Building a Bioarchaeology of Care

'Bioarchaeology of care' is a formal framework for analyzing cases of past caregiving in a contextualized and systematic manner. In bioarchaeology, health-related care is inferred from evidence in human remains that indicate survival with a disabling pathology when the individual would likely not have reached the actual age at death without care. Caregiving practices can potentially reveal a society's norms, values and beliefs. Additionally, caregiving can provide insights into societal knowledge, skills and experiences as well as political, economic, social and environmental variables. Despite its potential for providing a window into such aspects of past behavior, caregiving has been neglected as a topic for archaeological research. To alleviate this problem the Index of Care was created as an on-line instrument supporting application of a bioarchaeology of care methodology. Building a Bioarchaeology of Care consists of perspectives from three continents for developing theory and practice into a cohesive framework. Presenters will discuss the possibilities and pitfalls for Index of Care use, explore approaches for integrating care analysis in other areas of archaeology (e.g. mummification literature in context of caregiving), identify new directions for research, and propose strategies for communicating findings and stimulating debate.