Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In 2012, Kathryn Baustian, Debra Martin, and Anna Osterholtz organized a session at the SAAs on commingled human remains in archaeological contexts, partly to get people in the same room talking about assemblages of human remains long thought to be data-poor and often relegated to appendices in site reports. In the 12 years since that session, a tremendous amount of research has been conducted highlighting the importance of commingled remains to overall site interpretation. Commingling, no matter how it occurs, tells a significant story about mortuary activity, site formation, and/or the changing curatorial standards within which we work as bioarchaeologists. In this session, we highlight methodological rigor and new viewpoints on how the interpretation of commingled remains brings depth and breadth to the understanding of lived experience in the past through methodological advances and/or richly nuanced interpretation into the actions that lead to commingling.

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)

  • Documents (10)

Documents
  • Application of Metric Sex Estimation Standards at Tell Abraq: A Study of the Humerus (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Nichols. Anna Osterholtz. D. Shane Miller.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Estimating sex in commingled assemblages may have an increased reliance on metric methods. These metric methods are often based on known collections that differ in geographical location and historical time period from the commingled collections to which they may be applied. In this presentation, we detail the testing of...

  • Approaches to Scale in Highly Commingled Contexts: A Case Study from Roncesvalles (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Bonthorne.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at the ossuary of El Silo de Carlomagno, located in Roncesvalles (Navarre, Spain), have generated more than 680,000 human bones dating from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries CE. The subject of ongoing archaeological research, the site represents one of the largest commingled assemblages ever studied, with a...

  • Complete and Commingled Juveniles: Comparison and Interpretation (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecelia Chisdock. Susan Sheridan.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout much of bioarchaeology’s history, the remains of juveniles (nonadults) have seen a lack of study. Reasoning ranged from their perceived lack of importance in ancient societies, the complexities of growth and development, and the more fragile nature of their bones. Similarly, commingled remains are less often...

  • An Examination of Commingled Atlantoaxial Joints by Deviation Analysis (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Litavec.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study builds on previous research that incorporated deviation analyses into sorting commingled human remains. This presentation will analyze a relatively untested joint surface, the atlantoaxial joint, to exclude potential commingled joint pairs. Virtual models were created at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville...

  • Identifying Depositional Processes: Statistical Cluster Analysis at Sacred Ridge (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Osterholtz. D. Shane Miller.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Site of Sacred Ridge has the earliest identified Extreme Processing assemblage in the four corners region, with over 14,000 fragments of human bone (representing at least 33 individuals) deposited in two pit structures around AD 810. During excavation, over 9,000 point locations were taken with a total station. During...

  • Individual and Collective Insights Lost through Commingling (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alyson Caine.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Commingling of skeletal remains is largely acknowledged to occur in response to taphonomic factors in situ or secondary practices post-interment. However, data is frequently lost from commingling in museum collections due to curatorial practices. Here, commingling through curation and its ramifications are explored in an...

  • Interpreting Burned Commingled Ancestral Remains in the American Southwest (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Cristina Freiberger.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Highly fragmented ancestral remains are found throughout the Ancestral Puebloan region of the American Southwest (AD 800–1700). These human remains are often cut, burned, broken, disarticulated, and commingled. For the last 20 years, the narrative has been that these collections were burned to be eaten...

  • Reconstructing Violence: A Multiscalar Approach to Cranial Trauma (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Keri Porter. Susan Sheridan. Anna Osterholtz.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When analyzing traumatic injury in highly commingled and fragmentary collections, interpreting violence can be particularly challenging as reconstructing the full extent of fractures in an individual is not possible, and not all traumatic injuries are indicative of violence. In these cases, cranial trauma can be the most...

  • The Sum of Their Parts: Excavation and Inventory of Isolated Commingled Remains alongside Partially Articulated Individuals at Diablo Wasi, Peru (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Armando Anzellini. J. Marla Toyne.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Funerary contexts of commingled remains generally fall into one of two categories: primary mass burials and secondary reinterments. Each of these commingled contexts has standards of documentation, collection, and inventory that have proven effective in the past. At Diablo Wasi, in the northern Peruvian Andes, the funerary...

  • Updated Demographic Profile of a Commingled Assemblage from Durango, Mexico (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily R. Edmonds. J. Cristina Freiberger. Kathleen Stansbury.

    This is an abstract from the "Continued Advances in Method and Theory for Commingled Remains" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The cave site EDR 9-7 is located in the Rio Zape Valley of Durango, Mexico, within a transitional region between Mesoamerica and the American Southwest. EDR 9-7 can answer questions about environmental variation and cultural resiliency due to its initial use as a mortuary feature during a period of environmental stress, as...