Bioarchaeology's Holy Grail: The Reconstruction of Activity

Abstract

Human skeletal research aimed at reconstructing past activities has had a long and checkered history. In recent years, in fact, it has been embraced as a kind of “Holy Grail” by an entire subfield of human osteology. The quest, however, has proven more hazardous than most of us would have imagined. Many types of bone changes have been proposed as “markers” of activity, occupation, or mechanical stress. Three major research areas have been thought to show the most promise and, consequently, have been most actively pursued: osteoarthritis, musculoskeletal stress markers, and cross-sectional bone geometry.As might be expected, most contributors to this volume focus on pathological conditions as identified in human remains. As has been widely recognized, some of the bone changes seen in osteoarthritis that have routinely been used to reconstruct activity are also sometimes pathological. In addition, much of the complex physiolog-ical change that occurs at muscle attachment sites (entheses) also involves inherently pathological processes—a basic consideration that has not yet been generally acknowledged by bioarchaeologists. In recent years many paleopathologists have actively pursued this type of research under the broad rubric of what Jane Buikstra