The Department of Anthropology at Appalachian State University invites applications for a nine month, full time, non-tenure track appointment in Biological Anthropology at the rank of Adjunct Assistant Professor. The position will begin in August 2009 and carries full benefits. PhD in anthropology preferred, but ABD will be considered. Teaching experience is required. Specialization is open, but preference will be given to candidates whose research has a strong evolutionary and/or biocultural focus. The successful applicant will teach in the University’s new General Education program and develop courses in his/her specialty for the department’s new degree concentration in Biological Anthropology (http://www.appalachianbioanth.org).

Applicants must provide (1) a letter of application, which includes research and teaching statements; (2) a CV with names, addresses, and phone numbers of three references; (3) teaching evaluations; and (4) a recent writing sample. Applications should be sent to Dr. Gregory Reck, Chair, Department of Anthropology, Boone, North Carolina, 28608 or electronically to reckgg@appstate.edu. Review of applications will begin on November 15, 2008 and continue until the position is filled.

Appalachian State University is one of the 16 members of the University of North Carolina system, located near the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Department of Anthropology has approximately 150 majors and campus enrollment is 16,000. ASU is nationally recognized and ranked 7th in the Southeast for Master’s level universities. Appalachian State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. The university has a strong commitment to the principles of diversity and inclusion, and to maintaining working and learning environments that are free of all forms of discrimination. Individuals with disabilities may request accommodations in the application process by contacting Dr. Gregory Reck. Documentation of identity and employability of the applicant will be required before the hiring process can be finalized. The university website is http://www.appstate.edu.

Nature magazine has a site that allows authors to post papers that are currently under review, posters and presentations from meetings, etc. This is an interesting site that allows the reader to access current research, discuss or comment on the papers, and potentially to collaborate with one another. http://precedings.nature.com/

Thursday night at 8pm, Professor Ken Miller of Brown University will give a talk entitled “Is Evolution ‘Only a Theory’?: Charles Darwin and the Design of Life.” His talk will be in Powers Hall at the Broyhill Inn on the campus of Appalachian State University. For more information about the speaker series and related events, please see http://universityforum.appstate.edu/index.php.

John R. Lukacs Current Anthropology Vol. 49 (5):901-914 (Oct. 2008)

Some of my students may remember that Dr. John Lukacs presented this work at ASU in a guest lecture on September 22, 2008. The abstract summarizes the gist of this paper:

The transition from foraging to farming is associated with a
widespread and well-documented decline in oral health,
wherein women experience a more rapid and dramatic decline
than men. Historically, anthropologists have attributed this
difference to behavioral factors such as sexual division of labor
and gender-based dietary preferences. However, the clinical
and epidemiological literature on caries prevalence reveals a
ubiquitous pattern of worse oral heath among women than
men. Research on cariogenesis shows that women’s higher
caries rates are influenced by changes in female sex hormones,
the biochemical composition and flow rate of saliva, and food
cravings and aversions during pregnancy. Significantly, the
adoption of agriculture is associated with increased sedentism
and fertility. I argue that the impact of dietary change on
women’s oral health was intensified by the increased demands
on women’s reproductive systems, including the increase in
fertility, that accompanied the rise of agriculture and that
these factors contribute to the observed gender differential in
dental caries.

Of course, my comments should be prefaced with a statement that Dr. Lukacs was my Ph.D. advisor, our research interests are similar, and so I am not exactly an impartial observer. That being said, this paper is an important contribution to bioarchaeology because it provides a new set of proximate causes for sex differences in caries rates. Dr. Lukacs reviews cross-cultural evidence for sex differences in caries rates for contemporary and paleo-populations. His research demonstrates that in agricultural societies, female caries rates are significantly higher than males throughout their life history. He documents an association between agriculture and increase in both caries and fertility rates and suggests a causal relationship. To support this, he reviews aspects of female physiology related to oral health. Female life history and hormonal variation can lead to increased susceptibility to caries, which is exacerbated during the reproductive cycle. Ultimately, if the Neolithic transition led to an increase in fertility, Lukacs argues that is partially responsible for accentuated sex differences in caries rates.

It seems to me, this paper’s significance for bioarchaeology is analogous to the impact of the Osteological Paradox (Wood et al., 1992). It confirms the primacy of the demographic profile in the interpretation of skeletal assemblages. This time, it is fertility (rather than mortality) shaping morbidity. This paper supports the particular importance of demographic variables related to fertility (McCaa, 1998, 2002). Fertility is preeminent in shaping the demographic profile. It outweighs mortality in its contribution to the age structure of a population as it is concentrated at a single moment in the age pyramid, while mortality is diffuse. It appears in this paper as though fertility’s impact on morbidity is exactly opposite. While mortality is a force focused at a moment in the life of an individual, fertility (and related issues of pubescence and reproduction) is spread across the female lifespan- leading to increased caries rates in this case. This paper provides a lot to think about for sure…