Main description:

Exploring behaviour through bones has always been a fascinating topic to those that study human remains. Human bodies record and store vast amounts of information about the way we move, where we live, and our experiences of health and socioeconomic circumstances. We see it every day, and experience it, but when it comes to past populations, understanding behaviour is largely mediated by our ability to read it in bones. Behaviour in Our Bones: How Human Behaviour Influences Skeletal Morphology examines how human physical and cultural actions and interactions can be read through careful analyses of skeletal human remains.

This book synthesises the latest research on reconstructing behaviour in the past. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific region of the human body, guiding the reader from head to toe and highlighting how evidence found on the skull, shoulder, thorax, spine, pelvis, and the upper and lower limbs has been used to infer patterns of activity and other behaviour. Chapter authors expertly summarise and critically discuss a range of methodological, theoretical, and interpretive approaches used to read skeletal remains and interpret a wide variety of behaviours, including tool use, locomotion, reproduction, health, pathology, and beyond.

Contents:

1. Introduction: Skeletons in Action: Inferring Behaviour from our Bones
2. Bone Biology and Microscopic Changes in Response to Behaviour
3. Biosocial Complexity and the Skull
4. Activity and the Shoulder: From Soft Tissues to Bare Bones
5. Archery and the Arm
6. Tool use and the hand
7. Behaviour and the bones of the thorax and spine
8. Human Behaviour and the Pelvis
9. Horse riding and the Lower Limbs
10. Locomotion and the foot
11. Injury, Disease & Recovery: Skeletal Adaptations to Immobility & Impairment
12. Acting On What We Have Learned and Moving Forward with Skeletal Behaviour