Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2019

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record," at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This session examines healthcare through the lens of material culture, with an emphasis on inequality and access to medical care in the past. Papers will investigate topics that include how does one’s race, age, sexuality, gender, and/or class standing enable or circumscribe the types of medical care people received; the history of medicine in different historical, geographical, and temporal contexts; and the mechanisms through which archaeologists can measure and assess an individual, family, or community’s well-being and access to healthcare.

Other Keywords
bioarchaeology • Medicine • Health • Civil War • Slavery • Military Sites • Identity • inequality • heritage • Structural Violence

Temporal Keywords
19th Century • 18th-19th Centuries • 1940s • 17th - 19th century • 1850-1890

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • Coahuila (State / Territory) • New Mexico (State / Territory) • Oklahoma (State / Territory) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Texas (State / Territory) • Sonora (State / Territory) • United States of America (Country) • Chihuahua (State / Territory) • Nuevo Leon (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-6 of 6)

  • Documents (6)
Documents
  • Assessing Healthcare amid World War II Incarceration (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Stacey L Camp.

    This is an abstract from the "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeologists frequently recover artifacts that speak to the health and welfare of individuals or a community they are studying. Archaeologists can use these medicinal- and healthcare-related artifacts to assess an individual or community’s quality of life. This is particularly important to investigate in the context of...

  • Dead Bodies & the Politics of Memory: Bioarchaeology at the UWI Mona and the Decolonization of Heritage (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John T Shorter.

    This is an abstract from the "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2016, the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona interned human skeletal material recovered during the construction of its Basic Medical Sciences Complex (BMSC). Fragmented and bereft of context, these remains were initially believed to be of little scientific value, but as James Deetz would concur, greater narratives often...

  • "Dying Like Sheep There": Racial Ideology and Concepts of Health at a Camp of Instruction for the U.S. Colored Troops in Charles County, Maryland (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Palus. Lyle Torp.

    This is an abstract from the "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Camp Stanton was a major Civil War recruitment and training camp for the U.S. Colored Infantry, established in southern Maryland both to draw recruits from its plantations, and to pacify a region yet invested in slavery. More than a third of the nearly 9,000 African Americans recruited by the Union in Maryland during the Civil War...

  • "Not Unmindful of the Unfortunate": Giving Voice to the Forgotten Through Archaeology at the Orange Valley Slave Hospital (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Veit. Nicky Kelly.

    This is an abstract from the "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.   Beginning in the summer of 2016, Monmouth University began a program of archaeological research at the Orange Valley Slave Hospital in Trelawny Parish, Jamaica.  Constructed in 1797, the hospital, now a ruin, dates from the amelioration period that preceded the abolition of the trade in enslaved people and their full emancipation. ...

  • Soothing the Self: Medicine Advertisement, Non-Performative Identity, and the Cult of Domesticity. (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma L Verstraete.

    This is an abstract from the "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Excavations for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum were conducted in 2008 and 2009 by Fever River Research and yielded dozens of unique features in downtown Springfield, Illinois. This case study focuses on Feature 35 in the East Parking excavation block that yielded five bottles of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup....

  • Tonics, Bitters, and Other Curatives: An Intersectional Archaeology of Health and Inequality in Rural Arkansas (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jodi Barnes.

    This is an abstract from the "Health and Inequality in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Excavations at Hollywood Plantation, a 19th century plantation in southeast Arkansas, resulted in thousands of fragments of medicine bottles. From tonics increasingly marketed to women to bitters and syrups produced to treat all types of ailments, patent medicine bottles provide a lens into changing ideas about health and healing and...