Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-24-2025
Publication Title
Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume
178
Issue
June 2025
Pages
106205
Publisher Name
Elsevier
Abstract
The field of paleopathology is closely linked with both archaeology and science and has provided readers of the Journal of Archaeological Science with many articles exploring human and animal health and disease in the past. Along with a brief review of the history of paleopathology, and through an evaluation of contributions to the Journal over the past 50 years, suggestions for future research are offered. These suggestions include incorporating theoretical paradigms emphasizing complex roles that social behavior and environmental contexts play in disease processes, syndemic relationships between diseases and conditions, and avoiding a Cartesian epistemological framework of dualisms (body/culture, nature/nurture) as a means to conceptualize the body as fully entangled within relational entities, rather than as a separate entity upon which all else inter-acts. Critical recognition of ways in which paleopathology, and indeed, archaeology and science, has ignored ethical issues of inequality and perpetuated inequity is also addressed as essential steps towards robust knowledge of life in the past.
Recommended Citation
Anne L. Grauer, Rebecca L. Gowland, Paleopathology in the JAS: Peering back and looking forward, Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 178, 2025, 106205, ISSN 0305-4403, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106205. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440325000548)
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025.
Included in
Animal Diseases Commons, Bacterial Infections and Mycoses Commons, Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons, Environmental Public Health Commons, Immunology and Infectious Disease Commons, Other Life Sciences Commons, Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms Commons
Comments
Author Posting. © The Author(s) 2025. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in International Journal of Paleopathology, Vol. 178, June 2025,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2025.106205