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Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains:Working Toward Improved Theory, Method, and Data brings together research that provides innovative methodologies for the analysis of commingled human remains. It has temporal and spatial breadth, with case studies coming from pre-state to historic periods, as well as from both the New and Old World. Highlights of this volume include: standardizes methods and presents best practices in the field using a case study approach demonstrates how data gathered from commingled human remains can be incorporated into the overall interpretation of a site explores best way to formulate population size, using commingled remains Field archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, academic anthropologists, forensic anthropologists, zoo archaeologists, and students of anthropology and archaeology will find this to be an invaluable resource.
Case studies on violent deaths from the past and present vividly illustrate how anthropologists construct meaning from the victim's bones.
In 2002, Neil Whitehead published Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death, in which he applied the concept of poetics to the study of violence and observed the power of violence in the creation and expression of identity and social relationships. The Poetics of Processing applies Whitehead’s theory on violence to mortuary and skeletal assemblages in the Andes, Mexico, the US Southwest, Jordan, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Turkey, examining the complex cultural meanings of the manipulation of remains after death. The contributors interpret postmortem treatment of the physical body through a poetics lens, examining body processing as a mechanism for the re-creation of cosmological ev...
Ash is an important and yet understudied aspect of ritual deposition in the archaeological record of North America. Ash has been found in a wide variety of contexts across many regions and often it is associated with rare or unusual objects or in contexts that suggest its use in the transition or transformation of houses and ritual features. Drawn from across the U.S. and Mesoamerica, the chapters in this volume explore the use, meanings, and cross-cultural patterns present in the use of ash. and highlight the importance of ash in ritual closure, social memory, and cultural transformation.
This volume brings together expert s 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 and beyond. They consider sociopolitical and environmental factors that may have influenced mortuary ...
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...
Pithouse sites represent the basic form of occupation in the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico from AD 200 to the late 900s. This study presents the results of excavations of one such site, called La Gila Encantada. Little is known about the variability present at pithouse sites away from the major Mimbres and Gila River Valleys. Nonriverine occupations have been understudied until now. This book describes subsistence and settlement practices and compares the results with recent research conducted at the larger villages in the Mimbres River Valley. Despite basic similarities in material culture, households at La Gila Encantada appear to have followed different trajectories t...
An archaeological site that tells a story of structural violence in medical research In 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
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 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 ea...
The Archaeology of Slavery grapples with both the benefits and complications of a comparative approach to the archaeology of slavery. Contributors from different archaeological subfields, including American, African, prehistoric, and historical, consider how to define slavery, identify it in the archaeological record, and study slavery as a diachronic process that covers enslavement to emancipation and beyond. Themes include how to define slavery, how to identify slavery archaeologically, enslavement and emancipation, and the politics and ethics of slavery-related research.