Doing Context-Specific, Anthropological Bioarchaeology: Hard Times from England to the Andes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The concept and approach of "bioarchaeology as anthropology," wherein bioarchaeology is framed as interdisciplinary, hypothesis-driven, biocultural, cross-cultural, and focused on understanding the adaptation and evolution of social systems, was pioneered by George Armelagos and has been progressively strengthened and amplified by the work of Debra Martin. Her prolific body of work has particularly emphasized the crucial importance of operationalizing social theory, and rigorously engaging with "culture" as multidimensional, dynamic, and contingent. In doing so, Martin creates deeply contextualized interpretations of human remains that provide emic explanations of complex biocultural phenomena in past societies, such as violence. Here, we demonstrate the continuing power, scope, and applicability of her approach—particularly for investigations of structural violence in past societies, as well as resistance to it—through two diverse case studies. The first uses osteological and multi-isotopic analyses in Spanish colonial Lambayeque, Peru, to theorize indigenous foodways as avenues of cultural resilience. The second investigates skeletal evidence of poor women’s agency in seeking treatments for syphilis infection in post-medieval England despite gendered social inequality and misogynistic medical ideologies that historical records suggest greatly limited access to treatments. These disparate examples help underscore Martin’s significant influence in shaping an anthropological, twenty-first-century bioarchaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Debra L. Martin   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32971