Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sabrina C. Agarwal is an Assistant Professor at the University of California at Berkley and Faculty Affiliate of the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley.  She is co-editor of the volume Bone Loss and Osteoporosis: An Anthropological Perspective (2003).

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Social Bioarchaeology introduces the exciting and growing biosocial approach in archaeology that challenges the traditional methods of analyzing and interpreting human skeletal remains. Agarwal, Glencross and the experts assembled in this volume outline the essential components of this research, focusing on the dynamic interactions between humans and their larger social, cultural and physical environments, and how these analyses increase our understanding of human adaptation. The authors draw upon studies from the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East examining the central themes, theoretical issues, and methodological innovations in the field. Each chapter offers significant new research that integrates elements from biological, behavioural, ecological and social research. This new volume will be a valuable resource for archaeologists, biological anthropologists, paleopathologists, and all researchers with an interest in understanding our social and biological adaptations in a constantly changing global environment.

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Social Bioarchaeology introduces the exciting and growing biosocial approach in archaeology that challenges the traditional methods of analyzing and interpreting human skeletal remains. Agarwal, Glencross and the experts assembled in this volume outline the essential components of this research, focusing on the dynamic interactions between humans and their larger social, cultural and physical environments, and how these analyses increase our understanding of human adaptation.  The authors draw upon studies from the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East examining the central themes, theoretical issues, and methodological innovations in the field. Each chapter offers significant new research that integrates elements from biological, behavioural, ecological and social research.  This new volume will be a valuable resource for archaeologists, biological anthropologists, paleopathologists, and all researchers with an interest in understanding our social and biological adaptations in a constantly changing global environment.

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Social Bioarchaeology

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Sabrina C. Agarwal and Bonnie A. Glencross

"Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones" (Henry David Thoreau).

Perhaps nothing so easily invokes the mind to reflect on life and death as the human skeleton. While often regarded as the dry and inanimate remainder of the corpse, during life the skeleton forms the building blocks of our personal and social experience with the world. As such, for the archaeologist, human skeletal remains provide an assemblage like no other. Skeletal remains offer not only corporeal evidence of human existence, but also a biological material that has been crafted and shaped through the cultural experiences of life and death.

The duality of skeletal remains as both a biological and cultural entity has formed the basis of bioarchaeological theoretical inquiry. Bioarchaeology has developed and long used various biocultural models that emphasize the synergistic relationship of social, cultural, and physical forces in shaping the skeletal body (Armelagos et al. 1982; Armelagos and Van Gerven 2003; Schutkowski 2008). The use of biocultural approaches are best exemplified in population-based bioarchaeological studies that strive to interpret indicators of health and disease as adaptive responses of the skeleton to large-scale change, such as shifts in subsistence (Cohen and Armelagos 1984; Cohen and Crane-Kramer 2007), political or economic change (Goodman et al. 1992), or periods of contact (Larsen and Milner 1993). This population-based perspective and emphasis on the adaptive response of the skeleton to environmental (cultural) forces can be considered the founding and first wave of theoretical engagement in bioarchaeology. The commitment of the field to move away from the historical legacy of typological classification in skeletal biology, and more recently to also go beyond mere paleopathological description (Armelagos 2003), has continued to fuel studies of skeletal stress and adaptation in past populations in a growing number of areas such as the examination of growth and development (Cardosa 2007; Hoppa and Fitzgerald 1999; Saunders 2008), metabolic stress (Brickley and Ives 2008), postcranial biomechanical adaptation (Ruff 2008; Ruff and Larsen 2001; Stock 2006), activity-related markers and degeneration (Kennedy et al. 1999; Weiss 2007; Weiss and Jurmain 2007), and trauma (Grauer and Roberts 1996, Milner et al. 1991; Torres-Rouff and Costa Junqueria 2006; Walker 2001) (For comprehensive overviews of the field at large see Cox and Mays 2000; Larsen 1997.)

The second wave of engagement in the field of bioarchaeology has focused on two somewhat divergent areas of research. First, in recent decades there has been a growing interest in the application of state-of-the-art technologies to investigate health and lifestyle in past populations (Iscan and Kennedy 1989; Katzenberg and Saunders 2008; Saunders and Katzenberg 1992). For example, there has been ongoing advancement in the field in the use of isotopic methods for reconstructing diet and migration patterns (see, for example, Dupras and Tocheri 2007; Eckhardt et al. 2009; Katzenberg 2008; Sealy 2001;White et al. 2004), ancient DNA analysis of pathological conditions (Roberts and Ingram 2008), and the use of noninvasive micro-imaging technologies (Cooper et al. 2004; Rhli et al. 2002). While the use of state-of-the-art technologies to examine archaeological material is considered groundbreaking, this work has been criticized as primarily descriptive and lacking in the analytical and population-based focus of the field at large (Armelagos and Van Gerven 2003, Hens and Godde 2008). However, these studies have been instrumental in advancing the scientific arsenal of methods available to bioarchaeologists and opening new avenues of inquiry to be pursued in studies with larger-scale questions. The second area of research in recent decades has been the critical examination of the nature of archaeological skeletal samples themselves. While the early work of 20th-century skeletal biologists and even modern popular representations of the field, particularly in relation to forensic anthropology, give the impression of skeletal remains as unbiased and unambiguous sources of clear biological evidence, bioarchaeologists have long known the reality and challenges of their data set. The publication of the seminal paper by Wood et al. (1992), entitled "The Osteological Paradox," brought to the forefront the nature of the skeletal record, specifically the role of selective mortality and hidden heterogeneity in susceptibility to illness (or frailty), their influence on the formation of skeletal samples, and how these affect our interpretation of health and disease in past populations. The challenges first outlined by Wood et al. (1992) are now expected and routine considerations in all bioarchaeological investigations of health in the past, and in fact have served to push our understanding of the biological and cultural component of individual and population frailty in disease processes further (Byers 1994; Cohen et al. 1994; Goodman 1993; Jackes 1993; Milner et al. 2008; Wright and Yoder 2003). Similarly, although early assessments of the challenges in the construction of demographic profiles in past populations were considered to be insurmountable roadblocks (Bocquet-Appel and Masset 1982), there has been much research on ways to better estimate and deal with the effects of demographic change on the composition of archaeological samples (Hoppa and Vaupel 1992; Jackes 1992; Konigsberg and Frankenberg 2002; Milner et al. 2008; Paine 2000).

The third wave of engagement within the field of bioarchaeology is anchored in the greater contextualization of archaeological skeletal remains. While the incorporation of archaeological contextual information has been central in the study of mortuary practice for some time (for example, see Beck 1995; Chapman et al. 2009; Parker Pearson 2001), only recent studies have emphasized the deeper understanding of past life ways gained through the close and simultaneous consideration of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic sources of data along with skeletal analyses (Blakey and Rankin-Hill 2004; Buikstra and Beck 2006). Attention to the biocultural adaptation of the skeleton and the use of state-of-the-art methodology is still maintained in the field; however, current research seeks to integrate elements from biological, behavioral, ecological, and social research. The goal of this new bioarchaeological practice is to transcend the skeletal body into the realm of lived experience and to make a significant contribution to our understanding of social processes and life in the past. Simultaneously, contemporary bioarchaeologists are more keenly aware of the present social world in which their work is practiced, and in which the skeletal remains they study are still situated in. Careful thought and attention is now paid to ethical considerations and the role of multiple stakeholders in bioarchaeological research. While early studies in human osteology emphasized biological and evolutionary change, contemporary bioarchaeology is now clearly a discipline poised to engage with social theory. In building a social bioarchaeology, scientists are engaged in the construction of the biological and social...