Applying a Social Autopsy Theoretical Framework to Bioarchaeological Analyses

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Not dissimilar to a medical autopsy, whereby a forensic pathologist directs their view inward towards a body’s tissues and organs in an attempt to reconstruct and explain an individual’s underlying cause of death, social autopsy directs its view outward. A social autopsy dissects the interworking layers of social institutions, political laws and policies, and economic constraints that produce the mortality and morbidity patterns of at-risk groups in an effort to generate reform and policy change. Social autopsy has been utilized in the fields of public health, sociology, and forensic archaeology, but, to date, no bioarchaeological analysis has implemented social autopsy as a theoretical framework. Typically, the social autopsy begins with the analysis of contemporary death phenomena, then probes the historic factors that contribute to increased death rates for a group. Bioarchaeological analyses can flip this line of inquiry to understand what conditions and constraints existed in the past to generate awareness of persisting issues that continue to increase mortality rates of marginalized groups today. This framework argues that reform cannot be implemented without an understanding of the types of systemic issues, oppressive treatment and differential hardships disenfranchised individuals experience(d).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36390.0