Tips for Best Practice Bioarchaeology Blogging

In something of a cannibalized post, and one that I have been meaning to write for a while now, I discuss here some general ideas that may be useful for bioarchaeology bloggers when writing and presenting blog entries for both the general public and the interested researcher.  Primarily the focus is on the Bioarchaeology of Care theory and methodology, one which considers the archaeological and osteological evidence for caregiving in prehistory on a case study basis (Tilley 2014, 2015i).  However, there may also be some use for the general bioarchaeological and osteological blogger.  The first part of this post (the context) is taken from one of my previous posts on the publication here.  The second part is taken directly from my own chapter.  Enjoy!

Bioarchaeology of Care Context

The volume is titled New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory (£82.00 hardback or £64.99 ebook) and it is edited by Lorna Tilley and Alecia A. Shrenk.  The volume presents new research regarding the bioarchaeological evidence for care-provision in the archaeological record.  Using the associated Index of Care online tool, bioarchaeological researchers can utilize the four-stage case study approach to analyze and evaluate the evidence for care-provision for individuals in the archaeological record who display severe physical impairment likely to result in a life-limiting disability, or to result in a sustained debilitating condition which limits involvement in normal, everyday activities.

The four main step of the index of Care tool used to evaluate the archaeological and osteological evidence for caregiving and receiving. Click to enlarge. Image credit: Index of Care site.

In short, my chapter investigates the public reception and engagement of the bioarchaeology of care theory and methodology as proposed by Lorna Tilley in a slew of recent publications (see bibliography below).  As an inherent part of this the chapter discusses the ethical dimensions within the approach used for analyzing physically impaired individuals in the archaeological record, and the potential evidence of care-provision as seen on the osteological remains of the individual and contextual archaeological information.  Proceeding this is a walk-through of traditional and digital media formats, presented to provide a contextual background for the communication of the theory and methodology which is subsequently followed by two bioarchaeology of care case studies, Man Bac 9 from Neolithic Vietnam and Romito 2 from Upper Palaeolithic Italy, which help to summarize the public perception and importance of the research conducted to date within this new area of investigation and analysis.  In the conclusion best practice advice is provided for researchers conducting education outreach with regards to publicizing the bioarchaeology of care research and its results via both traditional and digital media formats.

Best Practice Bioarchaeology Tips

The following work has been quoted from the section of my chapter discussing and promoting possible best practice for bioarchaeology bloggers:

‘It is evident that the skeletal remains of historic and prehistoric populations and individuals remain a potent symbol of a tangible link to humanity’s ancestors and of mortality more generally. Caregiving, and the evidence for compassion, is a subject that is close to the heart of humanity – one only needs to realise that rarely are any individuals untouched by immediate family members needing caregiving, be it social, daily and/or medical care; it is a topic which is inherently easy to relate to. As such it is recommended that researchers integrate the archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence between the prehistoric and historical worlds to the present. No discipline is better placed, or more uniquely positioned to do this, than bioarchaeology . . .

The 2016 Springer publication edited by Tilley & Shrenk. Image credit: Springer.

. . . Yet what are the suggestions for aspiring bioarchaeology bloggers, microbloggers, communicators and outreach workers with regards to best practice in public engagement and communication? How do we, as practitioners of bioarchaeological research, integrate good communication practices within the discipline?

These are challenging questions for a new and developing digital medium, one that is constantly changing and updating. Both Bertram and Katti (2013) and Meyers Emery and Killgrove (2015) indicate a number of gaps in the current social media representation of bioarchaeology, as well as suggesting a number of approaches that would develop best practices across the social media range. Some of their suggestions are particularly relevant in terms of how, and why, we should consider public engagement (using all media mediums) as a relevant, ethical and productive factor in bioarchaeological research, and these are discussed as follows.

Making Yourself, and Others, Visible

Bioarchaeologists are a tough breed to find online, due to the conflicting terminology used within bioarchaeology and related disciplines. Make your professional online presence visible by clearly defining the focus of your work and by indicating your interests in a clear and informed manner for visitors (Meyers Emery & Killgrove, 2015). It is also recommended that researchers citing digital and social media sites in academic articles, or on other social media applications, should properly reference the authors, title of post, address, and indicate the date accessed, as routine.

Exploit a Variety of Approaches

Vary the approach taken. Videos, for example, are particularly rare phenomena in bioarchaeological outreach, but have the potential to reach a vast audience – much more so than an academic article. It is well-known that serialisations (such as Kristina Killgrove’s Bones reviews or this author’s Skeletal Series posts) keep the reader interested, whilst providing structured content. Joint posts, interviews, guest posts and video entries can also help reach different and varied audiences online and in-print (Bertram & Katti, 2013).

Provide Information on Latest Research and New Techniques

Bioarchaeology uses a range of different techniques, and new methodologies and approaches are also developed every year to investigate the archaeological record. The use of these techniques and methodologies can, and should, be discussed and contextualised in terms of, or in relation to, their use and limitations within the discipline. The majority of bioarchaeological research is published in journals in which the article itself is locked online behind a subscription block, a so-called pay wall, thus preventing interested but non-academic based readers the opportunity to learn about the detail of the latest innovations. Blogs, such as Bones Don’t Lie by Katy Meyers Emery for example, offer the reader concise summaries of the latest published articles in a timely and free-to-access manner. Edited volumes such as this are out of the reach of the casual reader who lacks access to a specialist research or university-based library.

Three of the best bioarchaeology bloggers. Katy Meyer Emery’s Bones Don’t Lie, Kristina Killgrove’s Powered By Osteons, and Jess Beck’s Bone Broke. Image credit: respective sites as linked.

Try Bi, or Even Trilingual, Entries

The majority of online bioarchaeology social media content is in English. Using a second language (Spanish, Mandarin, Persian or French, for example) alongside an English translation would enable readers from different areas of the globe to gain access to the content. This could be achieved through transnational projects and international academic partnerships; for example, sponsored online content or conference workshops, spanning both national and language borders, might investigate ethics ‘case studies’ or develop ways of promoting research best practice. Benefits would include greater exposure of research to a wider audience, achieving an increased understanding of the importance of this research, alongside the building of ethical frameworks across cultural divides. It could also lead to a more integrated approach to the physical and cultural analysis of osteological material.

Discuss Your Pedagogy and the Dangers of Digital Media

The methods by which anthropology, archaeology and bioarchaeology are taught are rarely discussed on social media sites. A pedagogical approach, such as an introduction to the elements of the human skeleton and the importance of their study, would enable the public and researchers to understand how, and why, the topics are taught in a particular manner, and the expected outcomes of this. For instance, an introduction to the terminology used in osteology designed for the lay public can help to break down the ‘ivory tower’ view of academia (Buckberry, Ogden, Shearman, & McCleery, 2015). Furthermore, there should be open lectures and discussion at university level alongside engagement on the pros and cons of digital and social media use, including understanding the impacts and dangers of online sexism and trolling (Armstrong & McAdams, 2010). The ethics of public communication should be considered – what are the support frameworks for the digital advocacy of bioarchaeology online?

Define Disability and Highlight Differential Diagnoses

With reference to the bioarchaeology of care methodology, discussion must be focused on the available archaeological and osteological evidence and, where the material evidence is available, the cultural context for the understanding of what a disability would entail (Battles, 2011; Doat, 2013; Spikins, Rutherford, & Needham, 2010). Due to inherent limitations in osteological evidence, a specific disease diagnosis cannot always be determined (Brothwell, 2010). Therefore in bioarchaeology of care analysis differential diagnoses must be included when examining possible disease impacts on function and the need for caregiving. Each candidate diagnosis should be considered, as these may have different effects in different cultural, geographic and economic environments.

Factor Public, Social and Digital Media Engagement into Bioarchaeological Projects

Blogging, microblogging and engaging with newspaper reporters and television producers take time and effort. Factor this into the initial research as a plan of engagement from the beginning. Identify key communication aims and develop strategies for how to achieve these aims over the course of the research project. Do not be afraid to contact bioarchaeology bloggers or other social media users with details of the project that the research team wishes to make public at a given time (this will depend on client or other stakeholder agreement and timing for release of the research via academic journals and conference presentations). Engage with users and produce content that is in line with both professional and personal ethical standards, state possible conflicts of interest if necessary, and, when discussing original research, indicate the funding bodies that have supported the work.

Meyers Emery and Killgrove (2015) indicate a number of best practice suggestions that are pertinent to repeat here. They are: to write for an educated public, to write or produce content regularly, be sensitive to your own bias and the biases of others, and to repudiate the hysteria and hype of the media in a clear, productive and informative approach. There is a responsibility on a part of all bioarchaeologists who partake in public engagement to educate and inform on the standard approaches practiced in bioarchaeology and the ethical considerations that inform this, particularly to counter sensationalism and ethical misconduct. The above are all important aspects that each bioarchaeologist should use in their approach in disseminating and discussing bioarchaeological content and approaches to public audiences.’ (The above is taken from Mennear 2016: 356-359).

So there you go, a few general tips on bioarchaeology blogging best practices.

This chapter would not have been possible without last-minute editing, endless nights and bottomless coffees. All mistakes are, of course, my own. Image credit: imgur.

Further Information

• The online non-prescriptive tool entitled the Index of Care, produced by Tony Cameron and Lorna Tilley, can be found at its own dedicated website.  The four stage walk-through is designed to prompt the user to document and contextualize the appropriate archaeological and bioarchaeological data and evidence in producing the construction of a ‘bioarchaeology of care’ model.

• Kristina Killgrove has, in her Forbes bioarchaeology reportage, recently discussed one of the chapter case studies of a Polish Medieval female individual whose remains indicate that she had gigantism, or acromegaly.  Check out the post here.

• My 2013 These Bones of Mine interview with Lorna Tilley, of the Australian National University, can be found here.  The interview discusses the origin of the bioarchaeology of care and the accompanying Index of Care tool and the surrounding issues regarding the identification of care-provision in the archaeological record.  Previous Bioarchaeology of Care focused posts can be found here.

Bibliography & Further Reading

Armstrong, C. L., & McAdams, M. J. 2010. Believing Blogs: Does a Blogger’s Gender Influence Credibility? In: R. Lind, ed. Race/Gender/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audience, Content and Producers. Boston: Pearson. 30–38.

Battles, H. T. 2011. Toward Engagement: Exploring the Prospects for an Integrated Anthropology of Disability. Explorations in Anthropology. 11 (1): 107–124. (Open Access).

Bertram, S. M., & Katti, M. 2013. The Social Biology Professor: Effective Strategies for Social Media Engagement. Ideas in Ecology and Evolution. 6: 22–31. (Open Access).

Brothwell, D. 2010. On Problems of Differential Diagnosis in Palaeopathology, as Illustrated by a Case from Prehistoric Indiana. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. 20: 621–622.

Buckberry, J., Ogden, A., Shearman, V., & McCleery, I. 2015. You Are What You Ate: Using Bioarchaeology to Promote Healthy Eating. In K. Gerdau-Radonić & K. McSweeney, eds. Trends in Biological Anthropology. Proceedings of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology. 1. Oxford: Oxbow Books. 100–111.

Doat, D. 2013. Evolution and Human Uniqueness: Prehistory, Disability, and the Unexpected Anthropology of Charles Darwin. In: D. Bolt, ed. Changing Social Attitudes Towards the Disabled. London: Routledge. 15–25.

Killgrove, K. 2016. Skeleton Of Medieval Giantess Unearthed From Polish Cemetery. Forbes. Published online 19th October 2016. Available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/10/19/skeleton-of-medieval-giantess-unearthed-from-polish-cemetery/#476236b6413b. [Accessed 28th October 2016]. (Open Access).

Mennear, D. J. 2016. Highlighting the Importance of the Past: Public Engagement and Bioarchaeology of Care Research. In: L. Tilley & A. A. Shrenk, eds. New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory. Zurich: Springer International Publishing. 343-364. (Open Access).

Meyers Emery, K., & Killgrove, K. 2015. Bones, Bodies, and Blogs: Outreach and Engagement in Bioarchaeology. Internet Archaeology. 39. doi:10.11141/ia.39.5. (Open Access).

Spikins, P. A., Rutherford, H. E., & Needham, A. P. 2010. From Hominity to Humanity: Compassion from the Earliest Archaics to Modern Humans. Time and Mind. 3 (3): 303–325. (Open Access).

Tilley, L. & Oxenham, M. F. 2011. Survival Against the Odds: Modelling the Social Implications of Care Provision to the Seriously Disabled. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 1 (1): 35-42.

Tilley, L. & Cameron, T. 2014. Introducing the Index of Care: A Web-Based Application Supporting Archaeological Research into Health-Related Care. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 6: 5-9.

Tilley, L. 2015i. Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care. Zurich: Springer International Publishing.

Tilley, L. 2015ii. Accommodating Difference in the Prehistoric Past: Revisiting the Case of Romito 2 from a Bioarchaeology of Care Perspective. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 8: 64-74.

Tilley, L. & Shrenk, A. A., eds. 2016. New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory. Zurich: Springer International Publishing.

These Bones of Mine Round-Up Post for 2016

… Hmm I didn’t actually write that much in 2016 compared to previous years!  Regardless it is now 2017 (happy new year folks) and I think a little round-up post of the entries that I wrote, or helped to edit, for 2016 is in order.  This post is inspired by my reading of the round-up entries by Jess Beck, who blogs over at Bone Broke, and by Zachary Cofran, who blogs at Lawnchair Anthropology.  I recommend that you check out both their entries for haunting film posters and wonderful animal photographs (but stay for the fossils and osteology goodness!).  I digress, so let’s get this round-up rolling.  Firstly we’ll have a little look into the statistics for the year in order to see where the website stands in comparison to previous years on this site.

Site Statistics: Meaningful or Merely Visiting?

The total number of site views for 2016 was 227,920 compared to 2015’s 253,985, whilst the total number of site visits for 2016 totaled out at 167,317, comparable to 2015’s 182,605.  Not bad at all considering I use the site as a central focus (i.e. there is no associated Twitter or Facebook account for the blog, so the blog itself is the central output for posts, information, etc.).  The statistics are comparable for previous years until 2012, when WordPress implemented the distinction between views and visitor, in order to establish clicks per view I believe.  So, for example, the statistic for views in 2012 was 536,562 whilst visitors only totaled 20,955 as a result of the distinction in views/visits coming into effect towards the end of the year.

A quick visual of the views and visitor statistics for 2016, by calendar month, for These Bones of Mine. We can see a confirmation of the pattern I’ve talked about before for previous years where the views start, and end, strong but take a downward trend in the summer months (as they do on weekends compared to week days). Likely due to the viewing of the blog by students, staff and interested individuals who may be at university, college or school during regular semesters and not visit the site during non-academic periods. Alternatively, or in conjunction to the above, it may all be due to archaeologists being in the field excavating in the summer and having no internet access!

The total number of entries produced for 2016 was 22, a blog low for the site since its inception (for example, 2014 saw 67 entries posted and 2013 54 entries posted, although it is a follow on trend from 2015 where only 25 posts were produced and posted).  A total of 12 posts remain in varying states of drafting, and honestly I doubt that at least two of them will be posted in any format.  The top posts for views last year were, as it always is, the home page/archives to the site.  The next nine top posts are related to the Skeletal Series of posts where each section of the human skeleton is introduced and discussed from a bioarchaeological perspective.  Again, there are no great surprises here; indeed this is actually the main aim of the blog itself and it helps support my intention behind it!  2016 however saw the production of no Skeletal Series entries (though check out the Skeletal Series Human Osteology Glossary from December 2015), this is something I hope to rectify in 2017 by focusing on how bioarchaeologists, or human osteologists, assess skeletal remains in order to assign the biological sex and age for individuals.

So, are statistics useful?

I believe so, generally speaking, as they give me a good indication of what the individuals who visit the site want to read, what they use the site for, and how they navigate the site more generally.  Of course I’ve largely circumnavigated these wants with posts on literary topics of interest or books mentions instead this year!

A Few of My Favourite Posts

The year started with a fairly personal post on A Personal Anthropology of Driving, wherein I discuss the impact that driving has had on my life and I present brief thoughts on socio-cultural issues surrounding the car itself and the environment in which it drives by taking a whistle-stop tour of the world.  The entry let me write loosely on my thoughts and demonstrate that anthropology really can be found all around us, that there is no strict division between the person and the social.  It is a post I very much enjoyed writing, going from the personal osteological endeavors expected when one has a bone disease that has led to multiple fractures and (planned and unplanned) surgical interventions to the great freedom that driving a car can bring, so much so that across much of the world today it is considered a coming-of-age rite – indeed, it is up there with the biological terror of becoming an awkward adolescent!

One of my most treasured posts was Bones of Contention: A Personal Reflection on Animal Relations, which had a lot of reflective and creative similarities with the Personal Anthropology of Driving post.  I was able to combine my love of poetic writing with the tangible grain of my film photography, as well as to talk about the adorable three chickens that make their home in the back garden.  I also managed to sneak some zooarchaeology into the post as a through-line technique that helped to anchor the post with regards to human-animal relationships.

I mean look at this beautiful bird! The chicken, a Gingernut Ranger breed, is but one of three that currently terrorize the garden and step on the author’s books. Photograph by the author using a Pentax ME Super camera and Lomography Lady Grey black and white film, artfully manipulated in Media player.

For guest posts and interviews in 2016 I was lucky enough to be able to host a discussion between artists Natalie Marr, David Ashley Pearson and myself as we debated their short film Visitor, which has personal ramifications for each of us as we lost a close mutual friend of ours in 2015.  The interview discusses a number of topics, including the nature of grief, space and the influence of certain artists and film makers in the production of Visitor.  The film is pretty damn beautiful and is currently in a final edit, the trailer can be found on the link above and I recommend watching it.

The site also played host to a tantalizing guest post on artificial cranial deformation in the Great Migration Period in Europe by Maja Miljević.  In it Maja introduces the theory behind the aims of artificial cranial deformation, the methods and types of cranial deformation, and the context for the migration within Central Europe, presenting illuminating case studies on an area I had not read about or researched before.  In the third, and final, guest post of the year Jennifer Crangle and Greer Dewdney presented the launch of the Rothwell Charnel Chapel project website, backed by the University of Sheffield.  I’ve written about the Rothwell Charnel Chapple a number of times now for this blog, helping to promote the research carried out by my friend Jennifer Crangle as she promotes the importance of this rare English medieval site and involves the local community and members of the public.  I’ve been down to Rothwell to help participate in an open day, as well as helping to promote the project on this site and I recommend you give the site a visit and check it out!

A selection of crania at the medieval charnel chapel at Holy Trinity Church, Rothwell. A photographic essay by the author on this site can be found here with a background history on the charnel chapel itself. Photograph by the author using a Pentax S1a camera and Ilford black & white film.

As always, I heartily welcome guest post entries from around the world on a whole range of subjects related to bioarchaeology, human osteology, and archaeology more generally.  I also welcome discussion posts and interviews, where I act as the interviewer helping to ask questions and guide the discussion as necessary.  If you feel that this may be of interest please do read my Guest Post page for previous entries, see the areas that I am interested in and read through the advice post.  Most importantly, please feel free to get in touch either by dropping a comment below or by emailing me using the address on the About Me page.

An important update to one previous post was to highlight the sheer range of postgraduate masters degrees (either taught or research-based) available in bioarchaeology or human osteology related topics on offer in the United Kingdom, alongside the rising cost of the courses themselves.  The post also raised the spectre of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union and the recent changes made in a government White Paper for the direction of higher education within the country.  Expect a lot of change within the education sector over the next five to ten years, and to the economy of the United Kingdom more generally.  As always I console any students, or interested individuals, who want to pursue a masters focused on the analysis of human skeletal remains, from archaeological contexts, to think of what they want from the course; what research you hope to conduct; what research is conducted at the department itself; what resources are available to the student; what projects do the department carry out and, finally, who the course leaders are and their interests.  I always recommend a visit to the department, if you can, to get a feel for the course and for the location of the university itself.  Furthermore, always try to think of the next step after the masters itself: where do you want this degree to get you to and how will it help on the way?

I finally wrote up a conference review from 2014!  The Day of the Dead, a three-day conference held at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, in October 2014, was a truly fantastic event which mixed human osteology and funerary archaeology to provide an engaging, informative and vital series of presentations on a wide range of topics.  In the review I also managed to grab a quick few words from famed bioarchaeological researcher Christopher Knüsel, who helped lead a workshop on the archaeothanatology method of interpreting the burial position of the body in-situ.  I also blogged about the upcoming conference entitled Skeletons, Stories and Social Bodies that is to be held at the University of Southampton in March 2017.  Registration for that conference is still open at the normal rates, so book your tickets now!

A really quite wonderful conference. let’s hope it makes a comeback in some form. Image credit: Queen’s University Belfast.

Last year also continued a strong trend on this blog – I love reading and I am not afraid to tell you the readers just what I’ve been reading.  From non-fiction that covers the impact of momentous 20th century events in Russia and the USSR to the Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives and Fractures and Spanish novelists, I’ve covered a lot of ground sparingly!  Reading is fundamental to understanding the world around you, but also to escape the world around you.  It can give you a much deeper understand of the history of the various countries and regions of the world, as well as offering profound socio-political background knowledge.  I love it and I’d love to hear what bioarchaeological or archaeological textbooks you have been reading and where you have drawn your influences from.

Alongside my recommendations of books to read, I also discussed the pros and cons of academic publishing, the Open Access movement and the horrors of trying to access articles and book reviews, with a particular focus on the Sci-Hub, Academia and ResearchGate websites.  The post itself didn’t get any love from the Sci-Hub founder, or associate perhaps, but I was trying to present a balanced viewpoint of the options available to the student, researcher and layman of accessing academic research.  Clearly I did not succeed!  The year also saw a post by perennial blog favourite Stuart Rathbone’s new collection of archaeological work, entitled Archaeological Boundaries: Discussions, Experiments, and Unprovoked Attacks.  The post contains a first for this blog – a video review of the volume produced by Stuart himself for publicizing the volume, along with a few questions asked by yours truly.  The volume is published by another These Bones of Mine favourite Robert M. Chapple, whose excellent blog on Irish archaeology can be found here.

The cover of the volume with the chapter in by yours truly. The chapter marks the first publication in a book. Image credit: Springer international publishing.

Even better I became a published bioarchaeological author in 2016!  The publication of New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory, edited by Lorna Tilley and Alecia Shrenk and published by Springer in September 2016, saw my chapter published in a volume which itself was the outcome of a session on Bioarchaeology of Care theory and methodology at the 2015 Society for American Archaeology annual conference, which took place in San Francisco, USA.  My chapter takes a look at the public response, both online and in the traditional and digital media, to the case studies produced by Lorna Tilley as a part of her PhD research on identifying instances of care-provision given to disabled individuals in prehistoric contexts.  My chapter also presents a few best practice suggestions for engaging and communicating to the public the importance of bioarchaeological research.  I cannot tell you what it means to have a bioarchaeological book with my name in it, what a thrill!  You can read my chapter from the volume here. 

…And Finally

I re-wrote the 2002 song Lose Yourself, which is by the rapper Eminem for the 8 Mile soundtrack, and re-titled it Lose Yourself (In Mud) to include observations from an archaeological viewpoint.  It is also lovingly annotated with a few choice remarks.  Enjoy!

Publication of New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory

As I have recently discussed on a blog post about recently published or forthcoming bioarchaeology books, I too have had a book chapter published in a new edited volume for the Bioarchaeology and Social Theory series, as produced by Springer.  The volume is titled New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory (£82.00 hardback or £64.99 ebook) and it is edited by Lorna Tilley and Alecia A. Shrenk.  The volume presents new research regarding the bioarchaeological evidence for care-provision in the archaeological record.  Using the associated Index of Care online tool, bioarchaeological researchers can utilize the four-stage case study approach to analyze and evaluate the evidence for care-provision for individuals in the archaeological record who display severe physical impairment likely to result in a life-limiting disability, or to result in a sustained debilitating condition which limits involvement in normal, everyday activities.  (For further information see a full book description below).

In short, my chapter investigates the public reception and engagement of the bioarchaeology of care theory and methodology as proposed by Lorna Tilley in a slew of recent publications (see bibliography).  As an inherent part of this the chapter discusses the ethical dimensions within the approach used for analyzing physically impaired individuals in the archaeological record, and the potential evidence of care-provision as seen on the osteological remains of the individual and contextual archaeological information.  Proceeding this is a walk-through of traditional and digital media formats, presented to provide a contextual background for the communication of the theory and methodology which is subsequently followed by two bioarchaeology of care case studies, Man Bac 9 from Neolithic Vietnam and Romito 2 from Upper Palaeolithic Italy, which help to summarize the public perception and importance of the research conducted to date within this new area of investigation and analysis.  In the conclusion best practice advice is provided for researchers conducting education outreach with regards to publicizing the bioarchaeology of care research and its results via both traditional and digital media formats.

The following information is taken from the Springer press release (and is used with the permission of Lorna Tilley) regarding the volume, both its aims and its content:

Book Overview

‘Only in the last five years has the topic of health-related care found acceptance as legitimate subject matter for archaeology.  In 2011, a case study-based ‘bioarchaeology of care’, designed to provide a framework for identifying, analysing and interpreting evidence for likely disability and associated care response, was proposed; the approach generated academic and wider public interest, and from this time on it has continued to evolve as bioarchaeologists apply it to cases of likely caregiving and broader theoretical questions of care provision within their areas of specialisation.’

New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Extended Theory 

The volume ‘marks an important milestone in this evolutionary process.  Its origins lie in a symposium entitled ‘Building a Bioarchaeology of Care’, held during the Society for American Archaeology 2015 annual meeting, which brought together an international, cross-disciplinary group of scholars to explore this theme.  This book contains 19 chapters, most based on symposium presentations, the first substantive chapter providing an overview of the bioarchaeology of care methodology and last situating the bioarchaeology of care approach, and the chapters in this book in particular, within the discipline of bioarchaeology more generally.  The 16 chapters that comprise the core of this volume offer content which is always original, often methodologically innovative, and frequently challenging, and are organised under three headings.

In the first section, Case studies: applying and adapting the bioarchaeology of care methodology, Chapters 2-9 focus primarily on the care given to one or more individuals who experienced (variously) a congenital disorder, acquired disease, accidental or intentional injury and who date to prehistory (Bronze Age, United Arab Emirates), through later Pre-Columbian (southern United Sates and Peru) and Mediaeval periods (United Kingdom and Poland), to relatively modern times (late 18th century London).  These chapters also contribute to bioarchaeology of care theory, however, because each one, in some way, has implications for how we conceptualise past caregiving or for how we might improve current research methods.

The volume cover piece, published as a part of the Bioarchaeology and Social Theory series by Springer. The paperback version will be released at some point in the near future, but it is available now as a hardback and as an ebook. Image credit: Lorna Tilley/Springer.

In the second section, New directions for bioarchaeology of care research, Chapters 10-16 explore alternative perspectives for illuminating past health related care behaviours.  Respectively, they address the scope for applying the bioarchaeology of care methodology to mummified remains; the potential for research into past caregiving to focus on demographic sectors of the population which are often overlooked – specifically children and the aged; the prospects for acknowledging psychological, spiritual and/or emotional forms of support in bioarchaeology of care studies; the modification of the bioarchaeology of care model to allow an assessment of institutional healthcare efficacy at both an individual and a population level; the development of a biocultural model for examining the origins of health-related caregiving; and the potential relevance for bioarchaeology of care studies of an online application supporting research into clinical and social implications of living with disease.

In the third section, Ethics and accountability in the bioarchaeology of care, Chapter 17 interrogates the principles, assumptions, values and beliefs that are likely to influence carriage of bioarchaeology of care research, and Chapter 18 considers ethical responsibilities involved in communicating bioarchaeology of care research findings in the public domain, and discusses some practical ideas for information-sharing.’

The volume isn’t cheap by any stretch of the imagination, so if you are a student or a researcher interested in this topic I highly recommend that you advise your university or institution library to order a copy.  If you are a member of the public I recommend again that you use your local library and order a copy in or use the inter-library loan system in order to source a copy of the volume.  Alternatively individual authors of the chapters may upload their sections of the volume to their own respective academic social media websites, such as on ResearchGate or Academia.edu, if they have a profile.  For instance you can read my chapter here.  It also always worth emailing the researcher in question if you are interested in accessing their work and are unable to locate the writing online.  From a quick internet search it seems Google Books also has the book scanned and it is partially available here.

Further Information

• The online non-prescriptive tool entitled the Index of Care, produced by Tony Cameron and Lorna Tilley, can be found at its own dedicated website.  The four stage walk-through is designed to prompt the user to document and contextualize the appropriate archaeological and bioarchaeological data and evidence in producing the construction of a ‘bioarchaeology of care’ model.

• Kristina Killgrove has, in her Forbes bioarchaeology reportage, recently discussed one of the chapter case studies of a Polish Medieval female individual whose remains indicate that she had gigantism, or acromegaly.  Check out the post here.

• My 2013 These Bones of Mine interview with Lorna Tilley, of the Australian National University, can be found here.  The interview discusses the origin of the bioarchaeology of care and the accompanying Index of Care tool and the surrounding issues regarding the identification of care-provision in the archaeological record.

Bibliography & Further Reading

Killgrove, K. 2016. Skeleton Of Medieval Giantess Unearthed From Polish Cemetery. Forbes. Published online 19th October 2016. Available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2016/10/19/skeleton-of-medieval-giantess-unearthed-from-polish-cemetery/#476236b6413b. [Accessed 28th October 2016]. (Open Access).

Mennear, D. J. 2016. Highlighting the Importance of the Past: Public Engagement and Bioarchaeology of Care Research. In: L. Tilley & A. A. Shrenk, eds. New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory. Zurich: Springer International Publishing. 343-364. (Open Access).

Tilley, L. & Oxenham, M. F. 2011. Survival against the Odds: Modelling the Social Implications of Care Provision to the Seriously Disabled. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 1 (1): 35-42.

Tilley, L. & Cameron, T. 2014. Introducing the Index of Care: A Web-Based Application Supporting Archaeological Research into Health-Related Care. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 6: 5-9.

Tilley, L. 2015. Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care. Zurich: Springer International Publishing.

Tilley, L. 2015. Accommodating Difference in the Prehistoric Past: Revisiting the Case of Romito 2 from a Bioarchaeology of Care Perspective. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 8: 64-74.

Tilley, L. & Shrenk, A. A., eds. 2016. New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Expanded Theory. Zurich: Springer International Publishing.

Brief Updates: A Possible Publishing Rule of Thumb, Socio-Sexual Lives in Bioarchaeology & Memories of Fractures

I’ve been thinking a bit recently about the power of the written word, and of the associations with both personal jottings and more wider ranging long form pieces such as academic text books or investigative journalism.  Partly this has been guided by the growing number of books on my bedside, but also by a personal milestone in the publication of a bioarchaeology chapter by yours truly.  I’ll try not to mention this too much but it has been, and it will be, the realisation of a dream of mine to become a published author and particularly so in a topic that is close to my professional and personal interests.  But more on that below.

Two of the texts discussed in this entry below are Ann Oakley’s part memoir and part sociology study in Fracture: Adventures of a Broken Body and Pamela Geller’s research into socio-sexual lives in the archaeological record, which investigates past human sexuality.

Publishing: The Invisible Researchers

The term Publish or perish is a popular and well-known academic phrase that highlights the fact that research that isn’t published appropriately, or in a relatively timely manner, can easily become lost to the archives and the relevancy of the researcher to their discipline to disappear.  Any academic employed at an educational institute and conducting research will likely regularly produce articles, chapters, and books as appropriate, and actively take part in conferences giving papers or leading workshops to disseminate and communicate knowledge.  This is a normal part of the workload (heavy though that can be) of a research position.

Whether that phrase is helpful or stressful depends on the context – rushed research can lead to false or doctored evidence and the increased pressure to publish, along with the normal duties of lecturing, likely being a course or module tutor, and the administration accompanying such positions, can indeed lead to a hefty work load.  My interest in this though is the invisible researchers who are not employed within academia but are located on the fringes, those such as myself who work full-time in other sectors and publish and research in our own free time.  This blog is a prime example of that, but also of the mixing of the boundaries between the personal and the academic which would not normally be found within journals or published volumes.  Rather this is space to inform, educate, and communicate the interests and experiences of the individual.  The published work, of which I have only a few examples currently with more emphasis currently on specialist reports, requires a change of tone and, often, of approach.

Publishing Date Rule of Thumb?

I’ve also recognised a relatively reliable rule of thumb for academic book publishing.  For instance, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the publication of my own chapter within an edited volume titled New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Theory, to be published as a part of Springer’s Bioarchaeology and Social Theory series.  The edited volume builds upon Lorna Tilley’s 2015 Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care publication in identifying and interpreting cases of care provision in prehistory through osteological and contextual analysis, and by furthering the theoretical framework.  It is exciting to a part of such a volume as a result of the SAA session in 2015 and I’m keen to hold a copy of the finished work and to read the other authors contributions.  I’m also intrigued by the reception that the volume will hopefully receive and the criticism too, with the opportunity to learn from others in the field of bioarchaeology.

But the rule of thumb!  Springer obviously mentions their forthcoming volumes on their site as do other commercial online retailers, however I’ve noticed they tend not to add a specific date for publication whereas some retailers, such as Amazon, do under the title release date (1).  This is useful to know as the publishing date tends to change depending on when the individual chapter and volume editing and proof-reading tasks have been completed, and as to when the publishing production units can start to print.  In my case I’ve noticed the dates shift around a few times due to various factors but I’ve always known when roughly publication and release date should be, sometimes ahead of emails from the volume editors.  Of course this won’t really be a rule of thumb until the volume is published and collaborates my theory, but you can expect another blog post then!  If you have noticed the same trend please let me know below.

Socio-Sexual Lives In Bioarchaeology

Through serendipity I happened to come across Pamela Geller’s 2016 book The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives: Queering Common Sense About Sex, Gender, and Sexuality, published in the same Bioarchaeology and Social Theory series by the above and due for release shortly.  I am very tempted to order a copy of this volume as it seems to challenge the binary orthodoxy of sexuality and identity so prevalent within bioarchaeological analysis of past individuals and populations.  That is an interrogation of the assumption of stability with regards to the values of hetero-normative relations within today’s Western world that is so often projected onto past populations and cultures.

The wide range of cultural case studies and the deep chronological scope of the volume also promises to make it be an invigorating and exciting read.  As with the Bioarchaeology of Care publication, this volume probes the archaeological record into areas of research that have rarely been investigated in-depth, thus potentially opening up the record to a far greater scrutiny of the lived experience of sexual identity and gender.  As such, it is very much on my bioarchaeological books to read next list (you know, after I’ve read this other pile of books by my bedside table!).  It isn’t very often that I purchase bioarchaeology volumes as they can be quite expensive if they are not available in paperback or second-hand (2), but I’ll think I’ll make a change for this volume.  If I do I’ll be sure to write-up an entry for the blog.

Memories of Fractures

And so to bring this post to a timely conclusion I return to my opening paragraph.  One of my favourite books that I’ve had the pleasure of reading within the past few years remains the sociologist Ann Oakley’s (2007) Fracture: Adventures of a Broken Body, an essay on the impact of the author’s traumatically fractured humerus that covers much ground within a relatively slim volume.  I largely adore this book because it is so relatable and so readable, the descriptions of the personal and professional impact of her fracture is something that I can very much sympathize and empathize with.  However the strength is also the breadth of the book, through the historical, medical and sociological musings on the frailty, health and image of the human body and entwined identity.  This volume then represents a fine mix of the personal and the academic, never afraid to speak freely on the issues and challenges that face society in accepting the differences in human form and the obstacles.

The Great Questions of Bioarchaeological Research

To me then bioarchaeology and its associated disciplines offers the chance to investigate on a fundamental level one of the central facets of our existence; what does it mean to be human? How is this represented and approached in the archaeological record?  How were individuals treated within their respective populations, and what were the lived experiences of these populations and individuals like?  The ability to answer some of these questions, in part at least, endlessly fascinates me.  Some of the publications named above aim to answer these questions and may do just that.

Notes

(1).  I have just rechecked this and sadly my thumb of thumb can seemingly be thrown out of the window.  It appears that Amazon does seem to have a better rough date for volumes in preparation, but that by the final month or so within publishing and release date Springer also update their website.

(2).  Joining local or university libraries, where possible, can be great to order books in or to borrow books that are otherwise un-affordable or rare to find.  I generally only purchase bioarchaeology manuals that can be used in osteological analysis or are otherwise handy reference books, but otherwise some books can make great presents!

Bibliography

Geller, P. L. 2016. The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives: Queering Common Sense About Sex, Gender and Sexuality. New York: Springer.

Oakley, A. 2007. Fracture: Adventures of a Broken Body. Bristol: Policy Press.

Tilley, L. 2015. Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care. New York: Springer.

Doug’s Blogging Carnival: The Grand Challenges for Your Archaeology

Doug Rocks-Macqueen (of Doug’s Archaeology) is running another awesome blogging carnival following the success of his 2013-2014 Blogging Archaeology carnival.  Check out the Open Access volume that the original Blogging Archaeology carnival spawned, with the dedicated work of Doug and Chris Webster as the editors.  You can also read my review of it here, which was recently published in the AP Journal of Public Archaeology.  Both are available for free for your perusal.

This time around the theme is kept to one question: What are the grand challenges facing your archaeology? Anyone can take part, so please feel free to join in and write an entry (or draw, film and dance an entry in) about what your grand challenges are that you are facing in archaeology.  It is a one-off event for January, and Doug will post the replies to his call out by February 1st 2016 (but I’m hoping there will be further editions of the blogging carnival as it is so good to see the archaeology bloggers communicate with each other).  So without further ado, let me crack on with my entry for the carnival…

Probably one of my favorite memorial statues which can be found in a cemetery near to where I currently live. Check out Howard Williams Archaeodeath blog entry on the defense of photography in graveyards and cemeteries to learn more about the value of the recorded image. Image credit: A detail of one of my own photographs taken using a Pentax S1a camera on black and white Ilford film, if reproduced please credit as appropriate.

Grand Challenges Facing My Archaeology

Last night I drove up the coast to a nearby city to watch a Pearl Jam cover band with a few friends.  At the gig itself I was deeply moved by the band’s vitality, by the intense connection between a band the audience loved and a band the tribute act so clearly adored as well, but it was in the act itself, of how the cover band so carefully and energetically replicated Pearl Jam, that so impressed me (it isn’t easy capturing Vedder’s powerful voice, but kudos to the singer!).  The energy of a live act is hard to catch on tape, certainly a few live albums have managed to bottle this magic, but not the physical intimacy, the energy that re-bounds between the audience and the act when they give a great performance.

Having had the pleasure of seeing the real Pearl Jam play in a much larger venue in Manchester half a decade ago or so, watching this tribute act in a much smaller venue felt more raw, almost more real.  It was, or so I imagine, what it must have been like seeing Pearl Jam play live before they released Ten, the crowd of a few hundred bodies moving in time to invisible beat and roaring their appreciation between songs.  There is something about live music, when it is plucked from the air in front of you, that moves me so intensely.  It is also something that I have pursued much more actively in viewing since the loss of a beloved friend last year.

As I write this the song State of Love and Trust blares out of my CD player (I know, quaint in this streaming age) and I can feel my feet tapping and my fingers itching to blast something out on the guitar.  Scenes of last night are popping into my head – the rhythm guitarist bouncing around on stage, the singer clasping his hands around the microphone, the adoration of the crowd after Black is played and the personal joy of hearing The Fixer live.

It is this idea of distance, in a temporal-geographic sense, that I suppose is one of my grand challenges facing my own archaeology.  Writing in front of a screen offers precious little human connectivity as the tips of my fingers press into the plastic keys and dance across the keyboard.  I have thought more than once of stopping this blog, to focus perhaps on something more creative instead.  Although the blog post rate has slowed down remarkably after the first initial year, the content of the posts now dip into a more varied and eclectic range of topics and voices.  (Honestly readers, the Skeletal Series will eventually be complete one day!).  I feel that these posts help form the core of the identity of the blog, whilst the standard upcoming short courses or conference posts keep readers (and me) linked into the discipline itself.

One of the challenges, for me then, is knowing when to disconnect and when to reconnect.  There will always be an audience of some kind out there, but there is a need (at least for me) to take time off and to rejuvenate and to think about why I blog in the first place.  I want to help capture that feeling of vitality, of spotting the links between the everyday and the bioarchaeological (something that many bioarchaeology and mortuary archaeology blogs do exceptionally well).  I first started blogging to consolidate my own information and to capture how I was slowly learning the nuts and bolts of human osteology as it applied to the archaeological record.  I also wanted to offer a framework of what it is that human osteologists and bioarchaeologists do and why.  As stated above, this has changed somewhat as I came to understand that I wouldn’t necessary ever have a career in this field and that it would (likely) remain a passion of mine.  (This could be another blog post entirely, but it is down to a few different reasons that are not insurmountable in-and-of themselves).

Holding Your Head Up High

The blog is however but one facet of my identity, but it is one I have fleshed out over the past few years.  To change direction suddenly or to not blog for a while can feel like I am, in some sense, betraying those who would most like me to write.  As such I feel a duty to sometimes produce content, without which I sometimes don’t have either the heart or the time (which is also why there are currently 12 posts lingering in draft hell…).  It is wise to clarify here that those are pressures solely forced on myself – I know I take a long time to produce a post, but bear with me.

This site has afforded me a multitude of adventures and opportunities I never would have had if I’d not taken the dive and started writing for the fun of it.  I’ve been asked to contribute a book chapter to a new and exciting volume, I’ve been asked to speak in a country on a different continent, and I’ve been asked to contribute reviews to new and upcoming journals.  However, as much as I’d love bioarchaeology to be my breadwinner it is not.  I work in a completely different sector to my passion (and it is my passion that has burned the coals for the ability to continue down this path).  The day job gives me that monetary security to pursue the writing of reviews or chapters, to take part in open days, to watch and learn at conferences, and to conduct my own osteological analyses and research.  There is, I hope, a positive takeaway point from this – you too can join in as I have.

There is one constant at These Bones of Mine and that is the trying to champion the voice of others on the site, either by guest posts, interviews or point-of-view style entries.  I see this site as one continuous conversation between my writings (and the various winding alleys that these thoughts slowly percolate into) and the readers who take the time and the effort to read the words.  But I also see it as an opportunity to give a platform to other researchers and part-time bioarchaeologists.  This shall hopefully continue and please do not hesitate to contact me, or to look over previous guest posts (and the guest post guidelines) for further information.

On a personal note I have noticed that, when I am able to fit the time in, I am much happier to be actually carrying out human osteological analysis, to collect the data and to produce the report, that I personally feel I am doing something constructive and worthwhile.  Perhaps it was a feeling I experienced recently precisely because I did not have the time to assign to it and when I did, it felt special and unique.

Moving Forward By Going Backwards

Before the Pearl Jam tribute act I had the pleasure of attending the Little Lives day-long conference at Durham University, catching up with friends and learning about the great new research in the study of human non-adults in bioarchaeology.  A great deal of thanks must really go to the organizing committee of the conference, PhD researchers Clare Hodson, Sophie Newman and Lauren Walther, for putting together a varied, vital and exciting program of speakers.  One of the most mentioned topics of research within the study of non-adults were the implications in bioarchaeology for the DOHaD concept (Developmental Origin of Health and Disease, as an outgrowth of Barker’s Hypothesis, based on work conducted 25 years ago which investigated fetal origins for adult diseases, particularly cardiac and metabolic disorders).  It gave me food for thought as I’m currently analysing a collection of Iron Age and Romano-British individuals which runs almost the full gamut of age-at-death, from likely neonates to old adults.

In a way the analysis has a lovely circular notion to it, as the individuals I’m analyzing are from one of the first archaeological sites that I had the pleasure of excavating at.  Perhaps my challenge isn’t so much geographic as temporal – I have stayed close to where I have lived a large portion of my life, but my mind flits with eager ease through the changes that this place has seen.  Sometimes that is enough.

Seeing from the other side, live grows anew. Image credit: Photograph by the author using a Pentax S1a camera and Ilford black and white film. If reproduced please credit as appropriate.

Learn More

• Check out Doug’s Archaeology, an awesome site that cuts through the sections of archaeology entry by entry.  Read the rather lovely 2014 Blogging Archaeology edited volume, for free, here.  Follow the links on Doug’s site to join in this blogging archaeology challenge.  Remember no entry is too short or too long, nor any entry too discursive in its topic or content.

Four of A Kind: Body Focused Books

There has been a recent spate of publications that will interest the wide variety of professions that study and work with the human body, and a few that will be of major interest to those in the bioarchaeological and anthropological fields who study both the physical remains of the body and the cultural context that these bodies lived, or live, in.  With the annual Christmas celebrations a matter of weeks away, I’d thought I’d highlight a few publications that could potentially be perfect presents for friends and family members who are interested in the human body, from anatomical inspection to the personal introspection of what my body, and yours, can inform us of ourselves and the world around us…

Cover shots of the four books discussed below.

Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum by Gavin Francis. London: Profile Books (in association with the Wellcome Collection). 

Having previously read Francis’s book on being a doctor in Antarctica and knowing that he has accrued a wealth of knowledge and experience of treating the body from a medical viewpoint in a wide variety of countries, I was intrigued to see this new publication by him, which focuses on different sections of the body as a jumping off point for the essays in this collection.  I’d recently read Tiffany Watt Smith’s The Book of Human Emotions: An Encyclopedia from Anger to Wanderlust (which, coincidentally, is also published by Profile Books and the Wellcome Collection), which introduces over 150 different human emotions in an exciting combination of psychological, anthropological, historical and etymological mini essays on the human condition.

It is a thoughtful book and made me wonder about how we approach the body in bioarchaeology, whether our lexical terminology isolates and intimidates, frustrates and alienates those who we seek to engage and educate.  The Book of Human Emotions succinctly highlighted what we think is the universal, the standard charge sheet of emotions (anger, fear, joy, love, etc.) that can be found in cultures across the world, is actually not quite the case or clear-cut, and that they can be expressed and felt in different ways.  Francis’s book, I think, will also offer something as equally as thought-provoking.  Known not just for his medical expertise but also for the humanity of his writing, Francis’s exploration of the body, as a story we can each call our own, delves into the medical, philosophical and literature worlds to uncover the inner workings of the human body, in good health, in illness and in death.

Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles and Practices of Nineteenth-Century Surgery by Richard Barnett. London: Thames & Hudson (in association with the Wellcome Collection).

I came across the above book purely by chance whilst out browsing bookstores in York recently and I have to say it is now on my festive wish list.  The medical historian Richard Barnett introduces a publication detailing the knowledge and variety of surgical practices available to the 19th century surgeon, focused largely on the presentation of the technical drawings produced in the era as a precise method for communicating the advancements made in a variety of treatments.  The publication introduces some of the earliest effective surgical techniques for dealing with devastating facial and limb injuries, either from disease processes, traumatic incidents or the outcomes of warfare, and documents the procedures used in re-configuring the body to alleviate the pain and the disfigurement suffered from such injuries and traumas.  It may not be for the faint of heart, but I could see that some modern-day surgeons may be interested to learn of past techniques, the tools and resources that they had, and the importance of always improving and building upon the innovations of the past.

Bioarchaeology: An integrated Approach to Working with Human Remains by Debra L. Martin, Ryan P. Harrod & Ventura R. Pérez. New York: Springer.

For any undergraduate or postgraduate student of archaeology that has a burgeoning interest in biarchaeology as a profession, I’d heavily encourage them (and the department) to get a copy of Bioarchaeology: An Integrated Approach to Working with Human Remains by Martin, et al.  The volume concisely introduces the discipline and outlines the background to it, the theories and methodologies that have informed the theoretical and practical application of bioarchaeology, the current state of play with regards to legal and ethical frameworks, and, finally, the impact and the importance of bioarchaeology as a whole.  The volume also uses invigorating case studies to elucidate the methods of best practice and the impact of the points made throughout the volume.  It is an excellent guide to the discipline and well worth purchasing as a reference book.  Furthermore the volume is now out in paperback and it is very handy to have in your backpack, partly as a one stop reference for any theories or methodologies currently used in bioarchaeology but also as a pertinent remainder of the value of what we do as bioarchaeologists and why we do it.

Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care by Lorna Tilley. New York: Springer (Hardback only at the moment).

The post before this one has already detailed the aim and scope of this publication but I feel it is worth highlighting here again.  The bioarchaeology of care, and the associated online Index of Care application, aims to provide the bioarchaeologists with the tools for a case study framework for identifying the likelihood of care provision in the archaeological record by providing four stages of analysis in any individual skeleton exhibiting severe physical impairment, as a result of a disease process or acquired trauma.  The methodology takes in the importance of palaeopathology (the identification and diagnosis, where possible, of pathological disease processes in skeletal remains which has a firm basis in modern clinical data) but also the archaeological, cultural, geographic and economic contexts, to examine whether receipt of care is evidenced.

In the publication Tilley documents and investigates a number of prehistoric case studies, ranging from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, and determines the likelihood of care and the type of care that was needed for the individuals under study to survive to their age at death.  The theoretical background and implications, alongside the ethical grounding of the methodology and the concerns in terminology, are also documented at length.  Perhaps most importantly, this is a methodology that is open to improvement and to the use within current and future research projects.  It is also a method that can be used first hand when examining skeletal remains or from the literature itself (where available to a good enough standard).

~~~

The above publications are, to me, some of the most interesting that I have seen recently, but I am always on the look out for more.  Please note that the average costs of the books above are within the £10.00-£20.00 range, but prices will vary significantly.  The hardback academic publications can be quite expensive (+ £70), however once the volume is out in paperback the price tends to fall steeply.  If you can recommend anything please let me know in the comments below.

And Finally a Stocking Filler…

The University of Durham is playing host to a one day conference entitled Little Lives, focusing on new perspectives on the bioarchaeology of children, both their life course and their health, for the very fair price of £10.00 on the 30th of January 2016.  The Facebook group for the conference can be found here.  Alternatively contact the conference organizers via the Durham University webpage here to secure a place (something I must do soon!).

Please note that the call for papers date has now passed and that the conference program has now been finalized.

Further Information

• The Wellcome Trust, which helps operate the Wellcome Collection, is an independent global charity foundation dedicated to improving health by funding biomedical research and medical education.  The charity also has a keen focus on the medical humanities and social sciences, and it recognizes the importance of running educational workshops, programs and outreach events.  Find out more information on the charity here.

• Check out Alexandra Ion’s Bodies and Academia blog for her latest post entitled holiday gift ideas for anatomy lovers for more books focused on the human body.  I also highly recommend reading Ion’s blog for insights into understanding the human body in archaeology and osteoarchaeology.  Further to this check out Ion’s really interesting research into the Francisc I. Rainer human osteological collection in Romania, one of Europe’s largest skeletal collections, held at the Anthropology Institute of the Romanian Academy.

Publication of ‘Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care’ by Lorna Tilley

There is a new publication out by the bioarchaeological researcher Lorna Tilley, a PhD graduate from the Australian National University in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, which introduces the theory and practice in the bioarchaeology of care methodology.  The methodology aims to investigate and identify instances of care provision within the archaeological record through case study analysis of individuals who display evidence for physical impairment, either through disease process or acquired trauma, of a disabling nature which may have required care in order to survive to their age-at-death.  Focused, for the moment, on the prehistoric periods, the publication introduces a number of case studies spanning the Palaeolithic (including Homo neanderthalensis) to Neolithic periods from a variety of geographic and cultural contexts.  An introduction to the model, the background and the four stages of analysis, can be found here.

As a matter of disclosure I should add here that I helped to (briefly) edit the second chapter of the publication for Lorna and that my name, and this site, are mentioned in the acknowledgment section.  (I have to admit it is pretty awesome seeing my name in print!).

The cover of the publication, as a part of the Bioarchaeology and Social Theory series published by Springer, and series edited by Debra L. Martin, is now available. The hard back volume retails for the sum of £90.00 and in ebook form for £72.00. A paperback version will be released at some point and will be cheaper. Image credit: Lorna Tilley/Springer.

Without further ado here is the abstract to the volume:

Abstract

‘Characteristics of the care given to those experiencing disability provide a window into important aspects of community and culture.  In bioarchaeology, health-related care provision is inferred from physical evidence in human remains indicating survival with, or recovery from, a disabling pathology, in circumstances where, without such support, the individual may not have survived to actual age at death.  Yet despite its potential to provide a valuable perspective on past behaviour, caregiving is a topic that has been consistently overlooked by archaeologists.  Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care presents the ‘bioarchaeology of care’ – a new, case study-based approach for identifying and interpreting disability and health-related care practices within their corresponding lifeways context that promises to reveal elements of past social relations, socioeconomic organisation, and group and individual identity that might otherwise be inaccessible.  The applied methodology, supported by the Index of Care (a freely-available web-based instrument), consists of four stages of analysis, with each stage building upon the content of preceding one(s): these stages cover (i) description and diagnosis; (ii) assessment of disability impact and the corresponding case for care; (iii) derivation of a ‘model of care’ provided; and (iv) interpretation of the broader implications of the provision and receipt of this care.

This book looks first at the treatment of health-related caregiving in archaeological research, considering where, and why, this has fallen short.  Succeeding chapters establish the context and the conceptual foundations for undertaking bioarchaeological research into care provision, including defining and operationalising terminology surrounding ‘disability’ and ‘care’; examining debate around social and biological origins of care, and considering the implications for addressing caregiving motivations and practice; and presenting a theoretical framework for exploring the collective and individual decision-making processes involved in caregiving.  Two chapters then detail the four stages of the bioarchaeology of care methodology and application of the Index of Care, and these are followed by three case studies that illustrate the methodology’s application.  These chapters explore, respectively, the care given to Man Bac Burial 9 (Neolithic Vietnam), the Neandertals La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 and La Ferrassie 1 (European Upper Middle Palaeolithic), and Lanhill Burial 7 (early British Neolithic), and they demonstrate the variety, richness and immediacy of insights attainable through bioarchaeology of care analysis.  Most importantly, these studies confirm that the bioarchaeology of care’s focus on caregiving as an expression of collective and individual agency allows an engagement with the past that brings us closer to those who inhabited it.  The final chapter discusses some future directions for bioarchaeology of care research, and considers how research findings might inform modern values and practices.’

Next Steps

As exciting as the above publication is I can also confirm that there will be a multi-authored edited volume, which is presently titled as New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care: Further Case Studies and Extended Theory, to be published mid next year by Springer.  The volume is the culmination of a session on the topic held at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting back in April 2015, which was held in the beautiful city of San Francisco (see the list of presenters, and their topics, here).  I have also contributed a chapter to this volume on the topic, and the importance of, public communication within bioarchaeology of care research.  I am pretty excited to read the other contributions from a range of bioarchaeologists, historians and philosophers.  So keep your eyes peeled for that!

If there are any potential bioarchaeological researchers out there that are interested in analyzing the evidence for care provision, then I’d recommend checking out the above publication and utilizing the Index of Care tool within your own research (see also Tilley & Cameron 2014).  Only by other researchers incorporating the above methodology, and improving upon it when and where possible, are bioarchaeologists going to be able improve our own understanding of care in the archaeological record as a response by past populations and individuals to instances where care may have been provided.  Care, and the archaeological and osteological evidence for care provision, has been, and continues to be, a contentious issue within the discipline (Tilley & Oxenham 2011).  However it is also an area where a range of investigative research strands and new scientific techniques can be brought together to provide a fuller holistic approach, to both the archaeological record itself and to the individuals who populated it.

Further Information

• The online non-prescriptive Index of Care tool produced by Lorna Tilley and Tony Cameron can be found here.  Researchers are very much welcome to use the step by step process during the analysis of case studies and are asked to provide critical feedback that will help improve the tool for future users.

• Read an interview here with Lorna and myself, which was conducted back in 2013, where we discuss her work with the bioarchaeology of care model and the importance of using it to deduce the evidence for care provision in the archaeological record and the importance of recognising this.

Bibliography and Further Reading

Tilley, L. & Oxenham, M. F. 2011. Survival against the Odds: Modelling the Social Implications of Care Provision to the Seriously Disabled. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 1 (1): 35-42.

Tilley, L. 2012. The Bioarchaeology of Care. SAA Record. 12 (3). (Open Access).

Tilley, L. & Cameron, T. 2014. Introducing the Index of Care: A Web-Based Application Supporting Archaeological Research into Health-Related Care. International Journal of Palaeopathology. 6: 5-9.

Tilley, L. 2015. Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care. New York: Springer.

Guest Post: Telling Stories about the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project by Alexis Boutin

Alexis T. Boutin is associate professor of anthropology and coordinator of the cultural resources M.A. program at Sonoma State University.  In addition to co-directing the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project, she is starting a new community-based field project that studies the casualties and legacy of California’s Bear Flag Revolt of 1846.  Read more at her Academia.edu page or faculty webpage.  When not working or chasing after her children, Alexis spends her free time…actually, she doesn’t have any free time. 

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Like most good stories, this one starts in an unassuming way: a lone researcher, flipping through yellowed index cards in the wooden drawer of a museum registrar’s card catalog, stumbles across one for human remains from “Saudi Arabia; Bahrein Island”.  Casually mentioning the find over lunch with her colleague, who happens to be a curator at the museum, he expresses interest in helping her dig deeper into the collections and archives to find out how these bones came to be in the museum.  Thus was born the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project in late 2008 (Porter and Boutin 2012).  The researchers in question are Alexis Boutin, now of Sonoma State University, and Benjamin Porter, of University of California Berkeley.  The museum is the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.  The bones, and associated artifacts, belong to the only substantial assemblage from ancient Dilmun in a North American museum. And they have many stories to tell.

Peter Cornwall’s search for Dilmun

We must begin with Peter Bruce Cornwall, the scion of a distinguished family with deep roots in northern California.  He found privilege in his education at Andover, Toronto, and Oxford, but was challenged by the deafness that afflicted him late in childhood.  As a doctoral student in Anthropology at Harvard, Cornwall’s objective – which his advisor would call a “mania” – was to locate the place named in ancient Near Eastern texts as Dilmun.

1. Peter Cornwall’s 1932 yearbook photo from Phillips Academy Andover.

Dilmun served as a setting for Mesopotamian creation myths and fantastical events.  For instance, the hero Gilgamesh found Utnapishtum there, a former king who was granted immortality after a great flood in a story that mirrors that of the biblical Noah.  Dilmun also was well-known as a trading emporium in commercial networks extending to the Ur III societies of Mesopotamia, Magan in Oman, and Meluhha, the Harappan societies of the Indus River Valley.  But modern scholars had never agreed upon Dilmun’s actual location or extent.

2. Map of the Arabian peninsula, with ancient locales identified. Image by Benjamin W. Porter.

After overcoming the doubt of his academic advisors at Harvard and eventually winning limited backing from the Hearst Museum, Cornwall sailed for Bahrain in Fall 1940.  His journey was made no easier by its route across the Pacific and Indian oceans in the midst of World War II.  Cornwall excavated human remains and artifacts from at least 24 tumuli, or burial mounds, on Bahrain, followed by survey and surface collection at 16 or more archaeological sites in eastern Saudi Arabia.

3. Cornwall’s team excavating a tumulus in Bahrain. Courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

The cost of shipping the finds to his northern California home was covered by the Hearst Museum, in return for their eventual accession there.  Cornwall’s analyses allowed him to conclude that Dilmun was a political entity that ran along the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula from Kuwait to Qatar and was centered on Bahrain.  After publishing his PhD dissertation and several journal articles, Cornwall donated the assemblage to the Hearst Museum as promised in 1945, but provided minimal assistance with its accession.  He then began to withdraw from the academic world, moving to Rome and reportedly spending the rest of his days travelling and collecting art and antiquities, before dying in his late 50s of cirrhosis of the liver.  Although Cornwall’s contribution to Gulf archaeology has lived on in the works of many others (e.g., Bibby 1970, Crawford 1998, Højlund 2007, Potts 1990), the location of the materials that helped him make this discovery was not known outside of the Hearst Museum.

The Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project

Some 4000 years after these people died and 65 years after their remains were brought to California, Porter and I identified this assemblage (referred to hereafter as the “Cornwall collection”) as a rich source of information about life and death in ancient Dilmun.  Although the materials donated by Cornwall had been inventoried during their accession to the Hearst, they had undergone no further systematic analysis since that time.  Working with students from Sonoma State and UC Berkeley, we have determined that the Cornwall collection includes over 3,700 objects made from materials including metal, bone, ivory, pearl, shell, and alabaster, although stone and ceramic objects dominate.  The datable objects derive mostly from the Early Dilmun period, ca. 2050-1800 BCE.  This was a period of unprecedented political and economic prosperity in Dilmun, as suggested by fortified settlements, temple complexes, administrative seals, and imported goods.

When people died in Early Dilmun, their bodies were laid to rest in distinct mortuary monuments that are still visible across the island today.  These mounded tumuli usually consist of a stone lined burial chamber covered by a cone of sediments and gravels.  In most tombs, one or sometimes two individuals were interred, often in a relaxed fetal position.  Surrounding them were ceramic vessels, jewelry, metal weapons, and very rarely alabaster vessels or ivory objects.  A sheep or goat might also be included, likely an offering for the deceased to carry into the afterlife.  Not all tumuli had the same level of elaborate commemoration.  Differences in the size of monuments and the amount and quality of objects indicate that the privileged and wealthy were granted the most elaborate burial conditions.

The human remains in the Cornwall collection represent a minimum of 34 people.  Twenty-four adults, as well as one adolescent, were sufficiently well-preserved to permit sex estimation.  Nineteen are males/probable males, while six are females/probable females.  Of the skeletons for whom an age category could be estimated, the vast majority are adults, with middle adults (35-50 years) being the best represented.  However, adolescents, children, infants and one fetus are also present in smaller numbers.

4. The author at work in the Hearst Museum collections. Photo by Colleen Morgan.

Unfortunately, the notes that Cornwall deposited in the Museum’s accession files are very limited.  They contain very few associated field notes, such as photographs of the burials, the position of bodies, and even the geographic coordinates for specific tumuli around the island.  We are not sure if Cornwall produced this documentation in the first place, or perhaps he never gave it to the Hearst Museum.  We are hopeful that someone will come forward with missing information about Cornwall’s research from a family archive.  Nevertheless, important insights can be gained from the Cornwall collection when its contents are analyzed in the context of better-documented research in Bahrain and surrounding regions.

5. Cylindrical wheel-thrown ceramic jar (9-4680) typical of Early Dilmun burial assemblages. Photo by Colleen Morgan. Courtesy of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

Bioarchaeological analysis of skeleton 12-10152 provides a powerful example of one ancient Dilmunite’s experiences in life and death.  Cornwall excavated the remains of this person—a male who was at least 60 years old when he died—from a tumulus in the Dar Kulayb mound cemetery near Bahrain’s western coast.  No durable objects were buried with him, although multiple bones (including the skull) from a sheep (Ovis aries) or goat (Capra hircus) suggest that he did receive a large portion of a recently butchered animal.  The three stories that follow illustrate how bioarchaeological data from one skeleton (here, 12-10152) can be assembled and interpreted in various ways, to tell multiple stories through multiple media.

The Osteological Version

Analysis of 12-10152’s skeleton reveals a long lifetime of physical activity based on degenerative joint disease (DJD) throughout his skeleton.  Degenerative joint disease occurs when chronic stress on joints progressively damages articular cartilage and, eventually, underlying bone surfaces.  Bone formation and destruction characterize DJD, including the breakdown of articular cartilage, formation of osteophytes at joint margins and entheses, degeneration and consequent porosity of the articular surface, sclerosis, and eburnation caused by direct bone-on-bone contact (Larsen 2015; Ortner 2003).  This male’s DJD is more severe in the right shoulder, facet joints of three cervical vertebrae, lower lumbar vertebral bodies, hips, and knees.  The degeneration of the right shoulder joint is particularly marked, with significant osteophyte growth on the articular margins of the right humeral head, and extensive eburnation here and on the glenoid fossa of the scapula.  Osteophyte formation on the distal femora, more extensive on the left side, indicates degeneration of both knee joints.  The articular surface of the left patella (the only one extant) exhibits macroporosity and destruction of the subchondral bone.

6. Severe degenerative joint disease affecting 12-10152’s right humerus. 6a) eburnation of humeral head (superior view); 6ab) osteophyte growth on margins of humeral head (posterior view); 6c) eburnation of posterior face of glenoid fossa (right scapula, medial view). Photos by the author. (Click to enlarge).

As was common for the elderly of Early Dilmun, this male experienced extensive antemortem tooth loss.  His mandible is edentulous, and all but five of his maxillary teeth had fallen out by the time of his death.  Moderate DJD of the right temporomandibular joint is evident.  The left side is unaffected.  Atrophy of the right half of the mandible is also apparent, perhaps caused by a preference for the non-arthritic left side when chewing.  In a forthcoming publication, we compare his skeleton with those of two other elderly males in the Cornwall collection to explore how masculinity was embodied in Early Dilmun (Porter and Boutin forthcoming).

7. Extant cranial skeleton of 12-10152. Note antemortem loss of all teeth in mandible. Photo by the author. (Click to enlarge).

The Visual Version

The comparatively good preservation of 12-10152’s cranial and post-cranial skeleton provided an excellent opportunity to tell his story visually, through a forensic facial reconstruction.  This method had already been employed by the Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project on a teenage boy from Early Dilmun with excellent results (Boutin et al. 2012), and we hoped that a facial reconstruction of this older man could provide unique insights about embodied experiences toward the end of life.

Creating a replica of the skull is the first step in facial reconstruction.  For 12-10152, whose remains are very delicate and brittle, stereolithography—scanning the skull with lasers to create a digital file—was the best option.  Dr. Sabrina Sholts (now of the Smithsonian Institution) obtained multiple scans of each portion of the fragmented skull with a NextEngine 3D laser scanner. After she processed the data on a laptop, the resulting digital files were sent to GoEngineer in Santa Clara, CA, where they were “printed” three-dimensionally in plastic.  I brought these plastic cranial bones to the studio of forensic artist Gloria Nusse (San Francisco State University), where she and I worked together to rearticulate them into a model on which the face could be reconstructed.

8. Printed components of 12-10152’s skull, before and after re-articulation in Ms. Nusse’s studio. Photos by the author. (Click to enlarge).

When the plastic skull replica was ready, Nusse attached tissue depth markers at standard cranial landmarks.  Next, she used oil-based modeling clay to simulate the cranio-facial muscles, with “skin” of the same material eventually added to meet the height of the markers.  Once the basic form of the face had been completed, Nusse made small adjustments to the shapes of certain features, such as the eyelids and lips, and used a sponge to texturize the facial skin.  She carefully incorporated skeletal features distinct to 12-10152 into his visage: for example, the atrophied and edentulous nature of his mandible gave his lower face a sunken and asymmetrical appearance.  Nusse collaborated with Porter and me to create the hair and eye color, hair style, and dress for 12-10152’s reconstruction.  Our decisions were informed by texts and iconography from ancient Mesopotamia (which are lacking from early Dilmun), as well as a survey of publicly available photographs of modern Arabian Gulf citizens.  The resulting reconstruction has been displayed with that of the teenage boy in an exhibit entitled “From Death to Life in Ancient Bahrain,” which has traveled to several university museums in California.

9. Facial reconstruction of 12-10152 by Gloria Nusse, on display at Sonoma State University. Photograph courtesy of Alexis Boutin. (Click to enlarge).

The Narrative Version

The final way that I tell 12-10152’s story is in fictive narrative format, which is informed by the Bioarchaeology of Care and Bioarchaeology of Personhood models.  Having described the Bioarchaeology of Personhood in print before (Boutin 2011, 2012), I provide just a few highlights here.  Essentially, I have taken Clark and Wilkie’s (2006) concept of an Archaeology of Personhood and adapted it to focus on the relationship between human skeletal remains and embodied experience.  These models feature a less ethno- and temperocentric emphasis on individuality than other (bio)archaeological approaches to identity.  One of the only constants is the passage of time, which is marked bodily by aging.  Although age should not be privileged over other axes of personhood (e.g., gender, class, ethnicity, etc.), it is age that undergirds their fluidity over the life course.  So the Bioarchaeology of Personhood attends to the stories that skeletons tell us about how their personhoods were embodied across the life course.

In addition to telling these stories in traditional academic language and scholarly venues, I also write fictive narratives about the skeletons I study.  This allows me to draw together socio-historic contextual data, clinical research on health and illness, and bioarchaeological analysis in a way that provides a more humanizing view of past personhoods.  But no matter how well-substantiated, these narratives are always the products of my imagination.  They could be told in different ways by different authors, depending on which lines of evidence s/he chooses to prioritize.  For this reason, the qualifying term “fictive” (after Wilkie 2003) is essential.  I have also found the Bioarchaeology of Care (Tilley 2015) to be an extremely useful heuristic tool in creating fictive narratives based on the Cornwall collection.  I particularly appreciate how its focus on the provision of health care and support foregrounds the notion of community: each and every life course plays out in concert with those of others to which it is inextricably linked – mothers, husbands, children, neighbors, dynasts, etc.  What follows is an excerpt of a fictive narrative about 12-10152’s life course, focusing on the care and support that he may have required during old age.

The heat and dust rose in waves from the road as the young men padded by, their arms full of recently harvested dates.  I envied them in more ways than one.  “Grandfather, your stew is ready.”  It’s been many years since I was able to shimmy up the date palms, let alone chew my favorite date nut treat.  But even the few teeth left in my head are enough to enjoy my granddaughter’s fish-and-vegetable stew (as long as she cooks it long enough and I remember to chew on the left side).  Finding my walking stick with my left hand and heaving myself up with a grunt, I make my way into the house.  A wince and a groan as I raise my right arm to take the bowl from my granddaughter.  Ah well – if you live long enough to see your great-grandchildren, some aches and pains are to be expected.

The End

The Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project aims to maximize the interpretive possibilities of the human remains that we have the privilege to study.  Telling 12-10152’s story in various ways reminds us that identities are always multi-faceted and that there is no one “right answer” to how bioarchaeological evidence can be interpreted.  Another example of this approach can be seen in the multiple stories that we have told about a young woman with disabilities (12-10146) from the Cornwall collection.  These include an osteological analysis of her skeletal pathologies (Boutin and Porter 2014), a narrative telling of her embodied experiences in the recent Bioarchaeology of Care session at the 2015 SAAs (with a manuscript in preparation for International Journal of Paleopathology), and a full-body reconstruction by Ms. Nusse planned for 2015-2016.  Documentation and analysis of the Cornwall collection will conclude over the next couple of years, with the results to be published in a book entitled Embodying Dilmun: The Peter B. Cornwall Expedition to Eastern Arabia and Bahrain.  Will this be the final word on life and death in ancient Dilmun? As the saying goes, the best stories never end.

Bibliography and Further Reading

Boutin, A.T. 2012. Crafting a Bioarchaeology of Personhood: Osteobiographical Narratives from Alalakh. In A. Baadsgaard, A. T. Boutin and J. E. Buikstra (eds.), Breathing New Life Into the Evidence of Death: Contemporary Approaches to Bioarchaeology. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 109-133. (Open Access).

Boutin, A.T. 2011. Written in Stone, Written in Bone: The Osteobiography of a Bronze Age Craftsman from Alalakh. In A.L.W. Stodder and A. M. Palkovich (eds.), The Bioarchaeology of Individuals. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 193-214. (Open Access).

Boutin, A.T. & and Porter, B.W. 2014. Commemorating Disability in Early Dilmun: Ancient and Contemporary Tales from the Peter B. Cornwall Collection. In B.W. Porter and A.T. Boutin (eds.), Remembering the Dead in the Ancient Near East: Recent Contributions from Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 97-132.

Boutin, A.T., Nusse, G.L. Nusse, Sholts, S.B. & Porter, B.W. 2012. Face to Face With the Past: Reconstructing a Teenage Boy from Early Dilmun. Near Eastern Archaeology. 75(2): 68-79.

Bibby, G. 1970. Looking for Dilmun. London: Collins.

Clark, B. & Wilkie, L.A. 2006. The Prism of Self: Gender and Personhood. In S. M. Nelson (ed.), Handbook of Gender Archaeology. Lanham, Md.: AltaMira Press, 333-364.

Cornwall, P.B. 1943. The tumuli of Bahrain. Asia and the Americas. 42: 230–234.

Cornwall, P.B. 1944. Dilmun: The history of Bahrein Island before Cyrus. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Harvard University.

Cornwall, P.B. 1946. On the location of Dilmun. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 102: 3–11.

Crawford, H.E.W. 1998. Dilmun and its Gulf Neighbours. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Højlund, F. 2007. The Burial Mounds of Bahrain: Social Complexity in Early Dilmun. Moesgaard: Jutland Archaeological Society Publications.

Larsen, C.S. 2015. Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Skeleton. 2^nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Littleton, J. & Frohlich, B. 1993. Fish-eaters and Farmers: Dental Pathology in the Arabian Gulf. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 92:427-447. (Open Access).

MacLean, R. & Insoll, T. 2011. An Archaeological Guide to Bahrain. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Ortner, Donald J. 2003. Identification of Pathological Conditions in Human Skeletal Remains. 2^nd edition. San Diego: Academic Press.

Porter, B.W. & Boutin, A.T. 2012. The Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project:  A first look at the Peter B. Cornwall Collection at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy. 23: 35-49.

Porter, B.W. & Boutin, A.T. Forthcoming. The Elders of Dilmun: A Bioarchaeological Analysis of Masculinity from the Peter B. Cornwall Collection. In L. Gregoricka and K. Williams (eds.), Life and Death in Ancient Arabia: Mortuary and Bioarchaeological Perspectives. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Potts, D.T. 1990. The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, Vols. 1 & 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Tilley, L. 2015. Accommodating Difference in the Prehistoric Past: Revisiting the Case of Romito 2 from a Bioarchaeology of Care Perspective. International Journal of Paleopathology. 8: 64-74. (Open Access).

Wilkie, L.A. 2003. The Archaeology of Mothering: An African-American Midwife’s Tale. New York: Routledge.

Building a Bioarchaeology of Care: Session at the SAA’s 80th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, April 2015

Forgive me readers, but I haven’t been posting much as of late due to a number of reasons.  However, I do just want to highlight here that I’ll shortly be journeying to the United States of America to present at the Society of American Archaeologists 80th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, which runs from the 15th to the 19th of April.

I’ll be taking part in a morning session on the Bioarchaeology of Care methodology, as proposed by Lorna Tilley (see a previous interview from 213 on this site here), on investigating and researching care-giving for physically impaired individuals in the archaeological record.  The session, entitled Building a Bioarchaeology of Care (Symposium 299), runs from 8 am until midday on the Saturday 18th at Plaza B at the Hilton hotel and conference centre in San Francisco. I’ll be talking about public engagement and outreach surrounding the methodology, and the importance of this, at 11.30 am on the day.  There is a whole heap of amazing-sounding presentations before mine (see below) – I’m pretty excited to be learning about the application of the Bioarchaeology of Care methodology and associated online Index of Care program to the archaeological record itself.

No pressure. Unlike a lot of the excellent researchers presenting in this session who’ll be focusing on actual archaeological sites and individuals, I’ll be talking about my experience of blogging and public communication, and the importance therein. Read the full SAA 15 program here.

So, if you are visiting the City to attend the conference and the session, feel free to say hi.  I’ll be the guy who’ll be chewing his fingers off with nerves!  I really cannot thank the organizers of the annual meeting and, of course the session organizers, Lorna Tilley, Debra Martin and Alecia Shrenk, for their invite to take part in this session – I am thoroughly looking forward to it (but not to the hills of San Francisco!).

Learn More

• To learn about Bioarchaeology of Care methodology head to the free-to-use Index of Care site.  The Index of Care is the associated online research program to the methodology.  It allows users to ‘think through’ the four different stages of the approach using the appropriate archaeological evidence to identify relevant aspects of care-giving in individual case studies.  A brief introduction to the four stages of the Bioarchaeology of Care can be found here.

Bibliography

Tilley, L. and Oxenham, M.F.  2011.  Survival Against the Odds: Modeling the Social Implications of Care Provision to Seriously Disabled Individuals.  International Journal of Palaeopathology 1: 35-42. (Open Access).

Tilley, L. 2015. Accommodating Difference in the Prehistoric Past: Revisiting the Case of Romito 2 from a Bioarchaeology of Care Perspective. International Journey of Palaeopathology. 8: 64-74. (Open Access).

2015: A Year in Preview

Instead of regaling you, my dear readers, with posts of the past let me instead introduce to you posts of the future from my mystical green crystal orb (i.e. my neglected draft folder).  Whilst 2014 has indeed been a busy period, it has also been a particularly downcast sort of year punctuated with moments of beauty and intense clarity.  As such I’d thought it be more interesting to delve into some upcoming posts, highlight a few interesting events in my 2015 archaeological calendar, and also show just where this osteology thing has taken me and where (I hope) it will take me in 2015.  (Remember you can see my haul of 2014 posts in all of their naked glory here, and a quick round-up of the 2014 stats at the end of this post).

It also pains me somewhat to realise at this point that the awesome Blogging Archaeology carnival’s first entry took place well over a year ago.  Ran by Doug Rocks-Macqueen, this online archaeology blogging carnival helped bring together archaeologists from around the world in producing reflective entries on the importance and wealth of blogging archaeology.  In my series of Blogging Archaeology entries I made some vague and, looking back, crazy predictions of what I wanted to do with this blog in 2014.  A lot of this (including a PDF of the ever-popular Skeletal Series entries) didn’t really happen (about do check out Bone Broke’s awesome collection of handy osteo tips for PDF perfection).  Adding to that, I actually barely added to the Skeletal Series at all in 2014 (may the gods of osteo forgive me!).  But I kept blogging, sometimes not as much as I hoped, but the fantastic guest entries kept coming in and the internationally flavoured interviews and mini-photo essay posts began in earnest as well.  I diverged and that is always good.

On a general note 2014 did provide some paid archaeological work, I also got to excavate a few skeletons with friends in the surroundings of the lovely Peak District and I got to take part in some fantastic education outreach in both Sheffield and Manchester.  I also had the great joy of attending excellent conferences in both Belfast and Durham.  Although I was out of action for around 3-4 months mid 2014 due to a broken arm, I did manage to cram a fair bit in alongside the normal non-archaeological day job.

So in this 2015 preview I want to introduce a few blog posts that have been sitting quietly in my draft folder, where I’ve regularly updated them and added in new references, but haven’t completely finished them to post them to the blog itself.  As such this is just a sneak peek of a few thoughts that have been rattling around my mind…

1) The Body as a Weapon: The Bioarchaeology of Terror and Thoughts on Suicide Attacks

Given the rise in the recognition and importance of conflict archaeology and the role of understanding the bioarchaeology of violence in past societies, I think it is probably time we took a look at a modern-day phenomena through a bioarchaeological approach.  For the past few decades terrorism has become a dominant feature of continuing international and transnational conflicts as asymmetric warfare has largely replaced conventional warfare.  I’ll be particularly focusing on suicide attacks, where an individual or group aim to kill both themselves and others in an explosive act of violence.  As such in this post I’ll explore some initial thoughts on suicide attacks from a futurist bioarchaeological perspective (the bioarchaeology of terror).  Primarily focusing on the body as a weapon (both actual body damage and perceived threat based on body type) this post will also highlight a range of suicide attacks carried out by terrorists from across the globe and analyse both the bioarchaeology implications of these, and the differing cultural/national considerations in response to them.

2) Disability at the Movies: Physical and Mental Impairment on the Big Screen

As a fan of film I have long been interested in the representation of physical and mental disabilities in the movies.  As a relatively new artistic medium film has risen over the past century or so to become a vital, and major, part of the world’s culture, helping to document changing attitudes and explore artistic expression.  In this meandering entry I’ll discuss a number of films from the past 100 years or so and highlight the use and representation of both physical and mental disabilities (or impairments).

3) Disability and Sexuality: Looking through the Lens

Sexuality is often taken to be an integral part of the nature of human expression and humanity.  Disability, as either a mental or physical impairment, can be present at birth or occur during the lifetime of an individual and can mean impairments in the cognitive, emotional, developmental, sensory and/or physical sense.  If sexuality is the expression and capacity for erotic experiences and responses, what does this mean for individuals with disabilities and, more specifically, what does this mean for us as a society in the representation of people with impairments as members of that society?  How does this differ culturally?  This post will look at the intersection of the two and discuss the considerations of what is meant by disability or impairment, and how this is approached and understood in the context of human sexuality.

4) Ageing: Puberty in the Osteoarchaeological Record

This is a quick post highlighting some recent articles and books that I’ve been reading lately in understanding the ageing of the human body (particularly focusing on the biology of human senescence).  Being able to age a human skeleton is one of the fundamental skills in bioarchaeology, used as a basic demographic attribute for understanding past population structures.

However, there are still two age stages that can be ‘invisible’ in the archaeological record – old age and being able to identify the advent and process of puberty in the osteoarchaeological record.  The older age categories, used when skeletal maturation has been achieved (when full adult growth has been attained), are largely based on the degradation and wear stage of certain skeletal elements (pubic symphysis, auricular surface of the ilium, cranial suture obliteration, tooth wear stage, etc).  After the fifth decade of life it can be hard to successfully pin a small age range on an individual, particularly if there is no reference population to serriate against to gauge expected differences in bone change at known, or documented, ages.  This will probably be a post by itself.

The focus of this ageing post though is on puberty, as the measure when the non-adult individual grows to become an adult (sometimes taken as juvenile to adolescent to adult).  As both males and females reach puberty at different ages (females normally start it a year or two before males), this has posed bioarchaeologists problems in understanding when past populations reached this.  Shapland & Lewis (2013) have a method for this though, and I’ll post about it shortly!

5) Review: Day of the Dead Conference, October 2014, Queen’s University Belfast

I had the great joy in attending this wonderful conference in Belfast at Queen’s back in October.  Focusing on both bioarchaeology and funerary archaeology, the Day of the Dead three-day conference confidently brought together a slew of new research from both Ireland and the wider world on prehistoric and historic sites and cultures (including an awesome presentation on cannonball damage in deer and a possible universal code for sexing skeletal remains).  The conference was ably hosted by Dr Catriona McKenzie with a keynote speech by Dr Barra O Donnabhain and help from the ever affable Prof. Chris Knüsel.  This post, which detail a few of the presentations in detail, should also be up shortly.

6) The Anatomical Position: A Short History of the Internationally Agreed Standard

One of the first posts where I have actively engaged and sought the views of others before commencing the writing of the post.  I have struggled so far to exactly find what I am looking for, but this has only spurned me on.  In this post I’ll take a quick look at how the anatomical position used in bioarchaeology, forensic science, medicine, and the anatomical sciences, has became so widespread as an internationally agreed standard and convention for the positioning and examining of the human body.  This is one of the posts that may take a while to appear, but it is there!

and finally…

7) Skeletal Series Part 13: How to Age a Human Skeleton

8) Skeletal Series Part 14: How to Sex a Human Skeleton

Two much delayed posts helping to highlight the next stage of the Skeletal Series posts.

This is really just a quick housekeeping post, making me more aware of what I need to do.  As highlighted towards the end of last month there will be a few posts on musical interludes, highlighting the evidence for music ability in the archaeological record.  My one big event for 2015 so far is the upcoming Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in April in San Francisco, USA.  I am particularly excited as there is a session on the Bioarchaeology of Care methodology by Lorna Tilley of Australia National University.  The methodology is an important step not just for understanding physical impairment in the past, but also for collating, using and distributing knowledge of the archaeological record via the Index of Care online tool.

All in all 2015 looks to be rather productive.

Notes

For die-hard stats fans this blog was viewed around 260,000 from 206 countries in 2014 (if I remember correctly this is down from 2013).  Averaged out this is around 5000 views a week, with the majority of the views taking place Monday to Friday rather than on the weekends.  The top 5 annual posts per views were (as it typical for each year that this blog has existed) the Skeletal Series posts.  Blog views, especially toward the last few months of 2014, tailed off noticeably.