2 Theory for a Bioarchaeology of Community: Potentials, Practices, and Pitfalls

This chapter is an exploration of theory and practice that could be useful for the articulation of a “bioarchaeology of community. ” “Community” is a more complex and vexing concept than meets the eye, and its meaning has changed significantly over the past few centuries. This chapter reviews the varied meanings of community in the recent past, evaluates archaeological understandings of community, and explores current uses of social theory in bioarchaeology. Lastly, I lay out a potential theoretical and ethical roadmap for bioarchaeologists who wish to investigate past communities. [Bioarchaeology, Community, Theory, Ethics] Bioarchaeology is in an interesting and creative, if perhaps tenuous, theoretical moment, as evidenced by this volume and recent examples in the literature (Agarwal and Glencross 2011; Baadsgaard et al. 2011; Knudson and Stojanowski 2008; Tilley 2015). More bioarchaeologists are employing archaeological and sociocultural theory in their work than ever before. These bioarchaeologists are also reflexively crafting their research around sociocultural issues, and re-evaluating received disciplinary premises about how they should engage with both the human remains of the past and their resonance in the present (Boutin 2011; Deskaj this volume; Geller 2006; Martin et al. 2013). A bioarchaeology of community can be a robust addition to this trend in the field, if its practitioners are prepared to stretch their scientific training into new spheres, ones where questions of the social—relationships between individuals, their kin and ancestors, the structures of power and control that limited people, and the dynamic cultural features that engendered change—are allowed to set the tone for their research. Bioarchaeology, however, exhibits a longer record of hewing to an objective and materialist scientific tradition, where empirical analyses and interpretations have come from the bottom, or the bones, up (see Buikstra and Beck 2006 and Larsen 1997). In other words, bioarchaeologists have conventionally read the features that may be discerned from human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts, then suggested interpretations based on foundational research linking the morphological and chemical properties of bone to lived experiences, from the dietary, to the physiologically stressed, and even to questions of identity in the past. Bioarchaeology, though, has never been solely a descriptive science; rather, the last four decades of its existence have clearly shown that the practice of bioarchaeology is rooted in both archaeological and anthropological approaches to the study of human remains. Despite this, there has traditionally been an antior atheoretical ethos in bioarchaeology—when it has come to social theory. Certainly, there is nothing inherently wrong with a bioarchaeology that is both hypothesisdriven and geared toward “anthropological problem solving” (Buikstra 2006a:xviii). If bioarchaeologists want to explore issues around community, though, I believe engagement with social theory is required, something that is a relatively newer practice in the field. Below, too, I will assert, as others have done before me, that bioarchaeology is and has been a deeply processual endeavor (Buikstra 2006a:xviii). Yet, when bioarchaeology has considered cultural issues it has not, at least until recently, done so in a way driven by the use and consideration of Volume editors: Sara L. Juengst and Sara K. Becker, Volume 28: The Bioarchaeology of Community ARCHEOLOGICAL PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, Vol. 28, pp. 13–23, ISSN 1551-823X, online ISSN 1551-8248. C © 2017 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/apaa.12085. 14 Ann M. Kakaliouras sociocultural theory. The biocultural approach (see bioarchaeological contributions to Goodman and Leatherman 1998 and also Martin et al. 2013, among others) is a lively and strong exception to this trend, but here I would like to reach even further toward the sociocultural, and suggest that more than a “biocultural” approach, what some bioarchaeologists seem to be reaching for is a sociohistorical bedrock for their scientific and interpretive work, one that of course would not exist without the influence of those who do bioculturally oriented and archaeologically contextualized work1. I define sociohistorical in this context as a deeper attention to not only how contemporary social theory may inform bioarchaeology, but to how bioarchaeologists can and should be as historically and culturally specific as possible in their interpretations, even in the absence of written histories. Bioarchaeologists have all too often employed a Tylorian comparative method to ground their interpretations in something that is already known, such as a cultural practice that leaves marks on bone, or a set of behaviors that are expressed skeletally in similar ways, even if those instances are far from the places and times they study. Buikstra (2006a) and Goldstein (2006:377) have long called for bioarchaeology to be a deeply contextual endeavor, and here I wish to stretch a smidgen past that, and recommend that bioarchaeologists historically contextualize their work as well, even if that means being left in a place of not knowing the culturally specific significance of a given feature, adaptation, or cultural modification. I will discuss the potential for “sociohistorical” bioarchaeology below, but it is this attention to historical and cultural specificity that will, in my estimation, most effectively ground a bioarchaeology of community, or any kind of bioarchaeology that wishes to concern itself primarily with the recovery and reconstruction of sociocultural relationships in the past. If these approaches are to take hold and influence research in and outside of bioarchaeology, scholars should be open to further theoretical and cultural exploration. This chapter, then, is a theoretical consideration of the “bioarchaeology of community” in three parts—or, in archaeological parlance, phases, or, in “sociocultural-ese”— movements. First, I will critically consider the concept of “community,“ specifically how it has been employed in anthropology as a whole, as well as in archaeology. I will evaluate the possibilities of a bioarchaeology of community given Canuto and Yaeger’s (2000) earlier call for an archaeology of community. Second, I will enumerate the particular history of how bioarchaeology has gotten to a place where we are considering multiple socially and culturally oriented “bioarchaeologies,” borrowing from Buikstra, Baadsgaard, and Boutin (2011:9), and framing at least some of our research in the context of social theories little used in the field before the last decade or so (e.g., Knudson and Stojanowski 2008). Last, I will end by discussing both disciplinary and ethical potentials and pitfalls, as at least some bioarchaeologists, many represented in this volume, attempt to move forward in establishing a “bioarchaeology of community. ” Each of these topics clearly deserves a much longer exposition, and I very much hope readers will see them as initial sketches for understanding where we have come from theoretically, and to where we might proceed. Part of this chapter will still tell a rather cautionary tale, but in bioarchaeology’s current disciplinary and theoretical context, there is a good deal of interesting work that can be done—if it is done carefully—toward forging a “Bioarchaeology of Community. ” The Many Meanings of Community Why a “bioarchaeology of community” and why now? Before examining the ways community has gained currency within sociocultural anthropology and archaeology, I want to present some cultural and etymological information courtesy of Raymond Williams’