Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives – serie

Building on the notion that human remains provide a window into the past, especially regarding identity, the contributors to this volume reflect on intentional and ritualized practices of manipulating the human head within ancient societies. These essays explore the human head’s symbolic role in political, social, economic, and religious ritual over the centuries. By focusing on the various ways in which the head was treated at the time of death, as well as before and following, scholars uncover the significant social meaning of such treatment. This illuminating collection highlights biological and cultural manipulations of human heads, ultimately revealing whose skulls and heads were collected and why, whether as ancestors or enemies, as insiders or outsiders, as males, females, or children. Featuring a wealth of case studies from scholars across the globe, this volume emphasizes social identity and the use of the body in ritual, making it particularly helpful to all those interested in the cross-cultural handling of skulls and heads.

Bioarchaeology and Identity in the Americas represents an important shift in the interpretation of skeletal remains in the Americas. Until recently, bioarchaeology has focused on interpreting and analyzing populations. The contributors here look to examine how individuals fit into those larger populations.The overall aim is to demonstrate how bioarchaeologists can uniquely contribute to our understanding of the formation, representation, and repercussions of identity. The contributors combine historical and archaeological data with population genetic analyses, biogeochemical analyses of human tooth enamel and bones, mortuary patterns, and body modifications. With case studies drawn from North, Central, and South American mortuary remains from AD 500 to the Colonial period, they examine a wide range of factors that make up identity, including ethnicity, age, gender, and social, political, and religious constructions.By adding a valuable biological element to the study of culture--a topic traditionally associated with social theorists, ethnographers, and historical archaeologies--this volume highlights the importance of skeletal evidence in helping us better understand our past.

The Wari Empire thrived in the Peruvian Andes between AD 600 and 1000. This study of human skeletons reveals the biological and social impact of Wari imperialism on people's lives, particularly its effects on community organisation and frequency of violence of both ruling elites and subjects.The Wari state was one of the first politically centralised civilisations in the New World that expanded dramatically as a product of its economic and military might. Tiffiny Tung reveals that Wari political and military elites promoted and valorised aggressive actions, such as the abduction of men, women, and children from foreign settlements. Captive men and children were sacrificed, dismembered, and transformed into trophy heads, while non-local women received different treatment relative to the men and children.By inspecting bioarchaeological data from skeletons and ancient DNA, as well as archaeological data, Tung provides a better understanding of how the empire's practices affected human communities, particularly in terms of age/sex structure, mortuary treatment, use of violence, and ritual processes associated with power and bodies.

In 1982, the Conference on Paleopathology and Socioeconomic Change at the Origins of Agriculture was held in Plattsburgh, New York, to examine previously untested theories about how the adoption of agriculture had impacted human health. The collection of those conference proceedings transformed into this landmark book that set the standard for how to collect, analyse, and interpret osteological data in the study of health transitions. Using skeletal pathologies, the contributors examine how the transition from foraging to farming affected human health and nutrition. Now back in print and for the first time in paperback, Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture is a foundational piece in bioarchaeological literature and a central source of information regarding the impact of early farming on socioeconomic evolution. It remains a highly cited reference for archaeologists and physical anthropologists. Contributors present data from nineteen different regions before, during, and after agricultural transitions, analysing populations in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and South America while primarily focusing on North America. A wide range of health indicators are discussed, including mortality, episodic stress, physical trauma, degenerative bone conditions, isotopes, and dental pathology.

This volume offers a novel interdisciplinary view of the migration, mobility, ethnicity, and social identities of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican peoples. In studies that combine bioarchaeology, ethnohistory, isotope data, and dental morphology, contributors demonstrate the challenges and rewards of such integrative work when applied to large regional questions of population history.The essays in this volume are the results of fieldwork in Honduras, Belize, and a variety of sites in Mexico. One chapter uses dental health data and burial rituals to investigate the social status of sacrificial victims during the Late Classic period. Another analyzes skeletal remains from multiple research perspectives to explore the immigrant makeup of the multiethnic city of Copan. Contributors also use strontium and oxygen isotope data from tooth enamel and dental morphological traits to test hypotheses about migration, and they incorporate ethnohistorical sources in an examination of ancient Maya understandings of belonging and otherness.Revealing how complementary fields of study can together create a better understanding of the complex forces that impact population movements, this volume provides an inspiring picture of the exciting collaborative work currently under way among researchers in the region.A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen.

As researchers become increasingly interested in studying the lives of children in antiquity, this volume argues for the importance of a collaborative biocultural approach. Contributors draw on fields including skeletal biology and physiology, archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, pediatrics, and psychology to show that a diversity of research methods is the best way to illuminate the complexities of childhood.Contributors and case studies span the globe with locations including Egypt, Turkey, Italy, England, Japan, Peru, Bolivia, Canada, and the United States. Time periods range from the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution. Leading experts in the bioarchaeology of childhood investigate breastfeeding and weaning trends of the past 10,000 years; mortuary data from child burials; skeletal trauma and stress events; bone size, shape, and growth; plasticity; and dietary histories.Emphasizing a life course approach and developmental perspective, this volume's interdisciplinary nature marks a paradigm shift in the way children of the past are studied. It points the way forward to a better understanding of childhood as a dynamic lived experience both physically and socially.

From Bronze Age Thailand to Viking Iceland, from an Egyptian oasis to a family farm in Canada, The Bioarchaeology of Individuals invites readers to unearth the daily lives of people throughout history. Covering a span of more than four thousand years of human history and focusing on individuals who lived between 3200 BC and the nineteenth century, the essays in this book examine the lives of nomads, warriors, artisans, farmers, and healers.The contributors employ a wide range of tools, including traditional macroscopic skeletal analysis, bone chemistry, ancient DNA, grave contexts, and local legends, sagas, and other historical information. The collection as a whole presents a series of osteobiographies profiles of the lives of specific individuals whose remains were excavated from archaeological sites. The result offers a more ""personal"" approach to mortuary archaeology; this is a book about people not just bones.

With one million dead, and just as many forced to emigrate, the Irish Famine (1845-52) is among the worst health calamities in history. Because historical records of the Victorian period in Ireland were generally written by the middle and upper classes, relatively little has been known about those who suffered the most, the poor and destitute. But in 2006, archaeologists excavated an until then completely unknown intramural mass burial containing the remains of nearly 1,000 Kilkenny Union Workhouse inmates. In the first bioarchaeological study of Great Famine victims, Jonny Geber uses skeletal analysis to tell the story of how and why the Famine decimated the lowest levels of nineteenth century Irish society.Seeking help at the workhouse was an act of desperation by people who were severely malnourished and physically exhausted. Overcrowded, it turned into a hotspot of infectious disease--as did many other union workhouses in Ireland during the Famine. Geber reveals how medical officers struggled to keep people alive, as evidenced by cases of amputations but also craniotomies. Still, mortality rates increased and the city cemeteries filled up, until there was eventually no choice but to resort to intramural burials. Deceased inmates were buried in shrouds and coffins--an attempt by the Board of Guardians of the workhouse to maintain a degree of dignity towards these victims. By examining the physical conditions of the inmates that might have contributed to their institutionalization, as well as to the resulting health consequences, Geber sheds new and unprecedented light on Ireland’s Great Hunger.

This volume integrates data from researchers in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology to explain when and why group-targeted violence occurs. Massacres have plagued both ancient and modern societies, and by analyzing skeletal remains from these events within their broader cultural and historical contexts this volume opens up important new understandings of the underlying social processes that continue to lead to these tragedies.In case studies that include Crow Creek in South Dakota, Khmer Rouge–era Cambodia, the Peruvian Andes, and northern Uganda, contributors demonstrate that massacres are a process?a nonrandom pattern of events that precede the acts of violence and continue long afterward. They also show how massacres have varying aims and are driven by culture-specific forces and logic, ranging from small events to cases of genocide. Many of these studies examine bones found in mass graves, while others focus on victims whose bodies have never been buried. Notably, the volume expands widely held definitions of massacres to include structural violence, featuring the radical argument that the large-scale death of undocumented migrants in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert should be viewed as an extended massacre.This volume is the first to focus exclusively on massacres as a unique form of violence. Its interdisciplinary approach illuminates similarities in human behavior across time and space, provides methods for identifying killings as massacres, and helps today’s societies learn from patterns of the past. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen.

This volume brings together experts in archaeology and bioarchaeology to examine continuity and change in ancient Arabian mortuary practices. While most previous investigations have been limited geographically to Egypt and the Levant, this volume focuses on the lesser-studied southeastern Arabian Peninsula, showing what death and burial can reveal about the lifestyles of the region’s prehistoric communities.In case studies from Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain, contributors explore the transition from the earliest to the most complex mortuary monuments in the Bronze Age. They also look at broader changes in mortuary rituals from the Neolithic period through the late Pre-Islamic period, and they discuss sites that illustrate more nuanced shifts in burial practices between the Hafit and Umm an-Nar cultures. Specific topics include animal offerings, communal tombs, and ancient mobility and subsistence strategies. By using skeletal remains as a rich source of scientific data that complements studies of burial context, this volume represents an important turning point for mortuary research in the region. Its novel interdisciplinary and international perspective provides a synthesis of new ideas and interpretations that will guide future archaeological research in Arabia and beyond.

Frontiers and territorial borders are places of contested power where societies collide, interact, and interconnect. Using bioanthropological case studies from around the world, this volume explores how people in the past created, maintained, or changed their identities while living on the edge between two or more different spheres of influence. Essays in this volume examine borderland settings in cultural contexts that include Roman Egypt, Iron Age Italy, eleventh-century Iceland, and the precontact American Great Basin and Southwest. Contributors look at isotope data, skeletal stress markers, craniometric and dental metric information, mortuary arrangements, and other evidence to examine how frontier life can affect health and socioeconomic status. Illustrating the many meanings and definitions of frontiers and borderlands, they question assumptions about the relationships between people, place, and identity. As national borders continue to ignite controversy in today’s society and politics, the research presented here is more important than ever. The long history of people who have lived in borderland areas helps us understand the challenges of adapting to these dynamic and often violent places. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

Abnormal burial practices have long been a source of fascination and debate within the fields of mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology. The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange investigates an unparalleled geographic and temporal range of burials that differ from the usual customs of their broader societies, emphasizing the importance of a holistic, context-driven approach to these intriguing cases. From an Andean burial dating to 3500 BC to mummified bodies interred in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily, during the twentieth century, the studies in this volume cross the globe and span millennia. The unusual cases explored here include Native American cemeteries in Illinois, “vampire” burials in medieval Poland, and a mass grave of decapitated soldiers in ancient China. Moving away from the simplistic assumption that these burials represent people who were considered deviant in society, contributors demonstrate the importance of an integrated biocultural approach in determining why an individual was buried in an unusual way. Drawing on historical, sociocultural, archaeological, and biological data, this volume critically evaluates the binary of “typical” versus “atypical” burials. It expands our understanding of the continuum of variation within mortuary practices, helping researchers better interpret burial evidence to learn about the people and cultures of the past.

This volume highlights new directions in the study of social identities in past populations. Building on the field-defining research in Bioarchaeology and Identity in the Americas, contributors expand the scope of the subject regionally, theoretically, and methodologically. This collection moves beyond the previous focus on single aspects of identity by demonstrating multi-scalar approaches and by explicitly addressing intersectionality in the archaeological record.Case studies in this volume come from both New World and Old World settings, including sites in North America, South America, Asia, and the Middle East. The communities investigated range from early Holocene hunter-gatherers to nineteenth-century urban poor. Contributors broaden the concept of identity to include disability or health status, age, social class, religion, occupation, and communal and familial identities. In addition to combining bioarchaeological data with oral history and material artifacts, they use new methods including social network analysis and more humanistic approaches in osteobiography. Bioarchaeology and Identity Revisited offers updated ways of conceptualizing identity across time and space.A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

Through an unprecedented multidisciplinary and global approach, this book documents the dramatic several-thousand-year history of leprosy using bioarchaeological, clinical, and historical information from a wide variety of contexts, dispelling many long-standing myths about the disease.Drawing on her 30 years of research on the infection, Charlotte Roberts begins by outlining its bacterial causes, how it spreads, and how it affects the body. She then considers its diagnosis and treatment, both historically and in the present. She also looks at the methods and tools used by paleopathologists to identify signs of leprosy in skeletons. Examining evidence in human remains from many countries, particularly in Europe and including Britain, Hungary, and Sweden, Roberts demonstrates that those affected were usually buried in the same cemeteries as their communities, contrary to the popular belief that they were all ostracized or isolated from society into leprosy hospitals. Other myths addressed by Roberts include the assumptions that leprosy can't be cured, that leprosy is no longer a problem today, and that what is called "leprosy" in the Bible is the same illness as the disease with that name now. Roberts concludes by projecting the future of leprosy, arguing that researchers need to study the disease through an ethically grounded evolutionary perspective. Importantly, she advises against use of the word "leper" to avoid perpetuating stigma today surrounding people with the infection and resulting disabilities. Leprosy will stand as the authoritative source on the subject for years to come.A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen.

Representing current and emerging methods and theory, this volume introduces new avenues for exploring how prehistoric and historic communities provided healthcare for their sick, injured, and disabled members. It adjusts and expands the bioarchaeology of care framework, a way of analyzing caregiving in the past designed for individual case studies of human skeletal remains, to detect and examine care at the population level. Covering a range of time from the Archaic period to the present, contributors discuss community settings including British hospitals and nursing homes, a shell burial mound site in Alabama, and the Mississippi State Asylum. These essays offer insights into the care given to children and those with reduced mobility, the social burden of healthcare, practices of euthanasia, and the relationship between care for the mentally ill and structural violence. A necessary extension to our understanding of the complexities of caregiving in the past, Bioarchaeology of Care through Population-Level Analyses shows that it is important to recognize the impact of disease or disability on both the individuals affected and their broader communities. Contributors demonstrate that flexibility in bioarchaeological modeling and methodology can result in robust and nuanced scholarship on caregiving in the past and the societies that provided that care.

An archaeological site that tells a story of structural violence in medical researchIn 2010, a pit containing over 4,000 human skeletal elements was discovered at the site of the former Army hospital at Point San Jose in San Francisco. Local archaeologists determined that the bones, which were found alongside medical waste artifacts from the hospital, were remains from anatomical dissections conducted in the 1870s. As no records of these dissections exist, this volume turns to historical, archaeological, and bioarchaeological analysis to understand the function of the pit and the identities of the people represented in it. In these essays, contributors show how the remains discovered are postmortem manifestations of social inequality, evidence that nineteenth-century surgical and anatomical research benefited from and perpetuated structural violence against marginalized individuals.A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

Examining the long-lasting effects of European colonization on Mexican populationsThe Biocultural Consequences of Contact in Mexico explores how Mexican populations have been shaped both culturally and biologically by the arrival of Spanish conquistadors and the years following the defeat of the Aztec empire in 1521. Contributors to this volume draw on a diverse set of methods from archaeology, bioarchaeology, genetics, and history to examine the response to European colonization, providing evidence for the resilience of the Mexican people in the face of tumultuous change.Essays focus on Central Mexico, Yucatan, and Oaxaca, providing a cross-regional perspective, and they highlight Mexican scholars’ work and viewpoints. They examine the effects of the castas system—which the colonizers used to organize society according to parentage and the social construction of race—on individuals’ and groups’ access to power, social mobility, health, and mate choice. Contributors illuminate the poorly understood extent that this system—and the national identity of mestizaje that replaced it—caused structural inequality and the structural violence of stress and health disparities, as well as genetic admixture.Five hundred years after the Spanish first clashed with Aztec forces and began to influence modern Mexico, this volume adds to discussions of colonialism, the reconstruction of biosocial relationships, and the work of decolonization. Students and scholars in anthropology and history will gain insights into how human populations transform and adapt in the wake of major historical events that result in migration, demographic change, and social upheaval.

Exploring the relationship between health and inequality in the societies of ancient Greece In this volume, bioarchaeologists, osteologists, archaeologists, and paleopathologists examine the ways social inequalities and differences affected health and wellbeing in ancient Greece. Although the ancient Greek civilization is often associated with the ideals of democracy and social equality, the region was characterized by pervasive divisions. Moving beyond elitism and idealization, this book focuses on health-related disparities and difference. Case studies cover a wide temporal range—from the eleventh century BCE through the sixth century CE, a period not usually examined in bioarchaeological studies of the region—and geographical areas including city-states in the Greek mainland, the Aegean islands, the Ionian coast, Albania, and Southern Italy. Comparing health-related data across social groups and sociopolitical systems, contributors explore the relationships between colonists and Indigenous communities, strategies of inclusion and exclusion in mortuary practices, and the impact of urbanization and Romanization on health, diet, and growth. This book also discusses methodological questions such as the challenges posed by poor skeletal preservation, small sample sizes, and incomplete or legacy data. With a focus on marginalized groups including ordinary people, women, children, and enslaved workers, Social Inequality and Difference in the Ancient Greek World shows how bioarchaeology can dialogue with the disciplines of archaeology and ancient history to explore subjects such as health, inequality, ethnicity, age, and gender. This book opens a new avenue for addressing questions concerning living standards in the ancient world.   Contributors: Hannah Liedl | Lukas Waltenberger | Britney Kyle | Dimitra Ermioni Michael | Victoria Sabetai | Carrie L. Sulosky Weaver | Anna Lagia | Elena Vlachogianni | Sandra Garvie-Lok | Prof Jane Buikstra | Reine-Marie Bérard | Christina Papageorgopoulou | Efthymia Nikita | Aliya R. Hoff | Eleni-Anna Prevedorou | Sofia Voutsaki | Lisa Steige | Sam Cleymans | Paraskevi Tritsaroli A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

How bioarchaeology can illuminate the lived experiences of people in the Roman Empire   Research on the Roman Empire has long focused on Rome’s legendary leaders, culture, and conquest. But at the empire’s peak, tens of millions of ordinary people coexisted in its territories—people who built the structures, wrote the literature, and transformed the landscapes we study today. In Roman Bioarchaeology, researchers use human skeletal remains recovered from throughout the Roman world to portray how individuals lived and died, spanning the empire’s vast geography and 1,000 years of ancient history. This volume brings together scholarship from archaeological sites in Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Africa, featuring new and advanced scientific approaches including DNA studies, stable isotope analysis, paleoparasitology, paleopathology, biodistance, and more. Throughout, contributors prioritize the ethical treatment of the deceased by highlighting individual narratives and working with local descendants where possible. From rural homes in Britannia to bustling cities in Phoenicia, these essays showcase the diversity of Roman lives and illuminate the experiences of the most vulnerable in these societies. This book demonstrates how bioarchaeology can enrich our understanding of many facets of life in the Roman world. Contributors: Piers Mitchell | Mario Caric | Efthymia Nikita | Gabriele Scorrano | Mahmoud Mardini | Serena Viva | Tracy Prowse | Kathryn E. Marklein | Mario Novak | Olga Rickards | Marissa Ledger | Anna Osterholtz | Pier Francesco Fabbri | Leslie Quade | Sammuel Sammut | Fabio Macciardi | Rebecca Pitt | Elizabeth A. Bews | Mary Lewis | Rebecca Redfern | Rebecca Gowland A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen