Anna J. Osterholtz - Böcker

Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains

​Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains:Working Toward Improved Theory, Method, and Data brings together research that provides innovative methodologies for the analysis of commingled human remains. It has temporal and spatial breadth, with case studies coming from pre-state to historic periods, as well as from both the New and Old World. Highlights of this volume include: standardizes methods and presents best practices in the field using a case study approach demonstrates how data gathered from commingled human remains can be incorporated into the overall interpretation of a site explores best way to formulate population size, using commingled remains Field archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, academic anthropologists, forensic anthropologists, zoo archaeologists, and students of anthropology and archaeology will find this to be an invaluable resource.

In 2002, Neil Whitehead published Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death, in which he applied the concept of poetics to the study of violence and observed the power of violence in the creation and expression of identity and social relationships. The Poetics of Processing applies Whitehead’s theory on violence to mortuary and skeletal assemblages in the Andes, Mexico, the US Southwest, Jordan, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Turkey, examining the complex cultural meanings of the manipulation of remains after death.  The contributors interpret postmortem treatment of the physical body through a poetics lens, examining body processing as a mechanism for the re-creation of cosmological events and processing’s role in the creation of social memory. They analyze methods of processing and the ways in which the living use the physical body to stratify society and gain power, as evidenced in rituals of body preparation and burial around the world, objects buried with the dead and the hierarchies of tomb occupancy, the dissection of cadavers by medical students, the appropriation of living spaces once occupied by the dead, and the varying treatments of the remains of social outsiders, prisoners of war, and executed persons.  The Poetics of Processing combines social theory and bioarchaeology to examine how the living manipulate the bodies of the dead for social purposes. These case studies—ranging from prehistoric to historic and modern and from around the globe—explore this complex material relationship that does not cease with physical death. This volume will be of interest to mortuary archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, and cultural anthropologists.  Contributors:Dil Singh Basanti, Roselyn Campbell, Carlina de la Cova, Eric Haanstad, Scott Haddow, Christina Hodge, Christopher Knusel, Kristin Kuckelman, Clark Spencer Larsen, Debra Martin, Kenneth Nystrom, Adrianne Offenbecker, Megan Perry, Marin Pilloud, Beth K. Scaffidi, Mehmet Somel, Kyle D. Waller

This volume explores violence in bioarchaeological case studies from various cultures, geographic regions, and time periods throughout the Eastern Hemisphere through the lens of Neil Whitehead's concept of poetics. It emphasizes the role and power of performance and ritual in violent acts, and how different types of violence are used within societies. Whitehead’s poetics of violence model has primarily been applied to Western Hemisphere assemblages and indigenous groups, and this is the first volume dedicated to the application of this theoretical model to Europe, Asia, and Africa.Developed from a symposium organized at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists annual meeting in 2018, this volume keeps a tight focus on the direct link between physical evidence for violence in human remains and the contextualized interpretations of how that violence may have functioned within an individual’s society. This type of theoretical interpretation, which treats violence as ameaningful act firmly embedded within its cultural context, rather than as an aberration, is rarely applied to archaeological assemblages and human remains from the Eastern Hemisphere. This is the first volume to offer direct physical evidence for how violence was enacted and understood within different societies in the past. This volume aims to make these rigorous theoretical studies available to students and professionals in archaeology, anthropology, and bioarchaeology, and to provide a model for other researchers to interpret evidence of violence in human remains from archaeological contexts.

This volume explores violence in bioarchaeological case studies from various cultures, geographic regions, and time periods throughout the Eastern Hemisphere through the lens of Neil Whitehead's concept of poetics. It emphasizes the role and power of performance and ritual in violent acts, and how different types of violence are used within societies. Whitehead’s poetics of violence model has primarily been applied to Western Hemisphere assemblages and indigenous groups, and this is the first volume dedicated to the application of this theoretical model to Europe, Asia, and Africa.Developed from a symposium organized at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists annual meeting in 2018, this volume keeps a tight focus on the direct link between physical evidence for violence in human remains and the contextualized interpretations of how that violence may have functioned within an individual’s society. This type of theoretical interpretation, which treats violence as ameaningful act firmly embedded within its cultural context, rather than as an aberration, is rarely applied to archaeological assemblages and human remains from the Eastern Hemisphere. This is the first volume to offer direct physical evidence for how violence was enacted and understood within different societies in the past. This volume aims to make these rigorous theoretical studies available to students and professionals in archaeology, anthropology, and bioarchaeology, and to provide a model for other researchers to interpret evidence of violence in human remains from archaeological contexts.

This volume centers on the application of social theory to commingled remains with special focus on the cultural processes that create the assemblages as a way to better understand issues of meaning, social structure and interaction, and lived experience in the past. The importance of the application of theoretical frameworks to bioarchaeology in general has been recognized, but commingled and fragmentary assemblages require an increased theoretical focus. Too often these assemblages are still relegated to appendices; they are analytical puzzles that need the interpretive power offered by social theory.Theoretical Approaches to Analysis and Interpretation of Commingled Human Remains provides case studies that illustrate how an appropriate theoretical model can be used with commingled and fragmentary remains to add to overall site and population level interpretations of past and present peoples. Specifically, the contributions show a blending and melding of different social theories, highlighting the broad interpretive power of social theory. Contributors are drawn from both the Old and New World. Temporally, time periods from the Neolithic to historic periods are present, further widening the audience for the volume.