The Bioarchaeology of Frontier and Borderlands

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.