Contact between separate human cultures have led to some significant adaptive transitions of humankind, particularly the collision between the Eastern and the Western Hemispheres beginning in A.D. 1492. Still, conquest and colonialism were not understood scientifically, long entwined with incomplete histories and assumptions regarding Native demographic collapse. Bioarchaeological studies of human remains have shed light on contact, including the realization that contact and colonialism were phenomenon not limited to the Columbian exchange.
Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed delves into bioarchaeology contact through new research of colonial encounters, culture contact, and colonialism from diverse areas. The chapters revolve around key questions: how did contact and colonialism produce dissimilar biocultural outcomes? How did colonialism unfold among regions and peoples not yet well studied, such as far southern South America, Africa, and the Near East? How were the colonizers transformed by these events In what ways did native peoples fight, cope, survive, thrive, or perish in colonial worlds? Fourteen chapters bring together lines of evidence anchored around the human skeleton to demonstrate remarkable variations in the outcome of contact—from twentieth century South America to Dynastic ancient Egypt, South Africa, Mesoamerica, Peru, the Roman world, and the southeast United States. These works provide an initial glimpse of the enduring global footprint of contact and colonialism over the last two thousand years. Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed makes the case that the bioarchaeology of contact, though a balanced integration between human biology, paleopathology, mortuary archaeology, history, and social theory, can uncover a previously unknown range of human experiences and histories.
