Doing Historical Bioarchaeology

Examples of how to conduct bioarchaeological research that integrates archival records with skeletal evidence

Doing Historical Bioarchaeology explores ways researchers can utilize and approach archival records alongside skeletal evidence. In this book, case studies demonstrate how this dual approach can generate new research questions, methodologies, and interpretations as well as address ethical questions about colonial collecting practices and biases in both skeletal and textual records. Contributors illustrate how historical bioarchaeology can humanize individuals in anatomical collections, reveal the obstetric violence present in early American gynecology, and navigate the ethics of pairing materials that originated from different times or places.

With the goal of fostering debate and highlighting diverse perspectives, this volume features contributors who engage with a wide range of datasets—an anatomical collection in Sweden, a Spanish colonial site in New Mexico, a nineteenth-century poorhouse in New York, archives in medieval Portugal, and many more. Together, these studies underscore the field's rapid growth and the importance of continued dialogue among practitioners.