Introduction: Health and Medicine in Historical Social Contexts.

Archaeologists studying inequality often study social patterns across a village, city, or region comparatively to assess difference based on identity traits, such as race, class, or gender (Flannery [10]; Robin [29]). The late 19th to early 20th centuries featured an escalation of scientific and medical attention to racial difference, same-sex attraction and gender nonconformity, and neurological variation, seeking biological origins and explanations for differences in behavior and appearance. Rather, these categories are created and enacted socially, with biological repercussions that come about through repeated exposure to discrimination, inadequate medical treatment, restricted labor opportunities, segregated housing, and other factors, leading to "a growing body of evidence [that] establishes the primacy of social inequalities in the origin and persistence of racial health disparities" (Gravlee [14]:47). The relationship between social inequalities and biological embodiment is dialectical and cyclical because "social inequalities shape the biology of racialized groups, and embodied inequalities perpetuate a racialized view of human biology" (Gravlee [14]:48). [Extracted from the article]