Making the Bioarchaeology of Care Methodology Public: Understanding the Roles of Ethics, Communication and Public Engagement in a Novel Approach to Physical Impairment in the Archaeological Record.

Summary

This presentation will discuss the public perception and communication of the Bioarchaeology of Care approach and the accompanying Index of Care program. The ethical considerations of the methodology, as an integral feature of working with human skeletal remains, will also be considered and discussed within a consideration of who ‘owns’ the past and, more specifically, who (if anyone) owns the remains of individuals. In particular it will focus on individuals who are described as disabled, or as physically impaired, in the archaeological record, and who are often only understood through the context of the researchers own cultural understanding of the nature of disability, and are often only the focus of a case study. Communication and public engagement are burgeoning areas of interest to bioarchaeologists as archaeology seeks to go beyond academic and commercial boundaries. As such new media methods will be discussed, such as blogging and education outreach, in the context of advertising the methodology for potential researchers and members of the public. Therefore this presentation will focus on the novel open approach that the Bioarchaeology of Care offers by contextualising the methodology within an academic and public sense, highlighting the importance of recognising care-giving in an archaeological setting.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Building a Bioarchaeology of Care

Keywords

Spatial Coverage