In recent years the bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands has seen enormous progress. This new and exciting research is synthesised, contextualised and expanded upon in The Routledge Handbook of Bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. The volume is divided into two broad sections, one dealing with mainland and island Southeast Asia, and a second section dealing with the Pacific islands. A multi-scalar approach is employed to the bio-social dimensions of Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands with contributions alternating between region and/or site specific scales of operation to the individual or personal scale. The more personal level of osteobiographies enriches the understanding of the lived experience in past communities. Including a number of contributions from sub-disciplinary approaches tangential to bioarchaeology the book provides a broad theoretical and methodological approach. Providing new information on the globally relevant topics of farming, population mobility, subsistence and health, no other volume provides such a range of coverage on these important themes.
This book addresses the controversy over the origins of the Bronze Age of Southeast Asia. Charles Higham provides a systematic and regional presentation of the current evidence. He suggests that the adoption of metallurgy in the region followed a period of growing exchange with China. Higham then traces the development of Bronze Age cultures, identifying regionality and innovation, and suggesting how and why distinct cultures developed. This book is the first comprehensive study of the period, placed within a broader comparative framework.
Interprets human skeletal collections from a region where millets, rice, and several other important cereals were cultivated, leading to attendant forms of agricultural development that were accompanied by significant technological innovations. The contributors follow the diffusion of these advanced ideas to other parts of Asia, and unravel a maze of population movements. In addition, they explore the biological implications of relatively rare subsistence strategies more or less unique to East Asia: millet agriculture, mobile pastoralism with limited cereal farming, and rice farming combined with reliance on marine resources.
The Handbook of East and Southeast Asian Archaeology focuses on the material culture and lifeways of the peoples of prehistoric and early historic East and Southeast Asia; their origins, behavior and identities as well as their biological, linguistic and cultural differences and commonalities. Emphasis is placed upon the interpretation of material culture to illuminate and explain social processes and relationships as well as behavior, technology, patterns and mechanisms of long-term change and chronology, in addition to the intellectual history of archaeology as a discipline in this diverse region. The Handbook augments archaeologically-focused chapters contributed by regional scholars by providing histories of research and intellectual traditions, and by maintaining a broadly comparative perspective. Archaeologically-derived data are emphasized with text-based documentary information, provided to complement interpretations of material culture. The Handbook is not restricted to art historical or purely descriptive perspectives; its geographical coverage includes the modern nation-states of China, Mongolia, Far Eastern Russia, North and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and East Timor.
As researchers become increasingly interested in studying the lives of children in antiquity, this volume argues for the importance of a collaborative biocultural approach. Contributors draw on fields including skeletal biology and physiology, archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, pediatrics, and psychology to show that a diversity of research methods is the best way to illuminate the complexities of childhood. Contributors and case studies span the globe with locations including Egypt, Turkey, Italy, England, Japan, Peru, Bolivia, Canada, and the United States. Time periods range from the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution. Leading experts in the bioarchaeology of childhood investigate breastfeeding and weaning trends of the past 10,000 years; mortuary data from child burials; skeletal trauma and stress events; bone size, shape, and growth; plasticity; and dietary histories. Emphasizing a life course approach and developmental perspective, this volume's interdisciplinary nature marks a paradigm shift in the way children of the past are studied. It points the way forward to a better understanding of childhood as a dynamic lived experience both physically and socially. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen Contributors: Sabrina C. Agarwal | Patrick Beauchesne | Tina Moffat | Tracy Prowse | Dan Temple | Marla Toyne | Haagen D. Klaus | Siân Halcrow | Raelene Inglis | Rebecca Gowland | Sophie L. Newman | Jessica Pearson | James H. Gosman | David A. Raichlen | Tim Ryan | Tosha L. Dupras | Lana J. Williams | Sandra M. Wheeler | Carl Henrik Langebaek Rueda | Melanie J. Miller
From Bronze Age Thailand to Viking Iceland, from an Egyptian oasis to a family farm in Canada, The Bioarchaeology of Individuals invites readers to unearth the daily lives of people throughout history. Covering a span of more than four thousand years of human history and focusing on individuals who lived between 3200 BC and the nineteenth century, the essays in this book examine the lives of nomads, warriors, artisans, farmers, and healers. The contributors employ a wide range of tools, including traditional macroscopic skeletal analysis, bone chemistry, ancient DNA, grave contexts, and local legends, sagas, and other historical information. The collection as a whole presents a series of osteobiographies--profiles of the lives of specific individuals whose remains were excavated from archaeological sites. The result offers a more "personal" approach to mortuary archaeology; this is a book about people--not just bones.
Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology, where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations. Based on original fieldwork, this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon – its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism, based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions, it examines the roles of life forces, souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming, sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication, touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies, world religion, and the state. Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research, the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences.
Over the past 20 years there has been increased research traction in the anthropology of childhood. However, infancy, the pregnant body and motherhood continue to be marginalised. This book will focus on the mother-infant relationship and the variable constructions of this dyad across cultures, including conceptualisations of the pregnant body, the beginnings of life, and implications for health. This is particularly topical because there is a burgeoning awareness within anthropology regarding the centrality of mother-infant interactions for understanding the evolution of our species, infant and maternal health and care strategies, epigenetic change, and biological and social development. This book will bring together cultural and biological anthropologists and archaeologists to examine the infant-maternal interface in past societies. It will showcase innovative theoretical and methodological approaches towards understanding societal constructions of foetal, infant and maternal bodies. It will emphasise their interconnectivity and will explore the broader significance of the mother/infant nexus for overall population well-being.
This book is the first of its kind, combining international perspectives on the current ethical considerations and challenges facing bioarchaeologists in the recovery, analysis, curation, and display of human remains. It explores how museum curators, commercial practitioners, forensic anthropologists, and bioarchaeologists deal with ethical issues pertaining to human remains in traditional and digital settings around the world. The book not only raises key ethical questions concerning the study, display, and curation of skeletal remains that bioarchaeologists must face and overcome in different countries, but also explores how this global community can work together to increase awareness of similar and, indeed, disparate ethical considerations around the world and how they can be addressed in working practices. The key aspects addressed include ethics in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology, the excavation, curation, and display of human remains, repatriation, and new imaging techniques. As such, the book offers an ideal guide for students and practitioners in the fields of bioarchaeology, osteoarchaeology, forensic anthropology, medical anthropology, archaeology, anatomy, museum and archive studies, and philosophy, detailing how some ethical dilemmas have been addressed and which future dilemmas need to be considered.