Delineation of a PFOA Plume and Assessment of Data Gaps in its Conceptual Model Using PlumeSeeker™.

An accurate conceptual site model (CSM) and plume-delineation at contamination sites are pre-requisites for successful remediation and for satisfying regulators and stakeholders. PlumeSeeker™ is well-suited for assessing data gaps in CSMs by using available site data and for identifying the optimal number and locations of sampling locations to delineate contaminant plumes. It is an enhancement of a university research code for plume delineation using geostatistical and stochastic modeling integrated with the groundwater modeling software MODFLOW-SURFACT™. PlumeSeeker™ increases the overall confidence in the location of the plume boundary through a variance-reduction approach that selects existing- or new monitoring wells for sampling based on minimizing the uncertainty in plume boundary and on new field information. Applicable at sites with or without existing monitoring wells, PlumeSeeker™ is particularly powerful for optimally allocating project resources (labor, well installation, and laboratory costs) between existing wells and sampling at new locations. An application of PlumeSeeker™ at Lakehurst, the naval component of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, demonstrates how the cost of delineating the migration pathway of a perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) plume can be minimized by requiring only 9 new sampling locations in addition to samples from 2 existing wells for achieving a 70% reduction in plume uncertainty. In addition, the use of available site data in three different scenarios identified CSM data-gaps in the source area and in the interaction between Manapaqua Branch and groundwater, where the observed high concentration in this area could have resulted from a combination of groundwater migration and induced infiltration.

Food and social complexity at Çayönü Tepesi, southeastern Anatolia: Stable isotope evidence of differentiation in diet according to burial practice and sex in the early Neolithic.

The identification of early social complexity and differentiation in early village societies has been approached in the past most notably through the evaluation of rituals and architectural layouts. Such studies could be complemented by an approach that provides data about everyday behaviours of individuals. We took 540 human and animal bone samples for stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis from the Neolithic site of Çayönü Tepesi in southeastern Anatolia. The inhabitants at this site chose to bury their dead in two different ways at different times during its occupation: beneath the floors of their houses, but also inside a public mortuary building known as the Skull Building. This variation provides an opportunity using isotope methods to test whether there was evidence for structuring of daily activities (diet in this case) that might serve to reinforce this change in burial practice. We show that when the inhabitants of Çayönü Tepesi changed their architecture and operated different burial practices in conjunction, this coincided with other aspects of behaviour including socially-constituted food consumption practices, which served to reinforce social identities.

Auditory exostoses among the prepottery neolithic inhabitants of Çayönü and Asikli, Anatolia; its relation to aquatic activities.

Most researchers argue that there is general agreement on the role of environmental and behavioral factors on the onset of the auditory exostoses. Accordingly, it can be considered an aquatic activity marker in bioarchaeological studies. In this paper, the prevalence of external auditory exostoses was examined between two prepottery Neolithic communities from Asikli Hüyük and Çayönü Tepesi in Anatolia. Both the etiology of the ear exostoses and the causative interactions between aquatic activities and the occurrence of this trait were discussed. Of 97 adult skulls (59 males, 38 females) from the Çayönü sample only 17 subjects (15 males and 2 females) showed this bony outgrowth with a prevalence of 17.52%. There is a strong male bias in lesion frequency. Among the 28 adult skulls that were examined from Asikli (11 males, 17 females), only one young male (3.57%) was affected with ear exostoses. This bony lesion is completely lacking in subadults (<15 years) of both skeletal samples.