BIOARCHAEOLOGY

Abstract

Bioarchaeology (osteoarchaeology) is the study of human remains in archaeological context. It may also be used in a general sense as the study of any biological remains (fauna and flora) recovered from an archaeology site. Increasingly, however, the term is used with regard to the identification and recovery of human skeletal remains in the field to analysis in the lab (osteoarchaeology). The aim of bioarchaeology is to contribute to archaeological interpretation and offer fresh perspectives about cultural pattern and process in the past. Skeletal biology, its cornerstone discipline in physical (biological) anthropology, provides the basic groundwork for studying recovered human remains. However, first and foremost, bioarchaeology is an archaeology discipline. It requires a firm understanding of the contextual aspects of site formation from individual burial features or commingled ossuaries to mortuary analysis of burial patterning across time and space. Bioarchaeology should be a holistic process, whereby interdisciplinary efforts inform and improve upon the findings in the archaeological record. In practice, coordination of disparate data sets has been the exception rather than the rule in the analysis of human remains from archaeological sites….