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

Edited by Clark Spencer Larsen, The Ohio State University and Marin A. Pilloud, University of Nevada, Reno

Series Description:

Focusing on bioarchaeology, the study of human remains from archaeological contexts, authored and edited volumes highlight central issues, such as biocultural responses to stress, health, lifestyle and behavioral adaptation, biomechanical function and adaptive shifts in human history, dietary reconstruction and foodways, biodistance and population history, warfare and conflict, demography, social inequality, and environmental impacts on population. Collectively, authors and editors emphasize integrative, interdisciplinary analysis of the links between biology and culture in past societies and the range of cultural, social, and economic conditions and circumstances that have shaped the human experience.

For more Information:

Clark Spencer Larsen
Distinguished University Professor
The Ohio State University
Department of Anthropology
4034 Smith Laboratory
Columbus, OH 43210-1106
larsen.53@osu.edu

Marin A. Pilloud
Associate Professor
University of Nevada, Reno
Department of Anthropology
1664 N. Virginia Street
Reno, NV 89557
mpilloud@unr.edu


There are 32 books in this series.


Please note that while you may order forthcoming books at any time, they will not be available for shipment until shortly before publication date

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Roman Bioarchaeology: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Life and Death in the Roman World

In this book, researchers use human skeletal remains uncovered from throughout the Roman world to portray how ordinary people lived and died, spanning the empire’s vast geography and 1,000 years of ancient history.

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Social Inequality and Difference in the Ancient Greek World: Bioarchaeological Perspectives

In this volume, bioarchaeologists, osteologists, archaeologists, and paleopathologists examine the ways social inequalities and differences affected health and wellbeing in ancient Greece.

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The Biocultural Consequences of Contact in Mexico: Five Centuries of Change

This volume examines how Mexican populations have been shaped both culturally and biologically by European colonization, drawing on methods from archaeology, bioarchaeology, genetics, and history and providing evidence for the resilience of the Mexican people in the face of tumultuous change.

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Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Anatomical Dissection at a Nineteenth-Century Army Hospital in San Francisco

This volume uses historical, archaeological, and bioarchaeological analysis to study and understand a nineteenth-century medical waste pit discovered at the former Army hospital at Point San Jose in San Francisco.

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Bioarchaeology of Care through Population-Level Analyses

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.

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Leprosy: Past and Present

Through an unprecedented multidisciplinary and global approach, this book documents the dramatic 7,000-year history of leprosy using bioarchaeological, clinical, and historical information from a wide variety of contexts, dispelling many longstanding myths about the disease.

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Bioarchaeology and Identity Revisited

This volume highlights new directions in the study of social identities in past populations. Contributors expand the scope of the field regionally, methodically, and theoretically, moving behind the previous focus on single aspects of identity by demonstrating multi-scalar approaches and by explicitly addressing intersectionality in the archaeological record.

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The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials

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.  

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Bioarchaeology of Frontiers and Borderlands

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.     

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Mortuary and Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Bronze Age Arabia

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.