Reconstructing Mobility: Environmental, Behavioral, and Morphological Determinants

Assembles a collection of experts to provide a current account of different approaches (e.g., traditional, comparative and experimental) being applied to study mobility. Moreover, the book aims to stimulate new theoretical perspectives that adopt a holistic view of the interaction among intrinsic (i.e. skeletal) and extrinsic (i.e. environmental) factors that influence differential expression of mobility. Since the environment undoubtedly impacts mobility of a wide variety of animals, insights into human mobility, as a concept, can be improved by extending approaches to investigating comparable environmental influences on mobility in animals in general. The book teases apart environmental effects that transcend typical categories (e.g., coastal versus inland, mountainous versus level, arboreal versus terrestrial). Such an approach, when coupled with a new emphasis on mobility as types of activities rather than activity levels, offers a fresh, insightful perspective on mobility and how it might affect the musculoskeletal system.

Kristian Carlson received his PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington (USA) in 2002. Following this, he spent three years as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University, NY (USA), and one year in a postdoctoral position in the Anthropologisches Institute and Museum at the University of Zürich (Switzerland). He was an Assistant Professor of Anatomy at the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine (USA) for two years before joining the Institute for Human Evolution (IHE) at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) in 2009 as a Senior Researcher. His research interests include modelling form-function relationships in limb bones of primates, both extinct and extant. He utilizes a variety of approaches to tackle questions about the impact that behaviours have on skeletal form. These include experimental assessments of primate locomotion (i.e., kinematics and kinetics), focusing on transverse forces and the behaviours that accentuate them (e.g., turning); traditional comparative studies of ape limb bone cross-sectional properties, including leading analyses of habituated chimpanzee skeletons; and mouse model research aimed at testing the explicit predictions constructed from his work with primates. Ultimately the supported predictions from extant-based models are applicable to extinct primates, including hominins, in order to infer the nature of their behavioral repertoires, particularly the emphasis on arboreal locomotion in their evolutionary history.

Damiano Marchi received his PhD from the University of Pisa, Italy in 2004. From 2004 to 2010 he was Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke University, USA, teaching and conducting research on human and living primate locomotory postcranial functional morphology. From 2011 to 2012 he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Since 2012 he is Lecturer of Anthropology atthe University of Pisa, Italy and Honorary Research Fellow at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand. His research focuses on the study of functional morphology and biomechanics of extant human and non-human primates. The results obtained by the study of extant primates are used to create models that can be applied: 1. to extinct hominins to make inferences on their locomotor behavior; 2. to Late Pleistocene/Holocene human populations to make inferences on their mobility and subsistence economy.