Dental enamel hypoplasia (DEH), as an indicator of nonspecific stress during development, provides an assessment of the relative morbidity of past human populations. An investigation of 669 Neandertal dental crowns yielded an overall DEH frequency of 36.0% by tooth (41.9% for permanent teeth; 3.9% for deciduous teeth) and about 75% by individual. These incidences place the Neandertals at the top of recent human ranges of variation in DEH frequencies, indicating high levels of stress during development. The paucity of deciduous tooth DEH and M1 DEH, combined with generally increasing levels of DEH through later calcifying teeth, suggests that the stress was primarily nutritional, beginning at weaning and continuing through adolescence. This supports paleontological and archeological interpretations implying significantly lower effectiveness for Neandertal foraging compared to that of modern humans.

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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The disarticulated and commingled human remains of at least 13 individuals were recovered from an archaeological site during salvage operations for a natural gas pipeline project near Ram Mesa in northwestern New Mexico. The condition of the remains and the nature of their interment suggested that unusual circumstances surrounded their deposition. The skeletal remains exhibited peri‐mortem modification in the form of breaking, cutting and burning. This late Pueblo II (ca ad 900–1100) assemblage shares similarities with other mass inhumations from the American Southwest described as cannibalized. Interpretations of cannibalism have long overshadowed consideration of other reasonable alternatives. We suggest that the ritualized violence associated with the persecution and execution of witches offers a more parsimonious explanation for the bone damage patterns seen in this modified assemblage. Witchcraft is an integral part of Puebloan and Athabascan religious belief and the well documented accounts in the Southwestern literature are compelling. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.