Archaeology as Political Action by Randall H. McGuire (original) (raw)
Related papers
A modern, documented human skeletal collection from Greece
Homo-journal of Comparative Human Biology, 2007
The University of Athens Human Skeletal Reference Collection has been created recently and consists of 225 skeletons. The Athens Collection is housed at the Department of Animal and Human Physiology, at the University of Athens, Greece.Documentation that includes age, sex, occupation, and cause of death exists for almost all of the remains in the collection. The remains belong to individuals who lived mainly in the second half of the twentieth century and come from cemeteries in the area of Athens. The demographic composition of the collection, and a description of the documentary and supporting data are presented. This recently established modern collection is of high value for palaeopathologists, skeletal biologists and forensic anthropologists. The importance of such collections for teaching and research is discussed.
Human osteoarchaeology in Greece: research themes, challenges and potential
Archaeological Reports, 2017
The development of human osteoarchaeology in Greece has been the subject of a number of papers (for example Agelarakis 1995; Roberts et al. 2005; Buikstra and Lagia 2009; Lagia et al. 2014). The volume New Directions in the Skeletal Biology of Greece (Schepartz et al. 2009) constituted a milestone in the field by bringing together the work of multiple scholars, employing a diverse thematic focus and stressing the value of the potential of human osteoarchaeology in exploring the past. Recent years have witnessed significant developments in the field across Greece with respect to the research themes explored and the methodological approaches adopted, as well as important institutional changes. These developments are reflected in this review, which focuses on the progress of human osteoarchaeological studies in Greece in the 21st century, the research questions they address, the challenges they face and their envisaged future.
Archaeologists in Greece are currently incorporating more skeletal studies into their research designs by testing hypotheses and drawing inferences about diet and nutrition, health and disease, demography and physical behavior, as well as lifestyle in the past. Current skeletal analyses in the country do not focus only on prehistoric populations; during the last few years, human skeletal material from highly ignored time periods (i.e., the Byzantine and the post-Byzantine) has also contributed to the reconstruction of health patterns in the past.In this study, we present the results of the analysis of human remains from the proto-Byzantine site (6th–7th centuries a.d.) of Sourtara Galaniou Kozanis in northern Greece. Additionally, we intend this research to provide information on specific pathological conditions that are suggestive of stress—either environmentally or culturally induced—during a turbulent era of Greek history, and the impact of these factors on specific age groups, such as subadults. These results are expected to contribute to our relatively restricted knowledge of that era in northern Greece, and, when compared with analyses of other contemporaneous populations, help us to reconstruct the patterns of life and disease in the country.
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 35, 2021
This paper reports on the MH II/III Burial Cluster II excavated at the MH acropolis of Aghios Ioannis in Boeotia, Greece. The burial ground comprises various funerary structures (tumulus, rectangular enclosure, cist graves) and provides evidence on primary and secondary mortuary treatment. The analysis is based on the remains of 22 individuals and explores issues of health and mortuary practices. The contextual approach of the human osteological remains reveals variations in the treatment at death of different age groups and evidence of differences in mortuary practices according to biological sex and everyday life; results add further to the discussion on the renegotiated individual and collective identities in the mortuary sphere at this formative period for the subsequent Mycenaean era in Boeotia and Mainland Greece.
2021
This paper reports on the MH II/III Burial Cluster II excavated at the MH acropolis of Aghios Ioannis in Boeotia, Greece. The burial ground comprises various funerary structures (tumulus, rectangular enclosure, cist graves) and provides evidence on primary and secondary mortuary treatment. The analysis is based on the remains of 22 individuals and explores issues of health and mortuary practices. The contextual approach of the human osteological remains reveals variations in the treatment at death of different age groups and evidence of differences in mortuary practices according to biological sex and everyday life; results add further to the discussion on the renegotiated individual and collective identities in the mortuary sphere at this formative period for the subsequent Mycenaean era in Boeotia and Mainland Greece.