Theme:
4. People of the Present – Peopling the Past
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Advancing a Bioarchaeology of Health Inequality: Recent Developments and Future Directions
Content:
Socioeconomic status is one of the strongest determinants of health today. People at the bottom of the social gradient are not only more likely to die at a younger age, they will also spend more years living with ill health and disability. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the impact of social inequities in terms of disease risks and outcomes, especially for the very marginalised members of society. The pandemic also highlighted the way in which other aspects of identity, such as ethnicity and gender, intersect with status to create structural inequities, which lead to disparities in chronic and infectious disease risk and mortality.
Bioarchaeologists are uniquely positioned to examine health inequality in the past. Indeed, for many periods, this is the only source of evidence available for exploring the embodied impact of past structural inequities. The skeleton holds both biographical and intergenerational information concerning body/society interactions and this can be harnessed to explore past adversity and structural violence as a consequence of social inequality. The archaeology of inequality has already made significant contributions to how we conceptualise such disparities in the past, with implications for the present.
In this session we invite speakers whose bioarchaeological research pushes methodological and theoretical boundaries of health inequality research. We are interested in contributions that incorporate recent advancements that address the osteological paradox, biomolecular techniques, and multidisciplinary approaches, including the integration of historical and material evidence. We hope that papers will generate discussion and showcase how the study of inequality in the past can provide unique insights into the range of impacts on people’s health and lifeways.
Keywords:
Human Osteoarchaeology, Inequality, Health, Stress, Bioarchaeology
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:
Anna Moles (Netherlands) 1
Co-organisers:
Sarah Schrader (Netherlands) 2
Rebecca Gowland (United Kingdom) 3
Affiliations:
1. Institute of Archaeology, University of Groningen
2. Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University
3. Department of Archaeology, Durham University
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