Theme:
5. Theories and methods in archaeology: interactions between disciplines
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
CANCELLED "More than Just Bones” - Understanding Past Human Behaviour through the Study of Human Remains
Content:
Human behaviour is a mental, physical and social activity characterizing the various stages of human life. Past human behaviour can manifest through material objects that had an active role in ancient lives. However, these are only the indirect evidence of once lived people; but their skeletal remains are the most direct way to experience them. Researchers can study bones and their burial context with different scientific methods, but the interpretation of them is far from beyond raw evaluation of metric or morphological data. Social aspects of past human lives are also an essential issue to interpret human remains. We need to consider people’s thoughts and intentions to explain mortuary activity and cause of certain deaths. These are strongly interconnected with past cultural or belief systems which could relate differently to the different segments of the society, the sick or the dead. Cultural systems can also buffer the effect of adaptation to new life strategies or the changing environment and can lead to new habits to overcome different health challenges. Therefore, the presence of certain pathological traits can indicate certain behavioural transformations in interpersonal relations, resource use or child-rearing.
This session intends to explore the role of human behaviour in the formation of burial grounds; how human behaviour continuously changes in different historical time frames. What were the long-term effects of certain cultural customs, how social role influenced the treatment of the body? How can different scientific fields contribute to explore these questions from the recovery of bones on the field to the evaluation of data produced by analytical laboratory methods?
We would welcome case studies or comparative interdisciplinary researches which place the dead at the centre to give an insight into a past society or a historical era.
Keywords:
human remains, bioarchaeology, mortuary activity, paleopathology, archaeothanatology
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Orsolya László (Hungary) 1
Co-organisers:
Tamás Hajdu (Hungary) 2
Mario Novak (Croatia) 3
Ivor Janković (Croatia) 3
Affiliations:
1. Hungarian National Museum, Archaeological Heritage Directorate, Budapest, Hungary
2. Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Anthropology, Budapest, Hungary
3. Institute for Anthropological Research, Zagreb, Croatia
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