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Modern humans differ from wild great apes in gestation length, weaning age, interbirth interval, sexual maturity, and longevity, but evolutionary anthropologists do not know when these distinctive life-history conditions evolved. Dental tissues contain faithful records of birth and incremental growth, and scholars suggest that molar eruption age, tooth wear, growth disturbances, tooth chemistry, and/or tooth calcification may provide insight into the evolution of human life history. However, recent comparative approaches and empirical evidence demonstrate that caution is warranted when inferring hominin weaning ages or interbirth intervals from first molar eruption, tooth wear, or growth disturbances. Fine-scaled studies of tooth chemistry provide direct evidence of weaning. Early hominin tooth calcification is more ape-like than human-like, and fully modern patterns appear only after Neanderthals and Homo sapiens diverged, concurrent with changes in cranial and postcranial development. Additional studies are needed to relate these novel calcification patterns to specific changes in life-history variables.

Abstract
This article discusses the two ends of the life-history process: the reasons for its undertaking and the research assumptions these engender, and the impact of the published account on readers. In doing so, I draw on my own experience in the research and writing of Nan: The Life of an Irish Travelling woman (Gmelch, 1986/1991) and upon the responses of Traveller and non-Traveller readers to this life history. (Ethnographic research; life-history interviewing, editing, and narra-tive construction; literary criticism)

The study of lives as wholes has not yet been well developed in the social sciences, though a good many anthropologists, psychologists, political scientists, and sociologists have written about its importance. These authors agree that a main shortcoming in such study is the lack of suitable concepts to make up a coherent frame of reference. Three procedural suggestions, the ideas of adaptation, dimension, and turning, may be useful for the beginnings of such a frame. These suggestions are intended as guidelines for the collection and analysis of data. Their applicability is illustrated in the life history of Gandhi, a man whose life is worth studying for a number of reasons.

Aging occurs in all sexually reproducing organisms. That is, physical degradation over time occurs from conception until death. While the life span of a species is often viewed as a benchmark of aging, the pace and intensity of physical degradation over time varies owing to environmental influences, genetics, allocation of energetic investment, and phylogenetic history. Significant variation in aging within mammals, primates, and great apes, including humans, is therefore common across species. The evolution of aging in the hominin lineage is poorly known; however, clues can be derived from the fossil record. Ongoing advances continue to shed light on the interactions between life-history variables such as reproductive effort and aging. This review presents our current understanding of the evolution of aging in humans, drawing on population variation, comparative research, trade-offs, and sex differences, as well as tissue-specific patterns of physical degradation. Implications for contemporary health challenges and the future of human evolutionary anthropology research are also discussed.

Utilizing the life history methodology, this paper will examine the reminiscent memories of parenting patterns and perceived parent-child interaction experienced by 18 adult women over 63 years of age, with the aim of exploring the linkage of these early experiences to the present day relationships these women have with their adult children. (Methodology: Life history)

A detailed biographical sketch of Ralph W. Spitzer (b. 1918), a graduate student of Linus Pauling's and promising academic who joined the Oregon State College chemistry department in 1946. Promoted to Assistant Professor in 1947, Spitzer was nonetheless fired from the OSC faculty in 1949 by President August L. Strand, almost certainly because of progressive political views espoused by Spitzer and his wife Teresa. Spitzer eventually matriculated to Canada where he earned an M.D. specializing in chemical pathology and co-founded a successful diagnostic laboratory firm, C.J. Coady Associates. The paper is based upon a series of oral history interviews conducted by the author with Ralph Spitzer, his daughter Eloise Spitzer, and his wife Hisako Kurotaki.

The British tradition of political life history has six conventions: 'tombstone' biography, separation of public and private lives, life without theory, objective evidence and facts, character and storytelling. I describe each in turn and review the main debates in the tradition before turning to the swingeing critique by 'the interpretive turn'. Postmodernism deconstructed grand narratives by pronouncing the death of the subject and the death of the author. I outline an interpretive approach that reclaims life history by focusing on the idea of 'situated agency': that is, on the webs of significance that people spin for themselves against the backcloth of their inherited beliefs and practices. I explore, with examples, the implications of this approach for writing life history, stressing the different uses for biography open to political scientists. I end with some brief thoughts on why the British tradition of political life history has proved resistant to change. Adapted from the source document.