Biomechanical Analyses of Archaeological Human Skeletons

Robustness of the whole Jomon femur shaft assessed by cross-sectional geometry

“…Greater geometrical robustness will compensate for the weakening of bone substance along with aging (Ruff, 1992;Pearson and Lieberman, 2004). Since the expansion of the shaft will be a physiological adaptation during the life history of an individual, it is not easy to compare directly the ancient bones with recent ones only from the perspective of chronological age.…”

“…The analysis was conducted on ancient bone to which mechanical experiments were difficult to apply (Endo and Kimura, 1970). Previous reports were concerned mainly with one or two sections of the ancient long bones (Lovejoy and Trinkaus, 1980;Kimura and Takahashi, 1982, 1984, 1992Ruff et al, 1984Ruff et al, , 1993Brock and Ruff, 1988;Trinkaus et al, 1994Trinkaus et al, , 1998Ruff, 1995Ruff, , 1999Trinkaus and Ruff, 1996;Trinkaus, 1997Stock and Pfeiffer, 2001;Holt, 2003). The robustness of the ancient femur along the whole shaft has been reported in only a few papers, such as on the Pecos (Ruff and Hayes, 1983a, b), Neanderthal (Trinkaus and Ruff, 1989), and Minatogawa fossils (Kimura and Takahashi, 1992).…”

Inner structural organization of the distal humerus in Paranthropus and Homo

“…Variations in the amount of cortical bone tissue (commonly measured by %CA) reflect site-specific differences in the bone's ability to buffer pure axial compression and tension, i.e. differential structural reinforcements of the diaphysis (Ruff, 2008;Trinkaus and Ruff, 2012). Accordingly, even if we cannot discard here the possible influence on the endostructural bony arrangement of sex-related (or even of age-related) differences, nor that of a different handedness (for a recent discussion on hand specialization in early Homo, see Frayer et al, 2016; for its impact on humeral cross-sectional shape variation and cortical bone thickness distribution, see Lague, 2015 andVolpato et al, 2012, respectively), we anyhow assume that the two distinct conditions ("patterns") revealed by the South African and the Ethiopian specimens, whatever their taxonomic status, are primarily functionally-related and have biomechanical significance in terms of distal humeral strength.…”

“…htm), at virtual slice level a we assessed the following cross-sectional geometric parameters (CSG) reflecting bone shaft morphological and rigidity characteristics: percent of cortical area (%CA), an estimate of resistance to compressive and tensile axial loading; the ratios second (I x /I y ) and principal (I max /I min ) moments of area, with the former ratio being a better estimate of rigidity about AP and ML anatomical planes and the latter shape ratio being the best reflection of true cross-sectional shape (Carlson, 2014;Ruff, 2002Ruff, , 2008Trinkaus and Ruff, 2012).…”

Health at the time of Native-European contact in Southern Patagonia: First steps, results, and prospects

“…Some structural characteristics of bones, principally BMD and cortical area index, are good indicators of nutritional stress (Larsen 1997, Ruff 2000, Ruff & Larsen 2001. To evaluate architectonical bone alterations, we are doing bone photon-densitometry, whose preliminary results have shown compatible values with osteopenia or osteoporosis in all skeletons.…”