Bioarchaeology

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The term bioarchaeology was first coined by British archaeologist Grahame Clark in 1972 as a reference to zooarchaeology, or the study of animal bones from archaeological sites. Redefined in 1977 by Jane Buikstra, bioarchaeology in the US now refers to the scientific study of human skeletal remains from archaeological sites, a discipline known elsewhere as osteoarchaeology or palaeo-osteology. In England and other European countries, however, bioarchaeology can still refer to any biological remains recovered and analyzed from archaeological sites but is more commonly known as environmental archaeology.

Bioarchaeology was largely born from the practices of New Archaeology, which developed in the US in the 1970s as a reaction to a mainly cultural-historical approach to understanding the past. Proponents of New Archaeology advocated using processual methods to test hypotheses about the interaction between culture and biology, or a biocultural approach.

Yet there are ethical issues with bioarchaeology that revolve around treatment and respect for the dead. Large-scale skeletal collections were first amassed in the US in the 19th century, largely from the remains of Native Americans. No permission was ever granted from surviving family for study and display. Recently, federal laws such as NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) have allowed Native Americans to regain control over the skeletal remains of their ancestors and associated artifacts in order to reassert their cultural identities. Thus, part of the problem that bioarchaeology faces in becoming a more integral part of anthropology in the US has to do with post-colonial and native revitalization issues.

Bioarchaeology in Europe is not as affected by these repatriation issues as American bioarchaeology. However, because much of European archaeology has been focused on classical roots, artifacts and art have been overemphasized and Roman and post-Roman skeletal remains were nearly completely neglected until the 1980s. Prehistoric archaeology in Europe is a different story, as biological remains began to be analyzed earlier than in classical archaeology.

This relatively new field of analysis in anthropology attracts numerous college and graduate students to such institutions as Arizona State University and Ohio State University, where anthropology programs with strong physical/biological components exist.

[edit] Further reading

For a short bibliography of key works in bioarchaeology, see:

J. Buikstra, 1977. "Biocultural dimensions of archaeological study: a regional perspective". In: Biocultural adaptation in prehistoric America, pp. 67-84. University of Georgia Press.
M. Katzenberg and S. Saunders, eds., 2000. Biological anthropology of the human skeleton. Wiley.
C.S. Larsen, 1997. Bioarchaeology: interpreting behavior from the human skeleton. Cambridge University Press.
S. Mays, 1998. The archaeology of human bones. Routledge.
M. Parker Pearson, 2001. The archaeology of death and burial. Texas A&M University Press.
D. Ubelaker, 1989. Human skeletal remains: excavation, analysis, interpretation. Taraxacum.
T. White, 1991. Human osteology. Academic Press.