Mortuary Analysis and Bioarchaeology: A Survey of Integrative Approaches

Summary

In her chapter in the 2006 volume "Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains", Lynne Goldstein considered the intersection of mortuary analysis and bioarchaeology through a survey of articles from eight prominent archaeology journals (1995-2000). She concluded that significant work remained to be done to appropriately integrate the two fields. In our paper, we summarize Goldstein’s critiques and examine more recent publications in these same journals (2006-2016) to characterize the extent to which the potential for further integration noted in her chapter has been realized. We also discuss what Goldstein characterized as emergent foci of mortuary archaeology—namely gender, the individual, the emotive, and landscape studies—to gauge the extent to which such topics have been considered by bioarchaeologists since 2006. We end with reflections on Dr. Goldstein’s influence on our own work, particularly as her guidance has inspired us to highlight mortuary analysis and use holistic approaches in our bioarchaeological research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21676