In colonial Connecticut between 1670 and 1719, women participated in one of every six civil cases, the vast majority of which were debtrelated. Women's participation dropped to one in ten cases after 1719, and to one in twenty by the 1770's. however, as Cornelia Hughes Dayton notes in Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789, these statistics are somewhat deceptive: in fact, both the absolute numbers and the percentage of adult women participating in civil cases grew steadily throughout the eighteenth century, but the legal activity of men also increased dramatically, and at a much faster rate. Single, married, and widowed women continued to pursue their own and their husbands' debtors through legal action much as they had done in the previous century, but despite this continuity, their place in the legal system shifted dramatically. Men's commercial interests and credit networks became increasingly far-flung, owing in part to the ability of creditors to buy and sell promissory notes (legal promises to pay debts). At the same time, women's networks of credit and debt remained primarily local and personal. Dayton contends that, although still performing crucial economic services in their communities—services that contributed to the commercialization of the colonial economy—women remained for the most part outside the new economic and legal culture of the eighteenth century.

Line	Micro-wear patterns found on the teeth of long-
	extinct specimens of the primate species
	australopithecine may provide evidence about their
	diets. For example, on the basis of tooth micro-wear
(5)	patterns, Walker dismisses Jolly’s hypothesis that
	australopithecines ate hard seeds. He also disputes
	Szalay’s suggestion that the heavy enamel of
	australopithecine teeth is an adaptation to bone
	crunching, since both seed cracking and bone
(10)	crunching produce distinctive micro-wear
	characteristics on teeth. His conclusion that
	australopithecines were frugivores (fruit eaters) is
	based upon his observation that the tooth micro-
	wear characteristics of east African
(15)	australopithecine specimens are indistinguishable
	from those of chimpanzees and orangutans, which
	are commonly assumed to be frugivorous primates.
	However, research on the diets of
	contemporary primates suggests that micro-wear
(20)	studies may have limited utility in determining the
	foods that are actually eaten. For example, insect
	eating, which can cause distinct micro-wear
	patterns, would not cause much tooth abrasion in
	modern baboons, who eat only soft-bodied insects
(25)	rather than hard-bodied insects. In addition, the
	diets of current omnivorous primates vary
	considerably depending on the environments that
	different groups within a primate species inhabit; if
	australopithecines were omnivores too, we might
(30)	expect to find considerable population variation in
	their tooth micro-wear patterns. Thus, Walker’s
	description of possible australopithecine diets may
	need to be expanded to include a much more
	diverse diet.