The Bioarchaeology of Frontier and Borderlands

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

This session aims to explore how people in the past might have maintained, created or manipulated their identity, while living in a place of liminality, stuck in between worlds. The zones of "in-betweeness", of demarcation between two or more spheres of influence is a very dynamic and potentially violent place. This session will look at how different groups stuck in these zones were affected, how they interacted with the different worlds, how they lived their lives on the "edge". The cases presented will address questions of how living on the frontier might have affected the health and disease of these groups, how conflict and violence might have been expressed, how social inequalities might have been manifested. How did these groups maintain their identity? What overall effect did the "frontier" have on the existence of those who called it home? The cases can address situations where the people involved might not have lived permanently in the borderland zone, but had extensively interacted with it, or were deeply marked by it. A frontier can be both physical and ideological, an end and a beginning; it means different things to different people and it can affect groups living on opposite sides differently.

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  • Documents (13)

Documents
  • Across the River: Romanized Barbarians and Barbarized Romans on the edge of the Empire. Bioarchaeology of Romania in Late Antiquity (300-600 CE) (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Cristina Tica.

    The goal of this research project is to examine differences in overall health between two groups that have been characterized in the literature as Romans and “barbarians”. The research questions addressed using skeletal remains are about how the daily life of people under Roman-Byzantine control compared to that of their neighbors, the “barbarians” to the north. Comparing two contemporaneous populations from the territory of modern Romania—and dating to the 4th-6th centuries CE, the study will...

  • The borders of space and time: Biological continuity at Campovalano (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Muzzall. Alfredo Coppa.

    Territorial and cultural boundaries remain some of the most elusive and compelling areas of anthropological study. We examine biological continuity at Campovalano (Teramo, Abruzzo, Italy) to highlight ways that biology can be used to elucidate interpretations of frontiers and borderlands. We test the hypothesis that geographic location strongly influenced biological continuity in Italian history. Eighteen cranial (n=278) and five maxillary dental (n=377) metric traits, and dental morphological...

  • "THE CREATION OF SILENCES": Medical Officers & the Morton Collection (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Pamela Geller.

    Official historic documents proclaimed nineteenth-century medical officers as heroic for administering to the inflicted during wars that defined and expanded the United States’ national borders. Military doctors were especially welcomed by U.S. soldiers and Euro-American settlers on the Florida frontier where life was precarious. Yet, their activities were often far from benevolent; many advanced necropolitical conditions. Rather than humanitarian crisis, medical officers regarded the...

  • An Exercise in Raw Power: A Bioarchaeological Perspective on American Violence & Westward Expansion (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Crandall.

    Bioarchaeologists have rarely marshalled data from historic American burial assemblages to explore the dynamics of violence in the borderlands West. This paper considers the social dynamics of American violence under Manifest Destiny through an exploration of ballistic trauma patterns documented in extant historical bioarchaeology literature. This study examines the lives of 42 individuals whose remains exhibit fatal gunshot wounds from across the mid-17th and early 20th century America. Trauma...

  • Feminicide and the Struggle to Fight Impunity in Guatemala (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Walsh-Haney. Victoria Sanford.

    The mortality rate of women in peacetime Guatemala has reached the level documented at the height of the genocidal war that took 200,000 lives. These female victims tend to be between 16 and 30 years-old with most of these brutal killings occurring within or near Guatemala City. To paraphrase UN Rapporteur Philip Alston, female homicides are only the beginning of the cost because a society that lives in fear of killing is unable to combat impunity and cannot get on with life and the business of...

  • Funerary Practice and Local Interaction on the Imperial frontier, 1st century AD: a case study in the Serur Valley, Azerbaijan. (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Selin Nugent.

    Military campaigns and conflict defined the years leading to the 1st century AD in the South Caucasus. This mountainous frontier region acted as a buffer zone between the Roman and Parthian Empires competing for territorial expansion. Local alliances were cyclically forged, broken, and mended for territorial control. Yet, little archaeological evidence remains of these interactions. How are military campaigns being conducted in the eastern frontier? How are foreign forces interacting with local...

  • Leprosy, Segregation, & Burial Context: Remote Desert Living in the Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Groff. Tosha Dupras.

    Stable oxygen isotope analysis of tooth enamel and bone apatite from adults afflicted with leprosy from the Kellis 2 cemetery (50-450 AD) in the Dakhleh Oasis provides insight into social perceptions of disease stigma during the Roman-Christian era in Egypt. Because there are no grave markers found in Kellis 2, this research focuses on the spatial analysis of stable isotope results to develop an interpretation of the burial location of leprosy cases. In particular, stable oxygen isotopes, which...

  • Life on the Northern Frontier, Bioarchaeological Reconstructions of 11th century Households in the Skagafjörður Region, North Iceland. (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kimmarie Murphy. Guðný Zöega.

    Iceland was settled in the 9th century by people of Norse and Celtic stock. Located on the margins of the Viking world, the Skagafjörður region was, by the 11th century, home to a large number of independent households forming core social units in a country without a king or central government. Although they maintained close ties with their old home world, ship arrivals were erratic and individual households were largely dependent on their own produce for survival. Early settlers lived in a...

  • A Line in the Sand: Bioarchaeological interpretations of life along the borders of the Great Basin and Southwest. (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Harrod. Aaron Woods.

    Prior to A.D. 1300, several archaeologically defined cultures were identified at the intersection of the American Great Basin and Southwest. Human skeletal remains were analyzed from site that represent the borders and the heartlands of the Fremont, the Virgin Branch Puebloan, and the Northern San Juan Puebloan cultural areas. The goal was to examine how life in the crossroads of these regions affected the experiences of individuals and groups. The following indicators were used to reconstruct...

  • Living on the Border: Health and Identity during the Colonial Egyptian New Kingdom Period in Nubia (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie M Whitmore. Michele R Buzon.

    Tombos is located at the Third Cataract of the Nile River in modern-day Sudan, and marks an important literal and figurative boundary between Egyptian and Nubian interaction. During the New Kingdom Period (1400-1050 BC), the cemetery at Tombos in Upper Nubia exhibits the use of Egyptian mortuary practices, including monumental pyramid complexes, likely used by both immigrant Egyptians and local Nubians. Despite the influence of Egyptian culture during this colonial period, there are several...

  • Marginalized Motherhood: Infant Burial in 17th Century Transylvania (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Bethard. Anna J. Osterholtz. Zsolt Zyaradi. Andre Gonciar.

    During the last four decades bioarchaeologists have enriched what we know about the lives of past people; however, many questions remain unexplored and understudied. Among these, the lived experiences of expectant mothers and their newborn infants have not received much attention in the bioarchaeological literature. Moreover, few scholars have attempted to understand how women who experienced a failed pregnancy or loss of a newborn infant have dealt with this reality, particularly in terms of...

  • Mortuary Practices in the First Iron Age Romanian Frontier: the commingled assemblages of the Magura Uroiului (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Osterholtz. Virginia Lucas. Andre Gonciar. Angelica Balos.

    Frontiers are fuzzy spaces, allowing for cultural diffusion and the negotiation of cultural identities. Identity is defined both based on interaction and on exclusion of surrounding groups. Located at the confluence of the Mures and Strei Valleys, the Magura Urioului rock formation stands as a natural fortress dominating the built and natural landscape. The highly visible rock outcropping and surrounding terraces have been continuously used by various groups including the Hallstatt, Celtic and...

  • Temporal and Spatial Liminality in Early Bronze Age Central Europe: A Bioarchaeological Analysis of a Mierzanowice Culture Cemetery (2016)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Toussaint. Piotr Wlodarczak.

    The cemetery at Szarbia in southeastern Poland is a Mierzanowice culture cemetery, from which 45 individuals have been excavated. The skeletal remains from this site had yet to be examined or published prior to this study. The Mierzanowice culture conforms to the “Borderlands” theme well in terms of its many modes of liminality. It is temporally liminal in that it is an Early Bronze Age culture, transitional between Late Neolithic and Bronze Age paradigms. It is culturally liminal in that modes...