Book Reviews

HUMAN REMAINS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: A HANDBOOK. By CharlotteA. Roberts. York, England: Council for BritishArchaeology. 2009. 311 pp. ISBN 978-1-90277-175-5.$35.00 (paper).

The study of human remains has long been a focus ofphysical anthropologists and bioarchaeologists in Ameri-can and Canadian anthropology programs. In Britain,however, the persistence of separate archaeologydepartments has hindered the integration of ‘‘bioarch-aeology’’ or ‘‘osteoarchaeology’’ into archaeologicalresearch, despite the inception in the 1990s of severalmaster’s programs in topics such as funerary archaeol-ogy and paleopathology. Charlotte Roberts’s handbookon archaeological human remains is especially suitedfor use as a textbook in these master’s programsaiming to fill a need for a manual on ‘‘all aspects of therecovery, handling, and study of human remains’’ (backcover).

The book is clearly designed to serve as a course text-book. Each of the eight chapters ends with a short sum-mary and list of ‘‘key learning points.’’ The first twochapters introduce the study of archaeological skeletalremains and related ethical issues. The next two chap-ters concern mortuary behavior and various ways thedead are treated, taphonomy and differential preserva-tion, and the excavation and curation of human remains.The bulk of the book (Chapters 5–7) is devoted to thelaboratory analysis of human remains and encompassesover half the text. A glossary is provided after a briefconcluding chapter.

While the book as a whole has much to recommendit, it is not without weaknesses. For example, in thefirst chapter—‘‘Why Study Human Remains fromArchaeological Sites?’’—Roberts outlines the scope andstructure of the book, provides a brief history of skele-tal studies, and notes significant collections of archaeo-logical and documented skeletons. Although the rest ofthe book implicitly answers the question posed by thechapter’s title, this question is not explicitly addressedat the outset, thereby missing a significant opportunityto capture readers who may question the importanceof studying human remains. Incorporating a few exam-ples to illustrate ways in which human remains con-tribute to our understanding of past peoples wouldaddress the question and form a springboard for thelater chapters, spurring readers to delve further intothe book.

Chapter 2, ‘‘Ethical Concerns and Human Remains,’’focuses on British legal requirements for excavation andretention of human remains for study. The United Statesis used as a comparative case study in a short section(less than three pages) at the end of the chapter. Lawspertaining to excavation of human remains in othercountries are mentioned only in passing. The lack of aninternational focus in this chapter limits the book’s util-ity outside of Britain. Supplemental material concerninglegalities and ethical debates in other countries could beassigned in non-British university courses to remedythis problem. The first half of Chapter 3, ‘‘Disposal and

Preservation of the Dead,’’ is also specific to Britain. Incontrast, in the second half of the chapter, Robertsillustrates the effects of environment on preservationwith examples from around the globe. I must admit Ihave semantic issues with this chapter. Although prob-ably not the author’s intent, ‘‘disposal’’ is used through-out, implying that all treatments of the dead—whethercremation, exposure, or interment in a cemetery orunder a house floor—were principally ways to get rid ofan objectionable corpse. I would prefer to stress howmortuary treatment and surrounding ritual may servemultiple functions, such as celebrating a person’s lifeand role in society, venerating ancestors, or demarcat-ing a group’s territory, among a range of other possibil-ities that might include placing the body in a middenwith the trash.

Although there are numerous factual and grammaticalerrors or contradictions that detract from the text attimes, the book’s primary shortcomings are in the firstthree chapters. The remainder of the book has much tooffer. In Chapter 4, excavation of human remains andsubsequent preanalytical processing and curation areconsidered, aspects infrequently covered in other texts.There is even a section on health and safety, focusing onpotential hazards from exposure to lead or organisms indust or human remains. Instructions, with accompany-ing illustrations, are given for cleaning, labeling, andpacking skeletal remains in bags and boxes. Conserva-tion during and after excavation and collection manage-ment, topics often neglected in osteology or bioarchaeol-ogy courses, are also discussed at length. The portion ofthe book devoted to analysis of skeletal remains isclearly the author’s forte. Beginning in Chapter 5, Rob-erts provides information on working in an osteologylaboratory, the basics of human osteology and bone biol-ogy (including overviews of sex and age determination),paleodemography, metric and nonmetric analyses, andcontextualizing these data. Chapter 6, on paleopathol-ogy, emphasizes ‘‘themes’’ like living environment, diet,work, and conflict rather than the usual descriptions ofdifferent conditions that affect the skeleton. I wasexcited to see this topical treatment, as it fits well withthe ‘‘health and disease’’ module in my own undergrad-uate bioarchaeology course. The last ‘‘analysis’’ chapterconcerns histology, radiography, and biomolecular stud-ies, especially the use of stable isotope and ancientDNA analyses to assess diet, relatedness, or mobility.Rather than advocating wholesale application of thesebiomolecular methods, Roberts stresses that they areinvasive and should be used judiciously to answer broadresearch questions. Such an emphasis at the end of thishandbook is a welcome reminder that human remainsare a nonrenewable resource and provide invaluable in-formation when properly excavated, curated, and ana-lyzed. Thus, the manual goes beyond the classroom toserve as a useful reference for anyone—student or pro-fessional, physical anthropologist or archaeologist—whomight encounter human remains in field or laboratorysettings.

In sum, the strengths of this book outweigh its weak-nesses. It is well illustrated and highly readable, makingit accessible for those lacking expertise in human osteol-ogy or bioarchaeology. With the caveats regarding the

VVC 2009 WILEY-LISS, INC.

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 142:335–339 (2010)

focus on Britain, this handbook draws together a greatdeal of information in a single volume. I will likely use itin my future bioarchaeology courses.

BRENDA J. BAKER

Center for Bioarchaeological ResearchSchool of Human Evolution and Social Change

Arizona State UniversityTempe, Arizona

DOI 10.1002/ajpa.21216Published online 27 October 2009 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com).

PRIMATE CRANIOFACIAL FUNCTION AND BIOLOGY. By ChristopherJ. Vinyard, Matthew J. Ravosa, and Christine E. Wall.New York: Springer. 2008. 496 pp. ISBN 978-0-387-76584-6. $159.00 (hardcover).

Edited books resulting from conference symposiumscan be hit or miss. Some, such as Frederick Grine’s(1988) ‘‘Evolutionary History of the ‘Robust’ Australopi-thecines,’’ become classics in the field. Others seem morelike a collection of ideas that have been published else-where in one form or another or a hodgepodge of worksin progress that lack cohesiveness and leave the readerwithout any real sense of the symposium’s purpose orgoals. I was pleased to discover that ‘‘Primate Craniofa-cial Function and Biology’’ is a ‘‘hit.’’ This volume inhonor of Dr. William L. Hylander is full of insightfulanalyses that leave no doubt as to the vitality ofresearch on primate skull function. It also does a com-mendable job of highlighting the importance ofHylander’s work as a foundation for current and futureresearch in this area.

The breadth of cutting-edge methodologicalapproaches presented in this volume make it a valua-ble introduction to the study of primate skull func-tional morphology. These include studies of bonestrain and muscle recruitment patterns (both corner-stones of Hylander’s own work), muscle scaling pat-terns, bone microstructure and material properties,and food mechanical properties and their relationshipto tooth and jaw morphology. There are modelingstudies as well as in vivo and in vitro research, andthe study subjects encompass a diversity of taxaincluding prosimians, New World monkeys, Old Worldmonkeys, and fossil hominins. There are even studiesof nonprimates such as mice, rabbits, pigs, camelids,and marsupials, all of which present interesting com-parative tests for functional hypotheses of particularprimate features. For example, anthropoid primates,pigs, and camelids all fuse their mandibular symphy-ses. However, strain gauge experiments conducted byHerring et al. (pigs, Chapter 2) and Williams et al.(camelids, Chapter 3) conclude that symphyseal fusionlikely occurred for a different reason in primates(wishboning or lateral transverse bending) than it didin either of the other groups.

Given that many of the authors worked closely withHylander at one time or another, it is not surprisingthat only one chapter (Simons, Chapter 18) does notfocus on the masticatory system. This may be disap-pointing to those wanting a more holistic view of primateskull function, but I do not feel that it is a significantdetraction. The book is still full of interesting andthought-provoking research, albeit with a slightly morelimited scope than the title suggests.

Useful introductions start each of the five majorsections providing clear and concise summaries of theresearch in the subsequent pages. However, someadditional effort on the part of the editors to drawconnections between the studies in each section, andpossibly between sections, would have been valuable.For example, Wang et al. (Chapter 8) suggest thatfused cranial sutures allow the transfer of strainswhereas unfused (patent) sutures do not, and thisagrees with earlier chapters on the mandibular sym-physis in which symphyseal fusion appears to allowthe transfer of strains from balancing-side muscleaction. Drawing such connections would help readerssynthesize research from individual chapters andcome away with a better understanding of the fieldas a whole.

In general, the figures are well selected and add tothe reader’s understanding of the research being pre-sented. However, there are occasional exceptions. Thefigures in the Ross chapter (Chapter 4) have separatelines to indicate the magnitude and direction of themaximum principal strains for chewing on both theleft side and right sides, but it is impossible to distin-guish between the lines for the left and right sides inthe figures. I must surmise that these figures wereoriginally in color and the transfer to black and whiteresulted in the loss of this important information,although even varying the grayscale of the two lineslikely would have been enough to make the distinc-tion. Figure 13.2 in the Dechow et al. chapter(Chapter 13) is another point of confusion. Four boxesare depicted to show differences in directional proper-ties, but the three boxes that are supposed to showorthotropy, transverse isotropy, and isotropy allappear to show orthotropy. Fortunately, the descrip-tion in the caption is well written and one can stillascertain the meaning of these terms.

These minor points aside, I was repeatedlyimpressed with the quality of the work presentedhere, and there are very few chapters from which Idid not learn something new. The diversity and qual-ity of research in this book make it a particularlyuseful resource for new Ph.D. students interested inprimate craniofacial biology as they struggle to iden-tify suitable dissertation topics, although the fairlyhigh price tag will likely keep most students frompurchasing their own copies. This book would also bevaluable for professors and researchers who simplywant to stay up to date on the myriad approachescurrently being undertaken to understand primateskull function, particularly if they have a special in-terest in the masticatory system. For someone not ac-customed to reading about biomechanics, the terminol-ogy can get a bit dense in places, but in general the

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authors do an admirable job defining technical terms,and the index is useful and quite complete.

This book is a fitting tribute to Hylander’s pioneer-ing and influential research. It quickly becomes clearas one moves from one article to the next thatHylander’s influence on this field will be felt for manyyears to come. To the authors’ (and editors’) credit,Hylander’s contributions are often mentioned specifi-cally either in the body of the text or in the acknowl-edgments of each chapter. For example, Williams et al.(Chapter 3) provide an excellent summary ofHylander’s work on anthropoid symphyseal fusion. Inaddition, Chapter 1 by Schmitt et al. recountsHylander’s role in answering Sherwood Washburn’scall for an experimental approach in physical anthro-pology.

The symposium on which this volume is based tookplace at the 2005 meetings of the American Associationof Physical Anthropologists. That was the 75th anniver-

sary of the AAPA, and I recall a poster from those samemeetings in which over 44% of American field primatolo-gists were found to be academic descendants of Wash-burn. It is clear from this book that Bill Hylander hashad an equally profound influence on the study of pri-mate skull function.

PAUL J. CONSTANTINO

Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid PaleobiologyDepartment of AnthropologyThe George Washington UniversityWashington, DC

DOI 10.1002/ajpa.21263Published online 12 March 2010 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com).

BONES AND OCHRE: THE CURIOUS AFTERLIFE OF THE RED

LADY OF PAVILAND. By Marianne Sommer. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press. 2007. 398 pp. ISBN0-674-02499-0. $42.00 (hardcover).

The Red Lady of Paviland is a partial human skeleton,missing its skull, covered in red ochre and associated witha number of possible grave goods (periwinkle shells, ivoryrods, and rings). It was excavated in 1823 by WilliamBuckland at Paviland Cave, or Goat’s Hole, in northernWales. Despite its common appellation, it is an anatomi-cally modern male, now thought to be a Gravettian burial.In this book, Marianne Sommer, a historian of science,presents the ‘‘biography of a scientific object’’ (p. 3). Shedoes not just review the history of research at PavilandCave, but also the role of the skeleton in the constructionand reconstruction of ideas about early human history.She discusses three stages in the production of this knowl-edge: 1) the initial discovery of the skeleton by WilliamBuckland; 2) its reinterpretation by William Sollas in theearly twentieth century, in the light of growing evidenceof human biological and cultural evolution; and 3) the latetwentieth century re-examination of the site by StephenAldhouse-Green and his colleagues.

Sommer states that what was initially importantabout the Red Lady was its status as the first genuinelyfossil human skeleton discovered by a scientist. But itsdiscoverer, William Buckland (1784–1856), was not youraverage scientist. He was the first Reader in Geologyand Mineralogy at Oxford University, but he was also anAnglican churchman and eventually the Dean of West-minster. As such, he was the authority to whom amateurcollectors of fossils and what we now recognize as Palae-olithic artifacts deferred. Since he believed in a literalbiblical interpretation of history, one could make a rea-sonable case that he single-handedly delayed the scien-tific establishment of human antiquity in the BritishIsles by at least thirty years. For him, any humanremains or artifacts associated with so-called extinct ani-mals had to date from the Diluvial Period, that of Noah’sflood, or immediately before it. On the positive side,Buckland was one of the first to emphasize the forma-tional processes behind the fossil bones recovered from

caves and carried out experiments with African hyenasto establish their role in accumulating bones. He usedthese studies to dismiss the possibility that humans hada role in the accumulation of any Pleistocene bones.

For Buckland, the Paviland burial represented a genu-ine archaeological site. As a result, it had to be quiterecent. He originally interpreted the skeleton as that of atax collector, surrounded by his ivory receipts. Eventually,he described it as that of a female and the ochre as a ‘‘scar-let letter’’ identifying the woman as a prostitute or witch.He stressed its burial in a remote, forbidden place, nearan ancient Romano-British camp. In this immortal phrasefrom his Reliquiae Diluvianae (1823), Buckland concludedthat the camp ‘‘seems to throw much light on the charac-ter and date of the woman under consideration; and what-ever may have been her occupation, the vicinity of a campwould afford a motive for residence, as well as the meansof subsistence’’ (cited on p. 65). This is the picture thatmost historians of Palaeolithic research present of thisfind. It was a genuine fossil human burial misinterpretedby its discoverer.

Did the reinterpretation of the site and skeleton byWilliam Sollas (1849–1936) offer a better answer? Sollas,one of Buckland’s successors to the Chair of Geology atOxford, was aware of the ever-increasing evidence offossil humans and their artifacts. He concluded thatthe Red Lady was an Aurignacian male burial, a Cro-Magnon just like those that had been recovered in theDordogne a few decades before. This is much closer tothe modern interpretation but still had a number ofproblems. He fit the skeleton into a racial theory ofhumankind but eventually accepted that it representedone of the possible ancestors of modern Europeans.

The third study discussed is that of a team of research-ers led by Stephen Aldhouse-Green of the University ofWales. This began in 1995 and led to a multidisciplinarymonograph, published in 2000. The goal of their work wasto re-examine the finding and to produce a ‘‘definitivereport’’ on the site. They wanted to conduct new excava-tions but discovered that the relevant deposits had allbeen removed during earlier work or by subsequent scour-ing of the cave by the sea. But by examining the original

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reports and by reanalysis of the findings, they concludedthat the Red Lady was indeed male but dated tothe Gravettian, about 26,000 radiocarbon years ago. Ald-house-Green and his colleagues used the latest methods tore-examine the skeleton and its associated artifacts. Forexample, Brian Sykes carried out a mitochondrial DNAstudy, and Sommer cites the original report that the skele-ton belongs to the dominant mtDNA lineage among mod-ern Europeans. But nowhere does she say which one thisis. The most common mitochondrial haplogroup in West-ern Europe today is H, my own type, but this lineage onlygoes back to around 20,000 years ago. But, once again, sci-ence is not enough. Aldhouse-Green concludes that theRed Lady must have been of high status and possibly ashaman buried in a scared and venerated place. To someextent, this is not that radically different from what Buck-land said almost 180 years before.

The history of the ‘‘establishment of human antiquity’’has been written about before, notably by Donald Gray-son in a book of the same name, as well as by Bowdoin

Van Riper (Men Among the Mammoths, 1993). Both ofthese books, however, are histories of the discovery ofthe Palaeolithic that stress the triumph of science oversuperstition. Instead, Sommer offers a postmodern inter-pretation to examine the construction and ownership ofknowledge about the Red Lady. Clearly, not only wereearlier workers influenced by their social climate, mod-ern researchers are too. Research continues on this find-ing, and no doubt it will continue to swing between rela-tivist or positivist perspectives.

PAMELA R. WILLOUGHBY

Department of AnthropologyUniversity of AlbertaEdmonton, AB, Canada

DOI 10.1002/ajpa.21265Published online 22 February 2010 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com).

BIOARCHAEOLOGY AND IDENTITY IN THE AMERICAS. Edited byKelly J. Knudson and Christopher M. Stojanowski.Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. 2009. 272pp. ISBN 978-0-8130-3348-8. $75.00 (cloth).

Anthropologists reveal and strive to make sense of dif-ferent ways to be human. To this end, the study of iden-tity is especially salient. Ethnographers, for instance,have demonstrated that identities—their formation,transformation, and eradication—communicate a culture’sbeliefs and values and, in so doing, dictate socially accept-able categories of person. Social theorists have also under-scored that contemporary peoples’ identities are shapedby individual experiences of and engagement with theworld. Yet, materializing ancient identities is not for thedata-deficient or theoretically disinclined. Such mayexplain bioarcheologists’ reticence to broach the topic aswell as its reductive treatment in many studies. Thereare, however, a small but growing number of publicationsthat neither avoid nor unduly simplify the topic. Happily,the edited volume Bioarchaeology and Identity in theAmericas is a welcome addition to this corpus.

As Knudson and Stojanowski remark in their intro-duction, bioarcheology will advance understandings ofidentity given ‘‘the attendant time-depth offered by anarcheological chronological framework as well as thedirect engagement of the physical body in the construc-tion of social identity’’ (p. 1). It is contextualized biologi-cal data that allow for consideration of dynamic socialprocesses and principles. Hence, identity and its (re)for-mation are best broached with a biocultural and theoret-ically informed perspective in place. With respect to thelatter, Buikstra and Scott’s Chapter 2 provides an over-view of theoretical concepts central in identity studies.Their clear and accessible synthesis is a springboard forthose with little exposure to the broader literature per-taining to agency, embodiment, personhood, and self-hood. This chapter, however, should not be used as asubstitute by bioarcheologists who endeavor to investi-gate identity. Rather, engagement with primary and ca-nonical writings, despite these sources’ linguistic andconceptual challenges, is essential. In light of the eso-

teric nature of identity theory, the majority of volumecontributors make excellent efforts at grounding abstractideas with empirical evidence. Duncan, for instance,uses notions about embodiment to consider the signifi-cance of Maya cranial modification. One question heasks is ‘‘Are individuals without modified crania some-how less fully embodied members of society than individ-uals with such modification?’’ (p. 177). In answer, Dun-can argues that cranial shaping was one methoddeployed to protect newborns against soul loss, but eth-nographic accounts suggest it was not the only one.Other practices may simply have been less indelible,hence, the absence of shaped crania.

Case studies throughout the volume demonstrate theimportance of examining identity at multiple spatial andsocial scales, from the regional and widespread down tothe local and personal. Part I, with its focus on commu-nity identity and ethnogenesis, includes queries bestanswered by compiling data from the larger group orpopulation. For example, in his study of the northern Pe-ruvian highlands’ Chachapoya region, Nystrom examinescraniometric data to determine the extent of ethnic di-versity prior to Inka conquest. In keeping with archeo-logical and ethnohistoric evidence, which indicates bio-logical and material heterogeneity, genetic models reveal‘‘phenotypically variable populations connected by lim-ited internal gene flow’’ (p. 96). In contrast, the chaptersin Part II deal with individual-oriented issues that speakto (in)congruities within identifiable patterns. I findthese contributions particularly refreshing, in that theystress the importance of scaled-down approaches, as acomplement to the populational perspectives that domi-nate currently in bioarcheology.

Regardless of the scale, however, the varied lines ofevidence that all authors bring together—artifactual,ethnohistoric, and ethnographic—allow for contextuali-zation of biological data and more nuanced interpreta-tions of past practices and beliefs. For example, Knudsonand Blom draw on isotopic signatures, biodistance data,cranial modification styles, and burial information todetermine the extent and nature of Tiwanaku’s influence

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during the Middle Horizon (AD 500–1100). In southernPeru at Chen Chen, they find evidence of immigrantsfrom the Lake Titicaca basin; whereas, local inhabitantsat San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile activelymanipulated interactions with the powerful polity.Torres-Rouff ’s chapter follows, offering a complementwith its analysis of 900 modified crania from seven cem-eteries at San Pedro de Atacama. As she asserts, the endof the Middle Horizon brought social and environmentalinstability and during this time shifting modificationstyles signified reconstitution of Atacamenos’ group identity.

As these two chapters illustrate, the materialization ofethnic identity is focal in the volume. Taken together,authors’ examinations undoubtedly expand the broaderliterature concerned with ethnicity in the past and pres-ent. Stojanowski’s chapter is a case in point. He exam-ines biodistance, archeological, and historical data ‘‘toargue that the Seminole, generally considered 18th cen-tury migrants to Florida, are, in part, biological descend-ants of the pre-Columbian populations of the state’’ (p.60). Their ethnogenesis began during 17th century Span-ish colonization, when demographic collapse resulted inout-migration and fugitivism. While his arguments willcertainly be controversial, he should be commended forconsidering how bioarcheological studies resonate in con-temporary Indian communities.

Despite the volume’s many strengths, I do see someshortcomings. Early on, Buikstra and Scott remark that

identity is ‘‘socially constructed, situational, and fluid’’(p. 26). Such a definition stresses that identity is thecomplex intersection of age, gender, religion, social status,ethnicity, and (dis)ability. It seems, however, that severalchapters stop short of considering identity as plurality. Inthe case of authors’ considerations of ethnicity, forinstance, I wonder how age, gender, and/or class compli-cated identity (re)constitution. Additionally, readers mayquery how those who lack exceptional preservation, richhistoric documentation, and relevant ethnographic analo-gies can effectively contend with issues related to identity.The bar is set high indeed. Nevertheless, these criticismsare not directed toward the methods and theories used byvolume’s contributors. Nor, is my intent to dissuade bio-archeologists from pursuing further investigation of iden-tity. Yes, the endeavor may be difficult, but this volumemakes plain the promise of such research and offers animportant guide for future work.

PAMELA L. GELLER

Department of AnthropologyUniversity of MiamiCoral Gables, FL 33124

DOI 10.1002/ajpa.21277Published online 22 February 2010 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com).

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