Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability

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.

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.