Integration of Resilient Bodies in Pathological Narratives around Disability

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bioarchaeology’s epistemological history is closely tied to that of paleopathology and medicine. Accounts of disease, injury, and death in the archaeological record are steeped in the medicalization of the body and of corporeal difference as defective and, therefore, requiring correction by practitioners and/or accommodation by caregivers. A series of osteobiographies from historic US institutions (e.g., Erie County Poorhouse, Buffalo, New York) are presented with their contextually rich documentary and archaeological archives. These case studies critically evaluate the potential for socially perceived corporeal difference, its historical assignment as impairment, and the function of this social, and often political, evaluation. Rather than seeking to establish social accommodation, or a lack thereof, these analyses center the ingenuity, resilience, and social negotiations of the individuals whose skeletons present with corporeal difference (e.g., pathologies, trauma) as perceived through the bio/archaeologist’s lens. They counter the notion of disability (a disadvantageous physical or mental condition that limits a person’s activities), sometimes in spite of dis-ablement (social prevention of individuals to full participation in society). The inclusion of a social disability framework in bio/archaeology avoids the exclusion of individual experience with perceived pathology and presents a more historical narrative of corporeal difference in the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Thinking with, through, and against Archaeology’s Politics of Knowledge

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40026.0