Francisca Alves Cardoso – författare

Exploring behaviour through bones has always been a fascinating topic to those that study human remains. Human bodies record and store vast amounts of information about the way we move, where we live, and our experiences of health and socioeconomic circumstances. We see it every day, and experience it, but when it comes to past populations, understanding behaviour is largely mediated by our ability to read it in bones. Behaviour in Our Bones: How Human Behaviour Influences Skeletal Morphology examines how human physical and cultural actions and interactions can be read through careful analyses of skeletal human remains.

This book synthesises the latest research on reconstructing behaviour in the past. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific region of the human body, guiding the reader from head to toe and highlighting how evidence found on the skull, shoulder, thorax, spine, pelvis, and the upper and lower limbs has been used to infer patterns of activity and other behaviour. Chapter authors expertly summarise and critically discuss a range of methodological, theoretical, and interpretive approaches used to read skeletal remains and interpret a wide variety of behaviours, including tool use, locomotion, reproduction, health, pathology, and beyond.

Serves as a comprehensive resource for readers who are new to human skeletal behaviour investigations Offers an overview on how behaviour may impact the entire skeleton (from head to toe) Discusses activities that can leave evidence on the human skeleton and how behaviour can become incorporated in bone Introduces methods that biological anthropologists use to quantify and interpret skeletal evidence for behaviour and its range of morphological variation Critically examines the current state of skeletal behaviour research and provides recommendations for future work in this field

Human skeletons are widely studied in archaeological, anthropological and forensic settings to learn about the deceased. Methods used to identify individuals in forensic contexts and to determine age and sex in archaeological settings are normally tested on identified skeletal collections: collections of skeletons with known age-at-death, sex, often occupation and cause of death. These collections often represent individuals dying within the last century, but this is variable and often depends on the purpose for creating the collection. Many were developed in attempts to understand local population biology whereas those collected recently are for forensic purposes: to improve identification in legal contexts. Some of these collections were developed from body donation programmes, while others have come from cemeteries: cemeteries which were either no longer viable or needed clearing. All these factors impact on who curates these collections: archaeology or anthropology departments and museums. However, unlike many other skeletons curated in these locations, these are individuals with names. All this raises ethical questions about their creation, curation and their use for research. This book focusses on identified skeletal collections in the UK, Portugal, South Africa, USA and Canada. The chapters discuss how and why collections were amassed including the local legislation governing them. Alongside this run the ethical issues associated with their collection, curation and access to them. The demographics of the collections: who is included and why, along with such biases and how they can impact on research are also discussed, as are limitations in the documentary data associated with these individuals. The importance of these collections is also focussed on: particularly their role in developing and testing methods for age determination in adults. This shows why these collections are so vital to improve methods and interpretations for archaeological and forensic research. The importance of communicating this to the wider public is also addressed.