Bioarchaeology of the American Southeast: Approaches to Bridging Health and Identity in the Past

A timely update on the state of bioarchaeological research, offering contributions to the archaeology, prehistory, and history of the southeastern United States.

Building on the 1991 publication What Mean These Bones? Studies in Southeastern Bioarchaeology, this new edited collection from Shannon Chappell Hodge and Kristrina A. Shuler marks steady advances over the past three decades in the theory, methodology, and purpose of bioarchaeology in the southeastern United States and across the discipline. With a geographic scope that ranges from Louisiana to South Carolina and a temporal span from early prehistory through the nineteenth century, the coverage aims to be holistic.

Bioarchaeology of the American Southeast: Approaches to Bridging Health and Identity in the Past is organized into two main parts. The first, Context and Culture History in Bioarchaeology, focuses on the fundamentals of archaeology-figuring out who lived at an archaeological site, when they lived there, what they did, and how they lived their lives.

This builds the framework that allows archaeologists to answer deeper questions, such as the ones addressed in the second part, Social Identities in Bioarchaeology. Here contributors explore questions of identity, ethnicity, gender and the status of women, social status, class, power and exploitation, migration, and conflict. These chapters implement and contribute to anthropological theory and showcase improved methods, such as innovative statistical analyses, and incorporate newer technology, including a DNA and geographic information system applications.