any one direction well I was just thinking that it may not be dairy it may be something linked to the landscape so I started with water but it could be cutting meat yes exactly there's a lot of things besides just taking care of the cows and milking and carrying the wheelbarrows in with the milk to the barn to produce cheese there's also the water maintenance, the landscape exactly which is I haven't gone too far into looking at possible explanations yet because I don't want to drive my analyses into something like dairy explanations the P-Box for fuel is definitely would have some sort of strain physically on the body and would be something likely that all individuals participated in and it's just part of the household duties Julie so you mentioned that there are canals at that time so do they have to take a boat and roll their way to work every day it was very it remains a very small area so while aquatic transportation is definitely a part of daily life still is a lot of other ones I wouldn't think the water series still so I think it would be part of a movement again that's part of daily life but not necessarily something so strenuous that it would leave a mark okay I thought that might it's like a similar movement to the yeah they tend to do the two handed oh the two it's definitely something that hunting I don't know about the analytical industries on the needs when you're talking about I just want to clarify with that video what he's turning and extending did you say that what you were looking at indicated that you're seeing rotation that would enable extension but you thought are you also seeing an evidence of the extension I'm seeing evidence of extension as well as evidence of this rotation having asymmetry in the legs is rather unusual because normally just general locomotion moving around walking tends to obscure any sort of asymmetric differences so it's something that I was really surprised by but you're definitely getting the left leg moving out and the right leg moving in and then I have this non-metric trait which is also suggesting extension so as far as the emissial markers that I was looking at I only presented results of things that came up as statistically significant but definitely looking at just general mean ranks might looking at that might show more evidence for extension in another area have you looked at like statistics for candidness like left handedness or right handedness for the population specifically and that like something like she is breaking you use your dominant hand at the top which is actually interesting if you're using it left hand with that extension I didn't I didn't find any evidence for handedness but all kind of another set but yeah there's definitely it's especially hereditary right handedness so like it would be interesting if like there's like everything else came up as symmetric between the arms with the exception of the left showing this flexion and extension but everything else was and so part of looking doing the CT scans on both hemorrhoids is to see if that's supported by the actual cross-sectional genometry of the bone so I am hoping that the CT scans are going to provide a whole other level of interpretations yeah you were saying for the rotating the extension of the feet, that's men primarily yes yeah mature adult males so I'm thinking about other examples where you have kind of like labor migration among men in places like South Africa as it happens today is there any kind of evidence for like migration to menstrual centers in the Netherlands or like during men's surgery that you have other parts of your journey men or like young men go out and learn to craft sort of like factories yeah I don't know what you're talking about in Germany so I wonder if it's like if it's a not symmetrical thing if it's like someone working in a machine all day or something like that um with both were you saying it's a asymmetrical thing or is it I'm saying that each the individuals are coming up with it being her individual having both significant oh so it is a symmetrical yeah it's a symmetrical but you know like okay yeah yeah I mean normally you would expect that just walking or kind of so it's it's definitely left leg goes out right leg goes in and then next extension like some kind of industrial workers have this is um proto-industrial area um at least as far as time that the cemetery was being used um there were there wasn't inflexive German immigrants but that was more in the 17th century so kind of the initial population which unfortunately the preservation of the initial population was not very good um originally I had been hoping to compare and look at temporal changes between the initial uh dairy peasantry and the later population but unfortunately most of the individuals I was able to look at um are are from the later 19th century yeah um what do you know about gender activities related to uh dairy milking or in that period because to me like I grew up on a dairy farm and that position looks familiar to me as in like you would reach down with your right hand to like feel their bag and then you might milk them you know so that to me looks like I've seen that like picking up milk buckets and picking things up yeah like ladies and gentlemen I wonder like how like the actual milking because I've seen there also milking cows yeah and I also have seen milks you know as part of my research is watching um being traditional she's making uh dairy farm uh running on youtube and things which is really funny um and like I said I'm hesitant to get too far into it because I don't want to over interpret one of the main criticisms of activity pattern analyses um is over interpretation of the results so I really haven't delved into any of that I wanted to get through my CT data first and kind of give myself as neutral as possible of an approach with my the results of my data but yeah I believe in I plan on coming and talking to you you know for experiences so anything else did they know if the canals freeze in winter? they do some of them do yeah I definitely would rather call it they do freeze anything else