New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care

Introduction: Building a Bioarchaeology of Care.- 1. Providing a context: thinking and theory in the bioarchaeology of care.- SECTION ONE :Case studies of caregiving: testing the boundaries of bioarchaeology of care research.- 2. Using the Index of Care on a Bronze-Age teenager with poliomyelitis or cerebral palsy: from speculation to strong inference.- 3. Cared for or outcast? A case for continuous care in pre-contact U.S. Southwest.- 4. The potential and challenges of constructing a bioarchaeology of care for a person with leprosy in the Late Medieval Period.- 5. Dealing with difference: the osteobiographies of two health-challenged women from medieval Poland.- 6. Surviving trepanation: approaching the relationship of violence and the care of war wounds through a case study from prehistoric Peru.- 7. Inferring disability and care provision in late prehistoric Tennessee.- 8. A post-mortem evaluation of the degree of mobility in an individual with severe kyphoscoliosis using direct digital radiography (DR) and multi-detector computed tomography (MDCT).- SECTION TWO:New horizons in bioarchaeology of care theory and practice.- 9. Mummy studies and the soft tissue evidence of care.- 10. The bioarchaeological evidence for elder care in Roman Britain.- 11. Caring for bodies or simply saving souls: The emergence of institutional care in Spanish Colonial America.- 12. Potential applications of the bioarchaeology of care methodological approach for historic institutionalized populations.- 13. Modeling care in prehistory through an analysis of hunter-gatherer social systems.- 14. Digitised Diseases: seeing beyond the specimen, understanding disease and disability in the past.- 15. What moral and ethical considerations should inform bioarchaeology of care analysis?.- 16. Highlighting the importance of the past: public engagement and communication from a bioarchaeology of care perspective.- CONCLUSION.- 17. The bioarchaeology of care: current status and future directions.

Lorna Tilley came to archaeology with an honours degree in psychology and work experience in areas of health practice, health status and health outcomes assessment, and health policy development. She she was awarded a Graduate Diploma in Archaeology from the Australian National University in 2006, and a PhD from the same institution in 2013. She has been sole or primary author of several articles on the bioarchaeology of care approach; the first of these (Tilley and Oxenham 2011) was awarded Most Influential Paper (2011-2015) by the International Journal of Paleopathology in April 2015. Her book Theory and Practice in the Bioarchaeology of Care (based on her PhD dissertation) was published by Springer in September 2015.

Alecia Schrenk has a MA in Bioarchaeology and is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Department of Anthropology. She has co-organized a symposium focusing on the Index of Care and furthering Bioarchaeology of Care methodology at the Society for American Archaeology 2015 Annual Meeting. She has recently published research on an 18-20 year old female with paraplegia from Bronze Age Tell Abraq, using isotopic analysis to give a perspective on the role that immigration and mobility may have on increased risk of disease and healthcare (Differential diagnosis of a progressive neuromuscular disorder using bioarchaeological and biogeochemical evidence from a bronze age skeleton in the UAE). Her research interests include paleopathology, bioarchaeology of care, the Index of Care, subadult health, and mortuary practices.

"The book is well structured and there is a good balance of case studies applying the approaches developed within the Bioarchaeology of Care. ... The book presents new research in the Bioarchaeology of Care ... . Not only does this book serve as a reference for the application of the Bioarchaeology of Care methodology but it also demonstrates that the discipline is in good shape." (Marta Díaz-Zorita Bonilla, European Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 23 (2), 2020)
"This edited volume demonstrates a maturing of the bioarchaeology of care paradigm, highlighting nuanced, careful theorizing and new avenues of exploration. ... these chapters demonstrate that when this perspective is applied cross-culturally, bioarchaeologists will bring a critical, self-reflexive approach to the analysis and interpretation of results, thereby deepening the intellectual rigor and the value of this paradigm. This edited volume claims a space for this approach in bioarchaeology, and it is awelcome addition to the literature on this topic." (Gwen Robbins Schug, Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 74 (3), 2018)
"Perhaps the most interesting bioarchaeological session to come out of a recent Society for American Archaeology conference symposium has now been published as an edited volume. ... the collection lays bare the methodology behind the case studies in a way that encourages other researchers to employ it as well. ... this volume represents an extremely successful collection of essays that should be on any archaeologist's bookshelf." (Kristina Killgrove, American Antiquity, Vol. 83 (2), 2018)

"I found this book to be a wonderful contribution to not only paleopathology, but the broader discipline of bioarchaeology and anthropology. It offers new depth to the bioarchaeology of care by providing diverse case studies ... . It examines case studies from across the globe and addresses groups that bioarchaeologists often find challenging. ... Tilley and A. Schrenk's volume is well-organized