Paleopathology in the JAS: Peering back and looking forward

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.