Given the well-documented fact that human body proportions covary with climate (presumably due to the action of selection), one would expect that the Ipiutak and Tigara Inuit samples from Point Hope, Alaska, would be characterized by an extremely cold-adapted body shape. Comparison of the Point Hope Inuit samples to a large (n > 900) sample of European and European-derived, African and African-derived, and Native American skeletons (including Koniag Inuit from Kodiak Island, Alaska) confirms that the Point Hope Inuit evince a cold-adapted body form, but analyses also reveal some unexpected results. For example, one might suspect that the Point Hope samples would show a more cold-adapted body form than the Koniag, given their more extreme environment, but this is not the case. Additionally, univariate analyses seldom show the Inuit samples to be more cold-adapted in body shape than Europeans, and multivariate cluster analyses that include a myriad of body shape variables such as femoral head diameter, bi-iliac breadth, and limb segment lengths fail to effectively separate the Inuit samples from Europeans. In fact, in terms of body shape, the European and the Inuit samples tend to be cold-adapted and tend to be separated in multivariate space from the more tropically adapted Africans, especially those groups from south of the Sahara.

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The work effort of prehistoric males relative to females has long been of interest to anthropologists, particularly in foraging versus farming groups. This knowledge requires a clear understanding of the sexual division of labor, or the dichotomy in subsistence roles allocated to males and females. Such research in the Prehispanic American Southwest has been limited. As previous work has shown that bone is the osseous template that reflects in vivo activity levels, it is possible to assess gender-based differences in past work effort using analyses of geometric properties of bone and calculations of bilateral asymmetry. Our research comparatively analyzed upper limb work effort by sex and subsistence in two skeletal samples from disparate economic groups, foragers and farmers, both from similar desert environments. The residentially mobile foragers are from the Lower Pecos region of southwest Texas and the farmers are from the aggregated pueblo of Pottery Mound in south central New Mexico. Humeri from 27 adult foragers (n = 11 males; n = 17 females) and 65 adult farmers (n = 38 males; n = 27 females) were selected for study. All humeri were radiographed and/or scanned and digitized. Statistical comparisons using two-way ANOVAs indicate that female farmers exhibited the greatest humeral strength and the least asymmetry. Relative to all other groups examined, female farmers engaged in higher levels of upper limb work effort implying a substantial economic contribution to their agricultural economy.

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