Sophisticated metrological systems were common in the European Bronze Age and mass-regulation has been argued for various classes of object, including gold artefacts. A recent study published in Antiquity used Cosine Quantogram Analysis to demonstrate mass-regulation in a small sample of gold objects from Britain, Ireland and France. Since then, substantial quantities of new data from British Bronze Age gold objects have been collated. Here, the author presents the results of Cosine Quantogram Analysis on nearly 1000 such objects—the largest sample analysed to date. The results demonstrate that, even though some regularities can be discerned, mass-regulation is no longer a tenable interpretation of gold objects from Bronze Age Britain.

Integrative explanations of why obesity is more prevalent in some sectors of the human population than others are lacking. Here, we outline and evaluate one candidate explanation, the insurance hypothesis (IH). The IH is rooted in adaptive evolutionary thinking: The function of storing fat is to provide a buffer against shortfall in the food supply. Thus, individuals should store more fat when they receive cues that access to food is uncertain. Applied to humans, this implies that an important proximate driver of obesity should be food insecurity rather than food abundance per se. We integrate several distinct lines of theory and evidence that bear on this hypothesis. We present a theoretical model that shows it is optimal to store more fat when food access is uncertain, and we review the experimental literature from non-human animals showing that fat reserves increase when access to food is restricted. We provide a meta-analysis of 125 epidemiological studies of the association between perceived food insecurity and high body weight in humans. There is a robust positive association, but it is restricted to adult women in high-income countries. We explore why this could be in light of the IH and our theoretical model. We conclude that although the IH alone cannot explain the distribution of obesity in the human population, it may represent a very important component of a pluralistic explanation. We also discuss insights it may offer into the developmental origins of obesity, dieting-induced weight gain, and anorexia nervosa.

Human food intake is driven by necessity, but modern industrialized societies are characterized by food surfeit and an increasingly ‘obesogenic’ environment. This environment tends to discourage energy expenditure and to facilitate energy intake. The amount eaten in any given eating episode depends less on internal need state and more on environmental contextual factors such as the availability of highly-palatable energy-dense foods. In addition, the process of satiation can easily be disrupted by the introduction within a meal of different foods (variety effect), the presence of others (social context) and competing tasks (distraction). Properties of ingestants such as alcohol promote food intake and characteristics of individuals make them more or less susceptible to situational cues to overeat. In the present review the role of each of these environmental factors in promoting overconsumption are considered and the extent to which these factors might contribute to long-term weight regulation is discussed.

The prevalence of obesity is reaching epidemic proportions in many industrialized countries. There is growing evidence that, even if the trigger of this epidemic is found in changes in the environment, genes are interacting with the environment to cause weight gain. Studies of twins reared apart indicate that approximately two-thirds of the variability in BMI is attributed to genetic factors. From prospective studies in Pima Indians we can ascribe 12 % of the variability in BMI to metabolic rate, 5 % to fat oxidation, and another probable 10 % to the level of spontaneous physical activity. These data indicate that at least 40 % of the variability in BMI is related to genetic factors involved in the regulation of food intake and/or volitional activity. This indicates that the most likely successful therapy for obesity may target pathways of the regulation of food intake. Similarly, an environment favouring engagement in physical activity should be promoted.