It has been shown that long bone adapts during ontogeny on loading pattern related to intrinsic factors such as body mass but also to external factors such as physical activity. Thus, the loading history helps to solve several aspects of past human subsistence strategy, evolution, and human ecology as well as biology of past human populations. The goal of this project is to interconnect structural properties of long bone diaphyses (i.e., transversal cross-sectional geometry) with pattern of loading reconstructed using musculoskeletal modeling and simulation of movement. The first part of the project will be based on software modeling of magnitude and pattern of loading operating on long bone diaphyses. The second part will be concentrated on living and past human CT scan data of lower limbs to test models of the observed loading regime. Structural properties will be analyzed using implementation in ImageJ software. Musculoskeletal modeling will be based on OpenSim and NMSBuilder software. The obtained magnitude and pattern of loading/ stress operated on lower limb diaphyses will be interpreted based on bioarchaeological models of loading history of past human populations.

Five relevant publications of the research group: 

Sládek, V., Hora, M., Véle, D., Rocek, T., 2022. Bow and muscles: Observed muscle activity in archers and potential implications for habitual activity reconstruction. J. Archaeol. Sci. 144, 105638.

Hora, M., Pontzer, H., Struška, M., Entin, P., Sládek, V., 2022. Comparing walking and running in persistence hunting. J. Hum. Evol. 172, 103247.

Sladek, V., Čerevková, S., Kaiser, J., Zikmund, T., 2019. Error in the estimation of periosteal and endoosteal contours from microCT scans for non-adult tibiae and humeri. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 170, 275–294.

Sládek, V., Berner, M., Makajevova, E., Velemínský, P., Hora, M., Ruff, C.B., 2018. Central Europe. In: Ruff, C.B. (Ed.), Skeletal variation and adaptation in Europeans: Upper Paleolithic to the Twentieth Century. Wiley-Blackwell, New York, pp. 315-354.

Hora, M., Soumar, L., Pontzer, H., Sládek, V., 2017. Body size and lower limb posture during walking in humans. PLoS One 12, e0172112.

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