Osteobiography as Local Biology

Summary

Osteobiography is an increasingly popular approach, but one that can have the effect of producing unproblematised, individualised approaches to the life course. In this paper I wish to explore how we can create a theoretically informed osteobiography. I propose two strands to this. Firstly, rather than osteobiography being something that ‘happens to’ individuals living in a society, I suggest that it constantly emerges through inter-relations with culturally specific understandings of the person that are deeply contextualised. Secondly, I bring in the concept of ‘local biology’ to explore how, rather than tracing events that happen to bodies, osteobiography can be better conceptualised through the continual interaction of genes, environment, culture and society. This interaction shapes not just immediate responses to disease or stress, but changes the potentials of the person throughout the life-course. These ideas are explored through a consideration of the process of ageing.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Bodies as Narratives: Revisiting Osteobiography as a Conceptual Tool

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15760