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

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.

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.  

Tooth modification has been practiced throughout many time periods and places to convey information about individual people, their societies, and their relationships to others. This volume represents the wide spectrum of intentional dental modification in humans across the globe over the past 16,000 years.

A monumental synthesis of a half century of research, this book investigates three communities from the ancient Nubian civilization of the Nile River Valley. Excavations in this region first inspired the “biocultural approach” to human biology now used by anthropologists worldwide, and Life and Death on the Nile exemplifies the very best of this perspective. It is the life’s work of two highly accomplished anthropologists.

Drawing upon wide-ranging studies of prehistoric human remains from Europe, northern Africa, Asia, and the Americas, this groundbreaking volume unites physical anthropologists, archaeologists, and economists to explore how social structure can be reflected in the human skeleton.

Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed represents a new generation of contact and colonialism studies, expanding upon a traditional focus on the health of conquered peoples toward how extraordinary biological and political transformations are incorporated into the human body, reflecting behavior, identity, and adaptation. These globally diverse case studies demonstrate that the effects of conquest reach farther than was ever thought before--to both the colonized and the colonizers.

By examining the physical conditions of 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.

Using evidence from 258 recovered graves from the Passo Marinaro necropolis, Sulosky Weaver suggests that Kamarineans--whose cultural practices were an amalgamation of both Greek and indigenous customs--were closely linked to their counterparts in neighboring Greek cities

Bioarchaeological studies of children have, until recently, centered on population data- driven topics like mortality rates and growth and morbidity patterns. This volume examines emerging issues in childhood studies, looking at historic and prehistoric contexts and framing questions about the nature and quality of children’s lives. 

Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoples offers clear, accessible explanations of complex methods for observing evolutionary effects in populations. Christopher Stojanowski's intimate knowledge of the historical, archaeological, and skeletal data illuminates the existing narrative of diet, disease, and demography in Spanish Florida and demonstrates how the intracemetery analyses he employs can provide likely explanations for issues where the historical information is either silent or ambiguous.