Population is the main driver of war group size and conflict casualties.

The proportions of individuals involved in intergroup coalitional conflict, measured by war group size (W), conflict casualties (C), and overall group conflict deaths (G), have declined with respect to growing populations, implying that states are less violent than small-scale societies. We argue that these trends are better explained by scaling laws shared by both past and contemporary societies regardless of social organization, where group population (P) directly determines W and indirectly determines C and G. W is shown to be a power law function of P with scaling exponent X [demographic conflict investment (DCI)]. C is shown to be a power law function of W with scaling exponent Y [conflict lethality (CL)]. G is shown to be a power law function of P with scaling exponent Z [group conflict mortality (GCM)]. Results show that, while W/P and G/P decrease as expected with increasing P, C/W increases with growing W. Small-scale societies show higher but more variance in DCI and CL than contemporary states. We find no significant differences in DCI or CL between small-scale societies and contemporary states undergoing drafts or conflict, after accounting for variance and scale. We calculate relative measures of DCI and CL applicable to all societies that can be tracked over time for one or multiple actors. In light of the recent global emergence of populist, nationalist, and sectarian violence, our comparison-focused approach to DCI and CL will enable better models and analysis of the landscapes of violence in the 21st century.

Bioarchaeology in the ancient Near East: Challenges and future directions for the southern Levant.

The synthesis of biological anthropology, archaeology, and social theory provides a bioarchaeological model to reconstruct nuanced aspects of demography, diet, disease, death, daily activities, and biodistance, even in the absence of discrete burials. Numerous skeletal assemblages in the southern Levant are composed of mixed and fragmented bones resulting from generational use of cemeteries, mass burial, and additional communal burial practices. Others become commingled due to taphonomic processes such as flooding, geological events, or human mediated mechanisms like looting, improper excavation, and poor curation. Such collections require one to ask broader questions of human adaptability, exercise a holistic approach, use broad demographic categories, and remain cognizant of the limitations posed by fragmentation. Expanded research questions and ethical considerations, the use of centralized databases and understudied collections, as well as the application of social media, citizen science, and crowd sourcing provide new tools for bioarchaeological analyses of the many commingled ancient Near Eastern collections in the southern Levant.

Continuity or conquest? A multi-isotope approach to investigating identity in the Early Iron Age of the Southern Levant.

OBJECTIVES: Across the Mediterranean and Near East, the transition from the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1550-1200 BC) to the Early Iron Age (ca. 1200-900 BC) was accompanied by profound cultural change. While this transformation was initially attributed to invasion or conquest, more recent, nuanced interpretations of archaeological and biological data now emphasize the decline of palatial economies, a shift away from centralized political authority, and internal social restructuring amidst rapid climate change in lieu of "collapse." Correspondingly, the hypothesis that Early Iron Age populations in Palestine represent the same ethnic group whose culture nevertheless underwent considerable change by actively adapting to internal and external forces was tested using biogeochemical data from individuals interred within an Early Iron Age tomb at the site of Tell Dothan. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Human dental enamel from molars (n = 43) recovered from Tomb I at Tell Dothan was analyzed for radiogenic strontium isotope ratios and stable oxygen and carbon (VPDB) isotope values. RESULTS: Strontium (mean = 0.70816 ± 0.00005, 1σ) isotope ratios, as well as oxygen (mean = -2.3 ± 0.7‰, 1σ) and carbon (mean = -11.9 ± 0.5‰, 1σ) isotope values, all display little variability. DISCUSSION: The absence of non-locals at Tell Dothan indicates that population replacement does not adequately explain the sociopolitical changes observed in the archaeological record. Further, homogeneity among isotope values is indicative of a community that was not highly mobile, suggesting that decentralization and a corresponding transition to a more mobile lifestyle may not accurately reflect the adaptive strategies of all human groups during this period as a mechanism to cope with social and environmental change.

Monks on the move: Evaluating pilgrimage to Byzantine St. Stephen's monastery using strontium isotopes.

OBJECTIVES: Written and archaeological evidence indicates that migration, in the form of pilgrimage to Byzantine Palestine, was a major social phenomenon between the 5th and 7th centuries CE. Monasteries saw record growth at this time as pilgrims chose to stay in the region and take up religious life. A major influx of people to the region, with a corresponding growth in monastic vocations that led travelers to stay in the area, is not in question; however, the distant origins of pilgrims reflected in surviving texts may be an artifact of preservation, biased towards an elite minority. The Byzantine monastery of St. Stephen's provides an opportunity to study this question from a bioarchaeological perspective, given the excellent preservation of the human skeletal assemblage, a wealth of written works about the community as well as daily life in Byzantine Palestine, and a rich archaeological record for the site and region. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An analysis of radiogenic strontium isotope values from the third molars of 22 individuals recovered from the St. Stephen's crypt complex was conducted to test whether those interred at the monastery were of local origin. RESULTS: Of those examined ( x¯= 0.7084 ± 0.0007, 1σ), 8 out of 22 (36%) exhibited (87) Sr/(86) Sr ratios that fell outside of local ranges. DISCUSSION: These results confirmed the sizeable presence of nonlocals at St. Stephen's Monastery. While most of these migrants likely traveled to Jerusalem from different areas of the Levant as pilgrims, others may have hailed from further afield, including Europe.

Bioarchaeological analysis of cultural transition in the southern Levant using dental nonmetric traits.

To many Near Eastern archaeologists, the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age transition in the southern Levant indicates the emergence of a new ethnicity. The question remains, however, whether changes in the material culture are the result of an invasion of foreigners, or instead arose from shifting cultural and technical practices by indigenous peoples. This study utilized dental morphological traits to assess phenetic relationships between the Late Bronze Age site of Dothan (1500-1100 BC) and the Iron Age II site of Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir, 701 BC). Information on 30 dental crown and root traits was collected for 4,412 teeth, representing 392 individuals from Lachish and a minimum of 121 individuals from Dothan, using the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System. Seventeen traits from Dothan and Lachish were compared with dentitions from a Byzantine Jerusalem monastery, Iron Age Italy, a Natufian group (early agrarians from the Levant), and a Middle Kingdom Egyptian site using C.A.B. Smith's mean measure of divergence statistic. The findings suggest that there are more similarities between Dothan and Lachish than either of them and other sites. This analysis indicates that the material culture changes were not the result of a foreign invasion. Rather, the Iron Age people of the southern Levant were related to their Bronze Age predecessors.