Commingled Bodies and Mixed and Communal Identities

The bioarchaeological analysis of commingled and fragmented skeletons would seem to inhibit the development of significant research questions that are informed by theoretical insights from the social sciences, but the opposite is more likely to be the case. This is because the mixed and broken bones require that researchers avoid simply offering descriptions of the skeletal assemblage; they must endeavor to articulate a research agenda informed, in large part, by expectations derived from a variety of social theories that aid in explaining how human societies and individuals are constituted. Further, the constitution of individuals and societies is of interest to bioarchaeologists because we aim to evaluate how those processes structure health outcomes in their broadest sense and simultaneously how those morbidity and dietary profiles structure societies and shape the human condition. Those insights are shaped by incorporating perspectives from social theory that require us to deeply evaluate issues such as the construction of individual and community identity, gender and its relationship (if at all) to skeletal sex determinations, and how, for example, the body might serve as an extended artifact, fostering, maintaining, and at times diminishing social ties. Those themes and others are more fully explicated when bioarchaeologists analyze both intact and commingled human remains.