Reading the Bones: Activity, Biology, and Culture

by Elizabeth Weiss

Overview

What can bones tell us about past lives? Do different bone shapes, sizes, and injuries reveal more about people's genes or about their environments? Reading the Bones tackles this question, guiding readers through one of the most hotly debated topics in bioarchaeology.

Elizabeth Weiss assembles evidence from anthropological work, medical and sports studies, occupational studies, genetic twin studies, and animal research. Examining the most commonly utilized activity pattern indicators in the field, she reevaluates the age-old question of genes versus environment. While cross-sectional geometries frequently inform on mobility, Weiss asks whether these measures may also be influenced by climate-driven body shape adaptions. Entheseal changes—at the locations of muscle attachments—and osteoarthritis indicate wear and tear on joints but are also among the best predictors of age and can be used to reconstruct activity patterns. Weiss also examines the most common stress fractures, such as spondylolysis and clay-shoveler's fracture; stress hernias or Schmorl's nodes; and activity indicator facets like Poirier's facets, Allen's facets, and Baastrup's kissing spines.

Probing deeper into the complex factors that result in the varying anomalies of the human skeleton, this thorough survey of activity indicators in bones helps us understand which markers are mainly due to human biology and which are truly useful in reconstructing lifestyle patterns of the past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813054988
Publisher:	University Press of Florida
Publication date:	10/31/2017
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Weiss, professor of anthropology at San Jose State University, is the author of Paleopathology in Perspective: Bone Health and Disease through Time.
 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Provides key information on the underlying biology of activity patterns and abundant perspectives on the relevant literature. Reading the Bones will pave the way to new, thoughtful research."—Douglas H. Ubelaker, editor of Forensic Science: Current Issues, Future Directions "This is the first volume to take such a comprehensive approach to this timely subject. It will make a wonderful reference book for those working on reconstructing past lifeways."—Marie E. Danforth, University of Southern Mississippi

Interviews

“This is the first volume to take such a comprehensive approach to this timely subject. It will make a wonderful reference book for those working on reconstructing past lifeways.”—Marie E. Danforth, University of Southern Mississippi

“Provides key information on the underlying biology of activity patterns and abundant perspectives on the relevant literature. Reading the Bones will pave the way to new, thoughtful research.”—Douglas H. Ubelaker, editor of Forensic Science: Current Issues, Future Directions

What can bones tell us about past lives? Do different bone shapes, sizes, and injuries reveal more about people’s genes or about their environments? Reading the Bones tackles this question, guiding readers through one of the most hotly debated topics in bioarchaeology.
Elizabeth Weiss assembles evidence from anthropological work, medical and sports studies, occupational studies, genetic twin studies, and animal research. She focuses on skeletal features such as measurements from cross-sectional geometries; entheseal changes, or locations of muscle attachments; osteoarthritis, which has often been thought to result from wear and tear on joints; stress fractures and hernias; and bone facets, which have been thought to come from frequent kneeling, squatting, or weight-bearing. This thorough survey of activity indicators in bones helps us understand which markers are mainly due to human biology and which are truly useful in reconstructing lifestyle patterns of the past.

Editorial Reviews

Succeeds in synthesizing a broad range of explanations of bone’s variation and how to identify and observe them to conduct an efficient and complete preliminary analysis. . . . This book helps to draw the most accurate portrait of past population’s ways of living and it expresses every necessary aspect through a critical review of what has been done and how those analyses and results interact.”—Anthropology Book Forum

From the Publisher