Anthropology, defined as the study of human societies and cultures and their development, is a broad overview of humans all together. There are many subsets to anthropology, each aiming to explore a different aspect of what makes humans human. One of these subfields, physical anthropology, aims to study the biology of humans dealing with adaptations, variability, and evolution. It also presents as a social science due to analyzing human culture and behavior. Physical anthropology aims to connect biological changes in humans to cultural differences. Through biological anthropology research is done on adaptation in different environments, diseases and death, and evolution from animal ancestors. Among the subfields of biological anthropology, one is bioarchaeology, which is the study of human bodies of past cultures. Bioarchaeology first became an area of interest in the 1970s and focused on integrating biology, archaeology, and cultural anthropology together. This field also has components of sociology, demography, chemistry, statistics, history, and forensics. Bioarchaeology takes away bias when examining a person’s life by instead looking at skeletal remains to draw conclusions based on biological studies. The skeleton is an interesting topic of study, showing changes due to activity levels, nutrition, and disease. Bioarchaeologists methods such as identifying visible signs of diseases and infection, DNA analysis, visual analysis of abscesses indicating variation in diets, and bone properties reflecting activity level.
One interesting study within bioarchaeology is embodiment, the facts that our diet, stressors, and illness become embodied in our tissues. Skeletal remains, in particular, embody biological, cultural, and historical components of our lives. This can be used to tell stories and paint a picture of what life one lived when that person can no long tell that story for themselves. It can also be useful in instances such as slavery where even if people told the story of their treatment, they may not be believed. Upon biological inspection of skeletal remains on enslaved individuals it has been noted of the poor diet and high stress leading to negative health prognosis. The study of embodiment is fascinating in that it truly shows the permanency of the choices we make in life.
One concept that I find to be an interesting concept to study more is the impact on the human body of varying diets that are present in different cultures. It has been studied on a nutritional level of how different diets provide different nutrition, noting that some cultures are simply healthier because they eat a more health conscious diet. To study the actual impact on the skeletal remains of a variety of individuals that eat differently, researching just how big of an impact diet has on one’s overall health. Although this may be hard due to other environmental factors in different cultures, it could show an overall trend in how diet affects health on a more concrete level than the nutritional data that is currently being researched.
Overall, bioarchaeology connects culture, biology, and archaeology into one field of study, giving us a more complete picture of the impact our choices have on our life.
“What Is Bioarchaeology?” Omeka RSS, digilab.libs.uga.edu/cemetery/exhibits/show/baldwin/bioarchaeology.
Hello Madison! I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog post and learning more about bioarchaeology as a field. My initial reaction was that you were quite well-informed about this subject, and it makes me wonder what your interests and career goals are. I feel like I learned a lot by reading your post, and you had many interesting examples of bioarchaeology, such as the unfolding stories of slavery, and the difference that nutrition can make. I personally study nutrition, and I would love to look more into how nutritional and bioarchaeological research might overlap, and what discoveries have come from that. For example, the article that we read for class, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” analysed this overlap extensively, and I found it extremely interesting.
I found your blog post very informative and made me want to learn more about the field of bioarchaeology. I would never have guessed that embodiment could be used to analyze enslaved people for nutritional malnourishment years after it happened. I think that embodiment has a wide range of uses and could be very important in understanding previous generations or cultures and how their nutrition helped or hurt them. You mention how different cultures can affect how healthy or unhealthy people are because the culture can determine what nutrition these people receive. I really think that this is true and should be studied a lot more, as I believe it could potentially explain a lot of the problems we have in the world today. On the other hand, even if the studies of different cultures’ nutrition is helpful, it is almost impossible to persuade a culture to change in a healthier way.