8 - Bioarchaeology in the Urban Context

Abstract

This chapter describes bioarchaeology in the urban context. In the past, many biological anthropologists deceived themselves into thinking that they were part of conjunctive, bioarchaeological investigations when they provided descriptive addenda to site reports. This deception was one symptom of a common malaise, revealed also in the traditional monograph through which most anthropologists appeared as technicians or data bearers. Until recently, osteologist–anthropologists were preoccupied with counting and measuring good well-preserved adult male crania, primarily with an eye toward constructing racial typologies and macroevolutionary trends. At the same time, archaeologists were principally concerned with constructing ceramic and lithic typologies and culture histories, which were not necessarily related to issues addressed by biological anthropologists. Thus, the goals of the archaeologist and biological anthropologist were, in the past, quite different and, as a result, were unsuited for conjunctive research designs.