Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Mind the Gap: Bridging Disability Studies and Bioarchaeology—An Introduction

   • Jennifer F. Byrnes, Jennifer L. Muller

   Pages 1-15

3. Theoretical Perspectives on Impairment and Disability

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. Accommodating Critical Disability Studies in Bioarchaeology

      • Russell Shuttleworth, Helen Meekosha

      Pages 19-38

   3. Consideration of Disability from the Perspective of the Medical Model

      • Susan E. Roush

      Pages 39-55

   4. Historiography of Disablement and the South Asian Context: The Case of Shah Daula’s Chuhas

      • Shilpaa Anand

      Pages 57-74

4. Ethnohistorical Interpretations: Ability, Disability, and Alternate Ability

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 75-75

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   2. Differently Abled: Africanisms, Disability, and Power in the Age of Transatlantic Slavery

      • Jenifer L. Barclay

      Pages 77-94

   3. Kojo’s Dis/Ability: The Interpretation of Spinal Pathology in the Context of an Eighteenth-Century Jamaican Maroon Community

      • David A. Ingleman

      Pages 95-117

   4. Rendered Unfit: “Defective” Children in the Erie County Poorhouse

      • Jennifer L. Muller

      Pages 119-138

5. Quantitative Methods in Impairment and Disability: Bioarchaeological Approaches

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 139-139

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   2. The Bioarchaeology of Back Pain

      • Kimberly A. Plomp

      Pages 141-157

   3. Using Population Health Constructs to Explore Impairment and Disability in Knee Osteoarthritis

      • Janet L. Young, Edward D. Lemaire

      Pages 159-182

   4. Quantifying Impairment and Disability in Bioarchaeological Assemblages

      • Ann L.W. Stodder

      Pages 183-200

   5. Injuries, Impairment, and Intersecting Identities: The Poor in Buffalo, NY 1851–1913

      • Jennifer F. Byrnes

      Pages 201-222

6. Case Studies of Impairment and Disability in the Past

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 223-223

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   2. Impairment, Disability, and Identity in the Middle Woodland Period: Life at the Juncture of Achondroplasia, Pregnancy, and Infection

      • Aviva A. Cormier, Jane E. Buikstra

      Pages 225-248

   3. Attempting to Distinguish Impairment from Disability in the Bioarchaeological Record: An Example from DeArmond Mound (40RE12) in East Tennessee

      • Jonathan D. Bethard, Elizabeth A. DiGangi, Lynne P. Sullivan

      Pages 249-267

   4. Anglo-Saxon Concepts of Dis/Ability: Placing Disease at Great Chesterford in Its Wider Context

      • Sonia Zakrzewski, Stephanie Evelyn-Wright, Sarah Inskip

      Pages 269-289

7. Back Matter

   Pages 291-292

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Over the years, impairment has been discussed in bioarchaeology, with some scholars providing carefully contextualized explanations for their causes and consequences. Such investigations typically take a case study approach and focus on the functional aspects of impairments. However, these interpretations are disconnected from disability theory discourse. Other social sciences and the humanities have far surpassed most of anthropology (with the exception of medical anthropology) in their integration of social theories of disability.

This volume has three goals: The first goal of this edited volume is to present theoretical and methodological discussions on impairment and disability. The second goal of this volume is to emphasize the necessity of interdisciplinarity in discussions of impairment and disability within bioarchaeology. The third goal of the volume is to present various methodological approaches to quantifying impairment in skeletonized and mummified remains.

This volume serves to engage scholars from many disciplines in our exploration of disability in the past, with particular emphasis on the bioarchaeological context.

• social theories of impairment and disability in the past
• historical and biological causes of disability
• legal factors driving disability studies within bioarchaeology
• distinction in use of terms impairment and disability
• formulation and use of methods to quantify impairment

• Division of Social Sciences, University of Hawai‘i–West O‘ahu, Kapolei, USA

  Jennifer F. Byrnes

• Department of Anthropology, Ithaca College, Ithaca, USA

  Jennifer L. Muller

Jennifer F. Byrnes is an Assistant Professor in the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi – West Oʻahu, USA. She received her B.S. in Biology from the State University of New York College at Geneseo (2006), and M.A. (2009) and Ph.D. (2015) in Anthropology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has received training in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology. She co-organized a symposium, of which this volume is a product of, entitled Embodying Impairment: Towards a Bioarchaeology of Disability at the American Association of Physical Anthropology 2015 Annual Meeting. She has most recently published articles in the Journal of Forensic Sciences on a collaborate project with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency as well as another research article which presented the practical considerations of portable X-ray fluorescence with osseous materials. She has ongoing research investigating the traumatic injuries and paleopathology of the adult skeletal remains exhumed from the Erie County Poorhouse in Buffalo, NY.

Jennifer L. Muller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Ithaca College, Ithaca, Nw York, USA. She received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo in 2006. Muller’s research embraces the holism of anthropological study, integrating theoretical perspectives and methodologies from the cultural, biological, and archaeological subfields of the discipline. Her research has specifically focused on how discrimination-based inequities impact human biology in African diasporic populations and among the institutionalized poor. Foundational to this research is the understanding that the body is both biological and social, and that the insidious and pervasive attributes of structural violence may assault the body in a multitude of ways. Muller also examines postmortem structural violence; the idea that discriminatory practices continue to harm the poor and marginalized after death. Muller’s dissertation focused on the relationships between traumatic injuries and inequity in the W. Montague Cobb Human Skeletal Collection housed at Howard University in the District of Columbia, USA. Her research on the institutionalized poor has included bioarchaeological and/or historical analysis from New York State poorhouses, including: the Monroe County Poorhouse, Rochester; the Erie County Poorhouse, Buffalo; and the St. Lawrence County Poorhouse, Canton. 

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