The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology provides readers with an overview of the study of ancient disease.
The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology provides readers with an overview of the study of ancient disease.
The volume begins by exploring current methods and techniques employed by paleopathologists as means to highlight the range of data that can be generated, the types of questions that can be methodologically addressed, our current limitations, and goals for the future. Building on these foundations, the volume introduces a range of diseases and conditions that have been noted in the fossil, archaeological, and historical record, offering readers a foundational understanding of pathological conditions, along with their potential etiologies. Importantly, an evolutionary and highly contextualized assessment of diseases and conditions will be presented in order to demonstrate the need for adopting anthropological, biological, and clinical approaches when exploring the past and interpreting the modern world. The volume concludes with the contextualization of paleopathological research. Chapters highlight ways in which analyses of health and disease in skeletal and mummified remains reflect political and social constructs of the past and present. Health and disease are tackled within evolutionary perspectives across deep time and generationally, and the nuanced interplay between disease and behavior is explored.
The volume will be indispensable for archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, and historians, and those in medical fields, as it reflects current scholarship within paleopathology and the field’s impact on our understanding of health and disease in the past, the present, and implications for our future.
1 Introduction; Part I: Applications, Methods, and Techniques in
Paleopathology- 2 The macroscopic study of human skeletal paleopathology; 3
Differential diagnosis and rigor in paleopathology; 4 Epidemiology and
mathematical modeling; 5 Paleohistopathology: History, technical aspects and
diagnostic challenges; 6 Paleoradiology; 7 Isotopes in paleopathology; 8
Genetics and Genomics; 9 Parasitology and paleopathology; 10 Historical
sources, historiography and paleopathology; 11 Osteobiography and case
studies; 12 Mummified remains; Part II: Investigating Diseases and Conditions
of the Past- 13 Sticks and stones may break my bones: Traumatic injuries in
paleopathology; 14 Developmental conditions in paleopathology; 15 Tumors and
neoplastic diseases: Assessing antiquity and pondering prevalence; 16
Treponemal infection; 17 Here and now, there and then: Two mycobacterial
diseases still with us today; 18 Paleopathology of infectious diseases; 19
Metabolic and endocrine diseases; 20 Dental disease; Part III: Theoretical
Approaches and New Directions 21 Ethical considerations for paleopathology;
22 Synthesizing stress in paleopathological perspective: Theory, method,
application; 23 Theoretical approaches to the paleopathology of infants,
children, and adolescents: structural violence as a holistic interpretive
tool in paleopathology; 24 Issues of gender, identity, and agency in
paleopathology; 25 Disability and care in the bioarchaeological record:
meeting the challenges of being human; 26 Defining the margins, embodying the
consequences; 27 Interpreting trauma and social violence from skeletal
remains; 28 The developmental origins of health and disease: Implications for
paleopathology; 29 Disease in the fossil record; 30 Zooarchaeology and the
paleopathological record; 31 Plagues and pandemics; 32 Public perceptions of
paleopathology and the future of outreach; 33 Big pictures in 21st century
paleopathology: Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity.
Anne L. Grauer, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Loyola University Chicago, USA.
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