Abstract
Growing interest in bioarchaeology and its ability to address complex questions tied to social and biological identities in the past has led to the development of nuanced methods for evaluating mobility and migration using human skeletal remains. Improving our ability to identify both short- and long-term migration through observations of body modification, analyses of biological distance, and applications of biogeochemical and aDNA techniques has enabled us to move beyond the simple dichotomous classification of past individuals as either local or nonlocal. These approaches have elucidated the complexity of migration processes while also revealing the heterogeneous ways in which individual agents and social groups incorporate, instigate, experience, and adapt to movement. These data have likewise demonstrated the potential of bioarchaeology to reveal broader patterns of social organization, social and ethnic identities, fictive kinship, postmarital residence, gender roles and relations, detailed life courses, responses to climate stress, and pathways of disease transmission. As bioarchaeology continues to contribute to mobility and migration studies, human skeletal data should be further contextualized by the archaeological record and linked to anthropological, archaeological, and bioarchaeological theoretical frameworks as part of more holistic attempts to explain the diversity and dynamics of human movement, interaction, and identity construction among communities in the past.
Similar content being viewed by others
Introduction
In the past, anthropologists tended to view mobility as a deviation from sedentary activities and not as a normative act in its own right (Bakewell 2008; Malkki 1992, 1995). Nevertheless, recognition that all societies possess at least some faction of mobile individuals is growing (Wendrich and Barnard 2008). This awareness has occurred alongside an enhanced appreciation for the importance of investigating human movement not as an event of limited scope and impact but as a multifaceted process guided by a convoluted array of societal structures, agential motivations influenced by culturally specific economic, political, and ideological circumstances, and human responses to external forces such as climate change. As mobility and migration occur within communities whose social organization inevitably changes over time, it follows that these processes too will change, necessitating models of human movement that incorporate fluidity and acknowledge the diversity of human interaction.
Through the act of movement itself, migrants become differentiated from both their population of origin as well as those communities they encounter in their new setting (Zakrzewski 2011). Bioarchaeologists subsequently attempt to identify biological changes associated with mobility and migration but, importantly, seek to contextualize skeletal materials more broadly within the “social construction of the human experience” (Knudson and Stojanowski 2008, p. 398). In this way, the identities of those who both impact and are influenced by the places through which they move as well as the peoples they encounter are not restricted merely to geographic origin or biological distance; instead, they may be conceptualized within markers imbued with social meaning and further shaped by self-perception, including age, sex, gender, status, and ethnicity (Brettell 2008; Díaz-Andreu et al. 2005; Insoll 2007; Knudson and Stojanowski 2008). Such bioarchaeological retrospection requires the implementation of social theory to generate effective explanatory frameworks that contribute to more meaningful interpretations of skeletal data (Martin et al. 2013a).
Using these approaches, and alongside fundamental questions related to how mobility intersects with sex, gender, age, status, ethnicity, religion, and other social categorizations. I first define the nuanced lexicon associated with the anthropology of human movement, discuss the history of anthropological and archaeological approaches to migration theory, and outline bioarchaeological applications to a social theory of migration using identity and gender frameworks. I then review methodological developments in the bioarchaeology of migration, including body modification, ancient DNA, biological distance, and radiogenic and stable isotopes. Within these contexts, I explore how bioarchaeologists can contribute to studies of mobility and migration among past individuals and populations. When coupled with social theory, a more meaningful and applied bioarchaeology emerges that has the potential to reveal the motivations for, logistics behind, and impact of mobility practices, and more holistically, processes of social and biological identity construction.
Defining Mobility and Migration
Mobility and migration are notoriously difficult to define, particularly given the complex task of classifying a continuum of mobile behaviors interpreted through the lens of a limited and biased archaeological record. Moreover, attempts to standardize definitions surrounding human movement have been met with increasing resistance and criticism, particularly as static, boundary-driven assessments largely ignore the dynamic nature of human social organization and the numerous modes of production that typically contribute to the structure of a single community (Anthony 1997; Cabana and Clark 2011; Tsuda et al. 2015; Wendrich and Barnard 2008). Simplified, bimodal terminologies (e.g., mobile vs. sedentary, hunter-gatherer vs. pastoralist, hunter-gatherer vs. farmer) have subsequently facilitated black-and-white models of movement that focus too exclusively on singular motivations for mobility (namely, subsistence) without taking into account the multifaceted incentives and influences beyond such practices, ranging from the ideological, religious, economic, and climatic to fleeing persecution, structural violence, or interpersonal conflict (Tsuda et al. 2015; Wendrich and Barnard 2008).
In lieu of modeling mobility solely along subsistence-based extremes, which necessarily focus on differences while ignoring cross-cultural similarities between groups, a growing number of archaeologists have recognized the utility of generating context-based typologies specific to the populations under investigation (Cabana and Clark 2011; van Dommelen 2014; Wendrich and Barnard 2008). While diversity in motivations surrounding patterns of mobility must certainly be recognized, additional factors structuring human movement—including scale (time and/or distance travelled, group size) and participant identity (the segment of the population engaged in mobility, framed by membership in sex, gender, age, status, or other socially structured categories)—should also be considered (Cabana and Clark 2011; Campbell and Crawford 2012; Frieman et al. 2019; Wendrich and Barnard 2008). Nevertheless, this work is complicated by the challenge of generating terminology that adequately encapsulates the variability and fluidity of mobile behaviors while at the same time recognizing that the development of any such vocabulary inevitably reduces this complexity into rigid categories that may oversimplify the very cultures we seek to better understand. How, then, do we move forward?
Minimalist definitions have recently been explored as a means of instigating interdisciplinary and inclusive conversations surrounding mobility and migration. Wendrich and Barnard (2008, p. 5) broadly define mobility as the “capacity and need for movement from place to place.” This characterization is purposefully vague in its emphasis on movement but little else; the authors carefully avoid mention of any motivations driving mobile behaviors. This sentiment is echoed by Cabana and Clark (2011, p. 5), who contend that migration must minimally involve “an individual moving from origin to destination,” without conjecture related to motivating factors that may have initiated migration or post-migration outcomes. Such definitions provide a useful common ground from which increasingly detailed descriptors can be established to better facilitate the examination of mobility among past communities and to improve the means by which archaeologists capture the enormous range of mobile behaviors incorporated into the social organization of these groups. As we look to expand and refine minimalistic definitions, scale and participant identity provide a useful starting point.
Scale
A basic distinction in evaluating human movement is scale, or time and distance travelled. Many archaeologists differentiate between past practices of mobility and migration based on scope of movement. First, mobility involves individual or group movement across shorter distances that typically takes place within one’s own cultural and/or political boundaries (Tsuda et al. 2015). Such localized movements are subsequently transient in nature, a temporary and often cyclical pattern of travel (Cabana and Clark 2011) interspersed with stationary periods of variable length for activities ranging from sleep to the production of goods (Wendrich and Barnard 2008). Most patterns of mobility among past communities likely involved short-term movements across shorter distances, in part because these were conducted within well-known interaction spheres and environmental zones (Anthony 1990; Hagerstrand 1967; Lewis 1982; see also Ravenstein 1889). Frequently, mobility is seasonal, part of broader subsistence strategies aimed at accessing resources in different habitats throughout the year. In other cases, information fields (Hagerstrand 1967), which incorporate depth of understanding of place coupled with connections to extended kin relations or other known social groups inhabiting nearby areas, enhance logistical and social support beyond cyclical mobility; thus, even one-way movements associated with residential relocation for economic opportunity or marriage occur across relatively short distances and/or within cultural boundaries (Brummell 1979; Connell et al. 1976).
Migration, on the other hand, is typically defined as a one-way, long-term or permanent relocation of one or more persons following travel across real or perceived political, environmental, or cultural borders (Cabana and Clark 2011; Tsuda et al. 2015). Framing migration as a relocation, however, should not imply that movement occurs as a singular or isolated event in time and space. Instead, migration is better conceptualized as a dynamic, long-term process, one that can span generations (Baker and Tsuda 2015; Bernardini 2011). While traversing such boundaries often requires long-distance travel, substantial socioeconomic or environmental borders may exist nearby; as such, migrations are not always long-distance acts but are inevitably long term in scope. Nonetheless, some anthropologists have begun to question whether our modern conceptions of boundaries adequately reflect those encountered in the past. Bernardini (2011), for instance, argues that prehistoric social landscapes were likely more fluid, political boundaries less defined, and ethnic identities more inclusive. Subsequently, instead of assuming that significant socioeconomic or ideological boundaries must be traversed for migration to take place, archaeologists should acknowledge the possibility of migrations taking place across “politically and economically continuous” landscapes rather than discrete borders (Bernardini 2011, p. 31).
Scale can also refer to the number of individuals engaging in mobile behaviors, and group size represents an important consideration in examining the social structure of mobility or migration practices. Individuals in small mobile groups tend to operate with relative autonomy, albeit with some rudimentary structure tied to shared motivations (Cabana and Clark 2011; Cameron 2013). For instance, a subgroup may be tasked with travel in order to trade local goods for nonlocal products before returning to a base settlement and thus possess a collective goal that motivates their actions. Large mobile groups, on the other hand, must be organized and governed more formally (Cabana and Clark 2011). Due to the complicated logistics of structuring a large mobile group for any length of time, they are unlikely to undertake temporary journeys traditionally associated with mobility and are more likely to engage in long-distance and/or long-term migration.
Participant Identity
The identities of those engaged in mobile behaviors are another key factor that structured these processes in the past. Identity refers to attributes (as well as personal perceptions of such attributes) including age, sex, gender, social standing, and ethnicity, all of which inform an ever-shifting sense of self as individuals navigate different social spheres (Díaz-Andreu et al. 2005; Knudson and Stojanowski 2009). Individual identities are embedded within broader societal structures, or habitus, which are unconsciously internalized and continuously reproduced by participants belonging to that community (Bourdieu 1977, 1990). Correspondingly, the motivations underlying mobility or migration, the agential decisions that take place during movement, and post-relocation behaviors and actions together form a complex interplay between individual identity and social structure, making them fundamentally social processes (Cabana and Clark 2011). Alternatively, others have observed that the ways in which archaeologists conceptualize identity construction among past peoples rely too heavily on Western and/or capitalist constructs that extol individuality (e.g., Boutin 2016; Fowler 2004; Moutafi and Voutsaki 2016) and that instead, collective or relationally formed identity construction may better explain the motivations and subsequent decisions made by social actors (Baustian et al. 2014; Clark and Wilkie 2006; Fowler 2016; Gregoricka 2020a; Hertz 1960; Shanks and Tilley 1982; Sørensen 2013). Bioarchaeologists working to interpret human movement among ancient groups should subsequently recognize social or community identities that may have superseded those of the individual.
Mobile portions of society consist of a variety of identity-based subgroups typically tied to subsistence-based motivations. Logistical mobility refers to the segment(s) of a community that utilize mobile behaviors to seek out food resources that support all group members (Binford 1980; Kelly 1992). Those responsible for obtaining subsistence through mobile foraging or hunting vary cross-culturally and might include the young and/or old, women and/or men, and skill- or kin-based groupings. Logistical mobility differs from transhumance, which refers more specifically to a societal subgroup responsible for guiding the seasonal grazing of herd animals (Jones 2005). Alternatively, movement may involve the entire community, as with residential mobility (Binford 1980; Kelly 1992); from an evolutionary perspective, such mobility may be linked to kin-structured migration or the enhanced tendency for biological (or fictive) kin to engage in mobile behaviors cooperatively as a means of enhancing success and reproductive fitness for the group as a whole (Fix 2004, 2012).
Theoretical Approaches to Migration
To more effectively and systematically understand migration, anthropological theory rooted in socioeconomics and gender can provide a useful tool and starting point for conceptualizing relationships between migrants and the peoples and landscapes with which they interacted, as well as underlying motivations for mobile behaviors. Here, I explore the evolution of cultural anthropological and archaeological thinking regarding mobility and migration and end with recommendations for how bioarchaeologists might utilize theory to better frame interpretations of past human mobility.
Cultural Anthropological Approaches
Anthropology underwent a long period of relative disinterest in migration studies until the 1950s and 1960s, when rapid globalization and subsequent transnational trade agreements instigated new and substantial waves of migrations that caught the attention of anthropological theorists (Horevitz 2009; Kearney 1986). Such migration was initially simplistically characterized as movement away from the traditional, rural countryside toward modernized, developed urban environments where labor was in high demand, later called modernization theory (Brettell 2008; Kearney 1986). The unilineal push-pull dynamic of such movement (Lee 1966) focused on the identity, motivations, and decisions made by individual migrants (Brettell 2008; Horevitz 2009; Kearney 1986). Nevertheless, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, increasing recognition that (expected) development did not necessarily follow urbanization forced theorists to rethink modernization, resulting in a neo-Marxist reframing known as dependency theory (Frank 1967; Kearney 1986). This model focused not on individual actors but on broad, macroeconomic relationships and resultant inequities between underdeveloped, labor-exporting and developed, labor-importing regions, thereby contextualizing migration within a decidedly historical-structural perspective (Kearney 1986).
However, the structural, macrolevel approaches of dependency theory were difficult for anthropologists to apply to the local communities in which they worked, particularly as migrants were depicted as passive pawns controlled by global, capitalist market forces rather than as social agents capable of decision making and instigating change in their own right (Brettell 2008). One offshoot of dependency theory that at least partially addressed such concerns was world-systems theory, which maintained that a modern, capitalist-based world system was a direct product of an economic history stretching back to the late 15th century AD, as Europe began extending its reach beyond its borders (Wallerstein 1974). This European expansion triggered the formation of interdependent long-distance exchange networks, generating a world system that consisted of developed, capital-intensive “core” areas that hegemonically manipulate low-skill migrant laborers from “peripheral” regions as a means to obtain economic surplus (Wallerstein 1974). This extension of dependency theory was viewed favorably by some anthropologists as enabling a more local perspective that shifted focus to peripheral communities.
A second post-dependency model emerged in the 1980s and 1990s known as articulation theory, referring to the articulation between communities receiving immigrants and those sending them (Brettell 2008; Horevitz 2009; Kearney 1986). This model shifted perspective from a worldwide, unitary macroeconomic system to analysis at the community level, which focused on labor derived from household units and the resultant surplus produced by noncapitalist modes of production (Horevitz 2009; Kearney 1986). Peripheral communities were conceptualized as self-sustaining structures that continued to reproduce themselves despite, or perhaps even because of, external influence from imperial, capitalist centers (Horevitz 2009; Kearney 1986). Such a household-based approach appeased those anthropologists dissatisfied with macrolevel paradigms who were eager to link theory to anthropological fieldwork performed within communities at the household level (Horevitz 2009). Nevertheless, critics of articulation theory framed it as not only too narrow in focus but also as perpetuating a view of migrants as “passive pre-capitalists” whose movement away from their home communities was directed solely by external rather than local economic drivers (Horevitz 2009, p. 751).
These criticisms instigated new ways of thinking about articulation, leading to the development of an alternative model known as transnationalism. Anthropologists taking a transnationalist approach acknowledge that migration is not a unidirectional movement in which ties with one’s home region are cut off and assimilation automatically takes place; instead, they contend that such mobility is inherently a social process in which migrants move back and forth between different sociocultural systems, maintaining social relationships with those in their place of origin (Brettell 2008, 2016; Glick Schiller 1995; Glick Schiller et al. 1992). This occurs as migrants increasingly have access to modern communications technology as well as to improved transportation methods as part of the broader impacts of globalization, resulting in the enhanced ability to “transgress geographic, political, and cultural borders” (Brettell 2008, p. 120). The construction of social identity among those migrants consequently involves a complex array of hybrid social influences ranging from local to international (Brettell 2016; Kearney 1995).
Transnationalism and migration have ties to feminist theory as well. Previously, the role of women in migration was generally not considered by scholars, was conceptualized as a secondary or passive role relative to the men they were following, or framed women as nonmigrants who remained in rural, underdeveloped areas while their more mobile male counterparts prompted modernity and change (Brettell 2008; Sheller 2008; Skeldon 1995). Although discussions of gender, gendered inequality, and migration studies began in earnest in the 1980s (e.g., Morokvásic 1984), feminist theorists eventually used transnationalist concepts as a means to bring the integral role of female migrants into greater focus, highlighting pre- and post-migration experiences as well as the impact of their migration on gender relations, family structure, and authority and power (Brettell 2008; Pessar 2003; Pessar and Mahler 2003). Such a gendered lens is especially critical with increasing recognition that economic rationalizations for migration among males do not necessarily mirror the motivations for and subsequent experiences of females (e.g., Kana’iaupuni 2000). Feminist theorists similarly advocate for the incorporation of nationality, ethnicity, class, and sexuality as well as gender into theoretical discussions of migration, concurrently seeking to contextualize these intersecting aspects of identity both socially and historically (Nawyn 2010).
Aspects of transnationalism have nevertheless been challenged by some anthropologists who see little innovation in transnationalist ideas (Horevitz 2009; Kivisto 2001). While acknowledging that modern technology has enhanced communication across borders, they argue that the actions of migrants to preserve social relationships and connections with their place of origin are not a novel outcome of globalization but one that has characterized migration across much of human history (Horevitz 2009; Kivisto 2001). This criticism echoes arguments made by archaeologists that ancient borders should not be conceptualized as discrete boundaries but as more sociopolitically and ideologically fluid than today, which likely affected the ways in which ethnicity and other forms of social identity were constructed and negotiated (e.g., Bernardini 2011). Furthermore, as outlined by Horevitz (2009), it is unclear whether transnational behaviors between a migrant’s homeland and destination would be sustained in the long term due to enhanced assimilation characteristic of subsequent generations (Esser 2004; Levitt et al. 2003).
Archaeological Approaches
Like cultural anthropologists, archaeologists generally avoided migration studies for decades (Anthony 1990; Burmeister 2000; Chapman and Hamerow 1997), contending that migration was of little interest because it could not be assessed through generalized, theoretical principles (e.g., see Renfrew 1982), and because it was so difficult to identify in the archaeological record (Anthony 1990). Migration was often relegated to an oversimplified, explanatory role when archaeologists were confronted with changes to material culture; such changes were perfunctorily attributed to either transcultural diffusion (i.e., movement of ideas and material culture, not people) or to population replacement with the arrival of an incoming, migratory group (Adams 1968; Adams et al. 1978; Anthony 1990; Rouse 1986; Storey and Jones 2011; Trigger 1980, 2003). Such ideas were firmly grounded within a culture-historical approach, corresponding with unsubtle racial undertones that some Indigenous cultures or ethnic groups were incapable of internally driven innovations and so must have adopted ideas from external sources (Trigger 2003, 2006; see, for example, Smith 1915, 1933).
With the advent of the New Archaeology in the 1960s and 1970s, processual approaches replaced efforts to organize past societies into distinct groups based on their material culture and instead emphasized scientific interpretation of archaeological evidence over description (Binford 1962; Johnson 2004). Processual archaeologists were interested in answering big-picture questions of diachronic cultural change through the development of universal, cross-cultural models (Binford, 1962; Trigger 2003). Unlike culture-historical paradigms, ancient human populations were believed to possess the ability to adapt and change themselves, rather than change being driven by external forces including migration and population replacement (Binford 1968). However, as migration could not be universally applied to explain or predict change, processualists ignored or even abandoned migration studies for decades (Adams et al. 1978; Burmeister 2000; Chapman and Hamerow 1997).
Processualism was contested beginning in the 1980s by post-processualists who argued that processual attempts to construct broad, overarching theoretical frameworks were futile, as these interpretations are inherently subjective and biased by the worldview of the archaeologist (Hodder 1982, 2004; Miller and Tilley 1984; Trigger 2006). In particular, post-processualists bemoaned the loss of agency at the expense of reliance on universal paradigms sought by processualists and contended that archaeological data should be heavily contextualized to the specific individuals and groups under investigation (Barrett 2012; Hodder 2004). While these tenets could have opened the door for migration to return as a meaningful topic of study, migration was largely ignored by post-processualists as well (Burmeister 2016; van Dommelen 2014).
Migration continued to be overlooked by American and British archaeologists until Anthony (1990), who maintained that archaeologists recognize the importance of migration but have not approached it effectively, leading to avoidance of the topic. He asserted that while identifying migration archaeologically would require the development of methodological frameworks, archaeologists must focus on the structural conditions within which migration occurs and not on methods or the complex causes of migration (not everyone agreed with this assessment; see, e.g., Chapman and Dolukhanov 1992). The recognition that motivations for migration in prehistory likely extended beyond the economic and into the ideological made it all the more prudent to focus on structure over cause (Anthony 1990). Ten years later, Burmeister (2000) encouraged archaeologists to utilize theory as a means to better understand human migratory behaviors. Nevertheless, while archaeologists since that time have shown more interest in the topic, there is no “integrated theory” for migration (Cabana 2011, p. 25). Similarly, van Dommelen (2014, p. 479) argued that “archaeological understanding of migration as a ‘multilayered process’ is practically non-existent,” and that more emphasis has been placed on simply identifying migration in the past rather than on its underlying motivations and consequences (see also Burmeister 2000).
Conversely, among archaeologists of continental Europe, ongoing culture-historical paradigms have served to preserve migration as an explanatory framework for change (Burmeister 2000, 2016). For many, this model has changed little since its inception and continues to fall into Kossinna (1911)-esque tropes that make oversimplified connections based on assumptions that material culture can be directly equated with biologically homogeneous populations represented as discrete cultural groups (Furholt 2018; Heyd 2017). Other European scholars have employed more complex and holistic frameworks that, while still grounded in culture-history, interject elements of processualism and post-processualism to better socially and structurally contextualize spatial distributions of and diachronic changes to material culture (Anthony 2007; Furholt 2019a; Kristiansen 1989; Kristiansen et al. 2017). Recent advances in ancient DNA (aDNA) analyses have particularly revitalized migration studies, as these data can be linked to associated archaeological, biological, and linguistic evidence at scales ranging from the individual (e.g., Frei et al. 2015) to interactions between broader communities and populations (e.g., Allentoft et al. 2015; Haak et al. 2015; Kristiansen et al. 2017). Nevertheless, simplified interpretations of aDNA datasets risk falling back into outdated culture-historical frames of reference in which migrations are viewed as large-scale, single events composed of biologically closed populations driven by collective agency (Furholt 2018). Instead, care must be taken to recognize migration as a heterogeneous and complex social process best interpreted through engagement with anthropological theory (Anthony 1990; Burmeister 2000; Furholt 2018).
Migration Theory and Bioarchaeology
As Baker and Tsuda (2015) point out, it is rare for discourse to occur between scholars who investigate past and present mobility, largely because it is assumed that the impetus, process, and effects of migration today differ markedly from those in prehistory. Yet considerable potential exists for these ideas to instigate new and more holistic ways of thinking about mobile behaviors. As migration is inherently a dynamic social process (Anthony 1997), some aspects of anthropological and archaeological theoretical frameworks may be complementary and of value to bioarchaeologists, whose own work is predicated on human social behaviors being “written” into bone (e.g., Agarwal and Glencross 2011). For instance, Anthony (1990) contends that we must focus on the structural conditions impacting migration. In this sense, bioarchaeology is uniquely suited to tackling such an assessment; while archaeological evidence might be lacking, indicators of mobility and migration have been embodied in the skeletons of those individuals acting within the confines of societal structures. At the same time, Greenblatt (2010, p. 251) argues that “mobility studies should account…for the tension between individual agency and structural constraint.” As bioarchaeology allows us to examine the individual and social circumstances surrounding biological changes incorporated into bone, skeletons act as a direct link to past peoples performing (or coerced into) migratory behaviors.
These concepts form the core of embodiment theory, in which the body is thought to biologically inscribe the environmental and social influences enacted upon it over the course of an individual’s life. This perspective enables bioarchaeologists to more directly explore the lived experiences of individuals due to the plasticity of the skeleton and its ability to respond and adapt to its biosocial surroundings (Joyce 2005; Larsen 2018; Sofaer 2006). In this way, the bodies of migrants are irreversibly affected by movement, place, and space, and subsequently manifest home, journeyed, and destination environs (Campbell and Crawford 2012) in ways that may be accessible to bioarchaeologists. Embodiment is therefore essential for accessing the identities of migrants who may have been socially marginalized or otherwise archaeologically obscured, including non-elite, female, nonadult, elderly, disabled, and queer bodies (Boutin and Porter 2019; Byrnes and Muller 2017; Geller 2017; Gravlee 2005; Joyce 2005; Lucy 2005; Sofaer 2006). By accessing such identities, bioarchaeologists can reach a more meaningful understanding of the motivations behind past mobility and migration (Tung 2012) that may vary among different segments of society.
Incorporating anthropological theory and bioarchaeology is mired with numerous challenges, as many economic anthropological paradigms have been constructed around capitalist-driven observations of modern migration behaviors and patterns (Horevitz 2009) and thus may not translate fully into precapitalist sociopolitical structures characteristic of past cultures (e.g., see Lamberg-Karlovsky 2009; Ratnagar 2001). Nevertheless, drawing at least partially from these frameworks may enable archaeologists to more effectively explore the manifold motivations for and consequences of migration. In particular, bioarchaeologists can incorporate transnational frameworks to better assess the identities of migrants using the human skeleton, elucidating not just the demographic aspects (sex, age) of those on the move, but also more complex social attributes (e.g., gender, ethnicity) that play into the impetus and outcomes of migratory behaviors (e.g., Frieman et al. 2019). Such markers of individual and social identity are critical pieces of information within transnationalist perspectives, which characterize the borders traversed by migrants as fluid but concurrently as powerful symbols that enforce status and value (Horevitz 2009; Kearney 2004).
Because a person’s social value may decrease after crossing borders (Horevitz 2009), structural violence may similarly be visible in skeletal markers on migrant bodies. Structural violence refers to the normalized harm embedded within and sanctioned by socioeconomic and political structures inflicted upon both individuals and groups, with those most commonly affected belonging to the most vulnerable factions of society (Farmer 2004; Galtung 1969). While such harm may be directly observed as physical violence in the form of traumatic injury (de la Cova 2012, 2017), indirect harm may also be assessed, reflected as long-term, systemic stress across the skeleton (Klaus 2012; Nystrom 2014). This approach offers a particularly useful means to bioarchaeologically assess forced migrations, as coerced mobility may not simply involve physical injury but also endemic physiological or nutritional stress (e.g., Laffoon et al. 2018).
Observations of skeletal markers may similarly reveal changes tied to shifting chronological and social age alongside migration. Known as life course theory, this framework refers to the diachronic examination of experiences that together form the life of an individual, embedded within their particular sociohistorical contexts (Agarwal 2016; Agarwal and Glencross 2011). As human growth and development is continuously shaped by biological, social, and environmental pressures, the trajectory of the life course may correspondingly change as individual developmental plasticity enables variable adaptations dependent on endogenous and exogenous surroundings (Agarwal 2016; Halfon et al. 2014). Subsequently, age-specific patterns of nutrition, health, trauma, stress, or activity can reveal social meanings and behavioral differences behind chronological age, made possible by the accumulation of shared, learned developmental experiences and constraints (Halfon et al. 2014; Sofaer 2011a, b). As human skeletal tissues form at different times throughout an individual’s life, longitudinal data on mobility patterns and its relationship to age of tissue formation—particularly with the ability of biogeochemical signatures from teeth and bone to explicate past geographic residence through life—may concomitantly reveal important information about the ways in which past peoples adapted to environmental and social circumstances and allow bioarchaeologists to better reconstruct the lives of migrants.
The intersection of gender theory in both cultural anthropology and archaeology with transnationalism also provides fruitful ground for bioarchaeologists to meaningfully contribute to migration theory. Gender theorists in cultural anthropology have long recognized the complexities of gender identity formation and negotiation for female migrants, particularly as they must navigate between numerous gender roles across the varying social and spatial environments they inhabit, ranging from small scale (e.g., the individual body) to broader scales of being and interaction (e.g., family, state) (Mahler and Pessar 2001; Pessar 2003). In this way, both male and female migrants may maintain, question, or even reshape gendered hegemonic systems, a process of change that in some cases is instigated by mobility (Pessar and Mahler 2003). Archaeologists interested in gender roles are necessarily limited to material culture to extract the complexities of gender dynamics among past peoples that played out in social structures ranging from subsistence strategies to exchange systems. Nevertheless, as we introduce our own sets of assumptions about task-differentiated, gendered divisions of labor, we must work to avoid perpetuating stereotypes when we characterize the gender roles and structures of communities under archaeological investigation (Conkey and Spector 1984).
In contrast, bioarchaeologists work directly with those bodies that were shaped by gendered social structures, which offer a rich source of information spanning the life course when supplemented by archaeological findings (Geller 2009; Sofaer 2006). Tied to both structural violence and embodiment, “gender theory in bioarchaeology is not about adding discussions of sex or gender into the conversation, but about disentangling our current cultural frameworks of sex/gender roles” (Stone 2020, p. 54). Although bioarchaeologists are equally susceptible to introducing bias into their interpretations of skeletal markers, enhanced recognition of such preconceptions, including moving beyond assumptions of sex and gender binaries (e.g., Geller 2008; Moral 2016) and acknowledging the impact of intersecting gender, ethnic, sexual, and/or class identities on the body (Geller 2017; Kjellström 2014; Torres-Rouff and Knudson 2017; see also Cho et al. 2013; Crenshaw 1991; McCall 2005), can lead to productive assessments of the role of gender among migrants in the archaeological record. These insights can also help bioarchaeologists identify diachronic changes to gender roles and identity as a direct result of migrations and better evaluate the ability of past individuals to engage in mobility in the first place based on gender and other intersecting identities (Cresswell and Uteng 2008; Frieman et al. 2019; Subramanian 2008). In this way, bioarchaeologists have the potential to bridge the gap between anthropological theory and archaeological evidence for mobility and migration.
Contributions of Bioarchaeology to Mobility and Migration Studies
Despite anthropological observations of a complex continuum of temporary and long-term mobile and migratory behaviors, identifying these movements in the archaeological record remains a challenge. This is largely due to our inability to detect short-term or small/subgroup mobility archaeologically, as these behaviors rarely generated detectable forms of material culture or substantial changes to residential camps or settlements (Adams et al. 1978; Anthony 1990; Burmeister 2000; Cabana and Clark 2011; Tsuda et al. 2015). Conversely, large-scale or long-term migration in the past necessarily produced more considerable, perceptible changes to the archaeological record, particularly if significant boundaries (sociocultural, political, economic, ideological) were traversed (Burmeister 2000; Cameron 2013; Clark 2001; Tsuda et al. 2015). Nevertheless, though more archaeologically visible, major migrations occurred only infrequently relative to the commonality of localized mobility (Cabana and Clark 2011; Cameron 2013).
Because of this issue, it has long been thought that archaeologists cannot adequately recognize small-scale mobility or, in some cases, even larger-scale migratory movements that took place without accompanying, significant shifts in cultural remains. Even with the presence of material culture seemingly indicative of mobility, it remains difficult to tease apart whether foreign goods were simply traded across long distances or if local imitations were produced as part of cross-cultural emulation strategies (Rouse 1986; Stein 1999). As a result, the vast majority of human movement in the past is obscured from view, representing an important yet largely invisible aspect of human behavior and social organization among ancient populations. To overcome these challenges, we must pursue innovative ways of approaching mobility and migration using interdisciplinary perspectives and by developing new techniques that advance traditional anthropological approaches. Bioarchaeology in particular holds great potential for facilitating research on human movement and has been at the forefront of mobility research.
Bioarchaeology is well suited to examining mobile behaviors among past human groups by taking a fundamentally different perspective of scale than archaeological approaches. Bioarchaeologists (initially) collect data at the level of the individual (Agarwal 2016), while archaeologists generally examine the past at the community level, extrapolating evidence using archaeological features and material culture typically disassociated from specific persons and instead viewed as broadly representative of the collective. From bioarchaeological data come the compilation of individual life histories that document a detailed bionarrative from infancy into childhood and later adulthood (Zvelebil and Weber 2013). This osteobiographical perspective lends itself to examining smaller-scale movements undertaken throughout the life course (Hosek and Robb 2019; Stodder and Palkovich 2012). Moreover, the recognition of variations in mobility between individuals of the same community has the potential to identify intrasocietal, subgroup movements (e.g., logistical mobility, transhumance) previously unrecognized in archaeological groups (e.g., Bentley and Knipper 2005; Gerling et al. 2012).
Bioarchaeologists then assemble individual data points to construct more generalized patterns regarding diet, health, activity patterns, relatedness, and overall lifestyle within and across communities, populations, and generations as skeletal data are contextualized within the broader archaeological record. In this way, bioarchaeologists may recognize not only short-term or temporary mobility but also differentiate these movements from larger-scale migratory relocations. Bioarchaeologists subsequently rely heavily on group-level data produced by archaeologists to better frame biological evidence.
Addressing Migration in the Bioarchaeological Record
Numerous methodological approaches are used by bioarchaeologists to better evaluate the embodiment of mobility and migration among past populations. These approaches include body modification (cranial, dental, and infra-cranial), ancient DNA analyses, biodistance (craniometric, dental metric, and cranial and dental nonmetric trait) analyses, and radiogenic and stable isotope analyses.
Body Modification
Body modification among ancient peoples was a strategic, symbolic act in which individuals chose to permanently refashion their own (or others’) physical bodies, not only for aesthetic purposes but to convey social meaning (Agarwal and Glencross 2011; Joyce 2005; Sofaer 2006). Through the intentional manipulation of one’s biological form, an individual could display their belonging to a particular ethnic, kin, or status group, often in highly visible and unalterable ways. As group affiliation and social identity can be tied to the overt shaping of body parts by means of embodiment (Geller 2009; Joyce 2005; Meskell and Joyce 2003), it follows that those moving to new regions might exhibit modified skeletal features distinct from that of the local population, enabling bioarchaeologists to identify potential migrants.
Cranial Modification
The transformation of the head is perhaps the most studied form of body modification. Purposefully inflicted, socially sanctioned practices that reshaped the human skull have been observed cross-culturally over at least 13,000 years of human history (Zhang et al. 2019). The practice necessitates the intentional application of persistent pressure to the cranial vault during early childhood, typically using a combination of straps, pads, and/or boards secured at particular angles to encourage the redirection of skull development and eventual permanent modification (Antón 1989; Blom 2005; Tiesler 2014).
Parents or other caregivers, and not the young child who underwent these long-term procedures, would have been the primary drivers controlling the ways that cranial modification was carried out (Torres-Rouff 2020). This decision was not made in isolation but was instead driven by societal norms and power relations negotiated in complex ways by and between community members. The end result of these negotiations was an intentionally shaped head that may have acted as a rite of passage to formally and symbolically initiate children as fully fledged members of the community or to protect a newly “ensouled” infant (Duncan and Hofling 2011, p. 203; Geller 2011; Tiesler 2014; Tiesler and Zabala 2017), or it may have delineated complex social affiliations including kin relationships, ethnicity, economic status, or social standing (Blom 2005; Hoshower et al. 1995; Lozada 2011b; Torres-Rouff 2002; Zhang et al. 2019). This forced assertion of social identity—physically inscribed onto the bodies and bones of these individuals and carried throughout the life course – would have been a powerful identifier for those migrating across sociocultural and political boundaries as they encountered other populations with unmodified skulls or different forms of cranial modification.
Dental Modification
Dental modification was a geographically and temporally widespread practice undertaken by many different cultural groups over thousands of years (Alt and Pichler 1998; Milner and Larsen 1991). Dental modification refers to the deliberate, non-therapeutic changes made to one or more teeth to alter crown morphology (via filing or notching), enamel color (dyeing), or tooth number (ablation), as well as to embed decorative elements into the labial surface (inlays) (Burnett and Irish 2017). In most cases, dental modification targets permanent anterior teeth, often with a focus on the more conspicuous maxillary dentition (Burnett and Irish 2017). Correspondingly, this practice was thought to signify aesthetic modification associated with culturally specific beauty standards, as a means of preventing harm or illness, or more symbolically and ideologically as an explicit marker of maturation (rite of passage), occupation, social status, gender identity, or group/ethnic/kin affiliation (Geller 2006; Larsen 2017; Mower 1999; Tiesler et al. 2017; Willman et al. 2016) that may distinguish locals from nonlocals as part of processes tied to mobility or migration.
Infra-Cranial Modification
Infra-cranial aspects of the skeleton may similarly be altered in response to culturally induced reshaping, which typically begins at a young age. Clinically and bioarchaeologically recorded alterations are largely confined to the manipulation (and hence, submission and ideological domination) of female bodies, including modifications to the neck (e.g., Chawanaputorn et al. 2007; Keshishian 1979), torso (Gibson 2015, 2017; Groves et al. 2003; Stone 2012), and feet (Berger et al. 2019; Cummings et al. 1997; Lee 2019). In addition to chronic pain and other complications, these practices served to reduce mobility among those whose bodies were reshaped; as such, it may be unlikely that infra-cranial skeletal modifications would act as productive indicators of movement among past individuals except under unusual circumstances.
Ancient DNA Analyses
In the last decade, ancient DNA (aDNA) analyses of human skeletal tissues have played an increasingly important role in investigations of migration among past populations, both in identifying individual migrants as well as revealing broader forms of interaction and movement between populations across wide geographic expanses (Nieves-Colón and Stone 2019). Ancient DNA refers to genetic material obtained from the cellular remains of dead organisms that is extremely degraded, fragile, and scarce (Raff 2019), with endogenous DNA typically comprising less than 1% of a sample extract (Pinhasi et al. 2015). Degradation occurs because of postmortem environmental conditions affecting these biomolecules, including temperature, humidity, soil and groundwater pH, exposure to oxygen or water, and microbe activity (Burger et al. 1999; Lindahl 1993; Misner et al. 2009; Smith et al. 2003), and because cells in a deceased organism are no longer capable of DNA repair (Raff 2019). This results in fragmented and chemically altered DNA (Briggs et al. 2007; Nieves-Colón and Stone 2019; Sawyer et al. 2012).
Nevertheless, under particular environmental conditions, fragments of endogenous DNA can remain preserved for thousands or even tens of thousands of years (Goodwin 2014; Lindahl 1993). Survival is enhanced by cooler temperatures and drier, anoxic conditions (Smith et al. 2003), as well as by the structure of skeletal tissue itself. The extraction of aDNA fragments is more often successful from dense cortical bone such as the petrous portion of the temporal, which can produce high aDNA yields, sometimes even in tropical environments (Gamba et al. 2014; Pinhasi et al. 2015).
Two different kinds of genetic material may be analyzed as part of aDNA studies of human skeletal remains. First, maternally inherited and haploid mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has long been favored by bioarchaeologists and molecular anthropologists. This is because many mitochondria, and thus many more copies of mtDNA, exist within a single cell as opposed to only two copies of nuclear DNA, making costly and labor-intensive recovery attempts more productive (Goodwin 2014; Nieves-Colón and Stone 2019; Raff 2019). The relative abundance of this type of aDNA, coupled with higher mutation rates and the absence of recombination, can reveal aspects of female-driven migration (e.g., exogamous marriage practices) and ensuing gene flow among populations in the past, which in turn may expose broader patterns of social organization shaped by mobility (Goodwin 2014; Nieves-Colón and Stone 2019). While a second genome, nuclear DNA, is present in far fewer numbers per cell and subsequently had been less successfully extracted and amplified in the past, recent advances in protocols surrounding decontamination and authentication, extraction, and sequencing (particularly next generation sequencing, or NGS) have now made this biparentally inherited genetic material more accessible to anthropologists (Nieves-Colón and Stone 2019; Raff 2019; Rohland and Hofreiter 2007; Shendure and Hanlee 2008). Additionally, like mtDNA, most of the Y chromosome (part of the nuclear DNA genome) does not undergo recombination, and although mutation rates are lower than in mtDNA, its polymorphisms can still be used to investigate male-based migrations and resultant admixture among ancient communities (Nieves-Colón and Stone 2019).
Prior to the advent of NGS, aDNA analyses involved the targeted sequencing of single loci for polymorphisms, or sites of genetic variability, with a focus on single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and short tandem repeats (STRs, also known as microsatellites) (Goodwin 2014). SNPs refer to common genetic variations at the level of the nucleotide resulting from DNA replication error and vary by around 85% between individuals (Goodwin 2014; Nieves-Colón and Stone 2019). STRs, on the other hand, are short allele sequences repeated in variable numbers between different individuals (Goodwin 2014). Recent technological advances associated with NGS now permit genome-wide analyses of SNPs as well as complete genome analyses, thereby enabling bioarchaeologists to ask more complex questions about kinship, admixture, and migration by examining numerous loci (Nieves-Colón and Stone 2019; Raff 2019). Consequently, aDNA analyses have revolutionized how we identify and assess ancestry and human movement. Nevertheless, caution must be taken in the interpretation of these data, which should be contextualized by associated archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence and strengthened by theory-driven anthropological perspectives.
Biodistance
Biological distance, or biodistance, analyses involve the measurement and/or morphological assessment of observable features of the skeleton, especially those pertaining to the cranium and dentition (Hefner et al. 2016). Following two assumptions—namely, that over time, populations exchanging genes become more genetically similar to one another, and that observed skeletal phenotypes are heritable and largely reflective of underlying genetic information—groups possessing similar metric and nonmetric traits engaged in gene flow as a result of interaction and migration, were more likely to share common ancestors, and are thus more closely related to one another than to others with more dissimilar means or trait frequencies (Larsen 2015; Relethford 2016; Stojanowski and Schillaci 2006). While phenotypic expression of these traits is thought to reflect both heritability and environmental influence, it is postulated that environmental impacts are generally slight and that these traits are primarily controlled by genetics (Cunha and Ubelaker 2020; Stojanowski and Schillaci 2006). This assumption has been corroborated by studies comparing population affinity data generated by nuclear or mitochondrial DNA with skeletal measures of biodistance (e.g., Herrera et al. 2014; Hubbard et al. 2015; Relethford 2004; Smith et al. 2016). While no trait is restricted to a single population, analyses of particular trait clusters can identify probable biological affinity (Cunha and Ubelaker 2020). Consequently, bioarchaeologists can use biodistance analyses to evaluate past mobility and migration through population interaction, and beyond this, better assess the formation and negotiation of ethnic or community identities.
Craniometrics and Dental Metrics
Craniometric and dental metric analyses rely on multivariate statistics to evaluate measurements taken on the skull and teeth (Dudzik and Kolatorowicz 2016; Hefner et al. 2016). As metric traits represent continuous and not ordinal variables, they are generally considered a more objective means of assessing biological affinity between and among populations (Cunha and Ubelaker 2020). For the skull, bioarchaeologists rely on documented differences in facial and vault shape between human groups, as populations displaying similar craniofacial morphology are assumed to be more closely related (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994). Measurements are taken using calipers between defined cranial landmarks (Howells 1973, 1989, 1995, 1996; see also Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994). For teeth, typical measures include buccolingual (crown width) and mesiodistal (crown length) dimensions, although definitions on how to take these measurements vary (e.g., Hefner et al. 2016; Kieser 1990; Moorrees and Reed 1964). Additional measurements outside of conventional buccolingual and mesiodistal distances have also been proposed (e.g., see Hillson et al. 2005).
Cranial and Dental Nonmetric Traits
Nonmetric traits refer to nonpathological features of the skeleton that are not quantified metrically but instead are assessed qualitatively through morphological observation (Pink et al. 2016). These traits may involve reduced or failed bone formation (hypostotic) or, conversely, excess deposition of bone (hyperostotic) (Ossenberg 1970). Such skeletal variants can manifest as variable numbers of foramina, the presence of accessory ossicles or persistent sutures, and ossification anomalies (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994). Many of these traits vary along a quasi-continuous or ranked scale (e.g., 0–7) and are subsequently scored based on expression (Scott and Turner 1997). Other nonmetric traits are discrete in nature, meaning that they are scored not along a gradient but are simply described as either present or absent (Cunha and Ubelaker 2020). As with measurements taken on the skull and dentition, patterns of particular cranial and dental nonmetric traits are thought to reflect population affinity. Correspondingly, groups sharing higher frequencies of nonmetric variations are assumed more likely to have engaged in sustained gene flow stemming from mobility or migration and are thus more closely related to one another. In particular, dental nonmetric features are considered to be under tighter genetic control (Scott and Turner 1997), perhaps even more so in deciduous than permanent teeth (Paul and Stojanowski 2017). Because these traits appear relatively unaffected by sex or age, they are especially useful for assessing affinity among commingled assemblages in which individualized demographic information may not be forthcoming (Scott and Turner 1997). The phenotypic expression of polygenic cranial nonmetric traits is more complex, with variable heritability reported (Carson 2006; Falconer 1989; Sjøvold 1984). Nonmetric phenotypic features for crania (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Hauser and De Stefano 1989; Ossenberg 2013) and dentition (Scott and Turner 1997; Turner et al. 1991) number in the hundreds and have been described in detail in the aforementioned references.
Infra-cranial Nonmetric Traits
Far fewer studies have focused on infra-cranial (or post-cranial) nonmetric traits than on cranial and dental morphology (Cunha and Ubelaker 2020; Hefner et al. 2016). This is because they are likely influenced not only by heritability but also by sex, age, diet, and function, particularly as many of these bones are weight bearing and thus shaped by biomechanical forces (Buikstra and Ubelaker 1994; Stojanowski and Schillaci 2006; Wescott 2005). Greater promise for the utility of infra-cranial features may be found in intra-cemetery approaches to biodistance analyses, which rely on anomalous congenital conditions or otherwise uncommon traits (Barnes 1994, 2012; Stojanowski and Schillaci 2006). Nevertheless, as the majority of these traits occur in less than 2% of a typical human population and are often found on less-studied skeletal elements (e.g., hands, feet), fewer biodistance studies have been performed on the infra-cranial skeleton (but see Case et al. 2017). As such, while worthy of additional analyses, they are not discussed further here.
Radiogenic and Stable Isotope Analyses
Radiogenic and stable isotope analyses of skeletal remains facilitate investigations of mobility among past populations by relying on atoms incorporated into human tissues whose isotope ratios have particular geographic provenience made unique by natural, regional variations in local geology or hydrological systems. As skeletal tissues variably form and remodel at different ages, bioarchaeologists can use isotopes integrated into teeth and bone to track patterns of movement across the life course for an individual. From the sampling of multiple individuals, these isotopes subsequently permit the recognition of broader trends of mobility and migration across particular segments of society, including sex, gender, age, status, or occupation-based groups, or even patterns of movement involving entire communities.
The complexities of biogeochemical sampling of human skeletal tissues highlight an important methodological issue because of their potential impact on how human mobility and migration are evaluated and interpreted. For instance, while bulk samples from enamel and bone yield isotopic values that represent a long-term average derived primarily from foodstuffs and drink consumed during a years-long period of tissue formation, microsampling of skeletal tissues offers a potential avenue for more acute assessments of human movement in the past. Nevertheless, applications of intra-tooth sequential sampling using human enamel hydroxyapatite are few in number (e.g., Holt 2009; Lovell and Dawson 2003; Sandberg et al. 2012; Wright 2013), as the complexities of amelogenesis and enamel maturation coupled with fluctuating mineralization rates between enamel layers produce isotopic values reflective of longer-term averages rather than precise snapshots of short-term behavior (Balasse 2002; Balasse et al. 2002; Fisher and Fox 1998; Hillson 1996; Montgomery et al. 2010b; Passey and Cerling 2002; Sandberg et al. 2012; Suga 1979; Suga et al. 1979). Instead, discerning intra-individual diachronic change in movement may be better accomplished through bulk sampling of multiple tissues with established formation and remodeling rates for a single individual (Dupras and Tocheri 2007; Gregoricka 2014; Jørkov et al. 2009; Knudson et al. 2016; Sealy et al. 1995), tying into developmental frameworks associated with life course theory.
Despite issues related to diagenesis, well-preserved bone hydroxyapatite may offer an alternative means by which microsampling may more successfully be accomplished relative to enamel. Bone too forms incrementally, and while continuous remodeling had previously led to the assumption that serial isotopic sampling of bone would not yield discrete, chronological data points useful for developing individual life courses (Bromage et al. 2009; Maggiano et al. 2019), more recent research suggests that unremodeled “pockets” of incremental layers of primary lamellar bone persist for many decades, thus holding considerable potential for revealing short-term patterns of mobility using high-resolution sampling (C. Maggiano et al. 2015; I. Maggiano et al. 2011, 2015). Additional work has been conducted on incremental dentin collagen sampling to discern short-term changes in diet and stress (e.g., Beaumont and Montgomery 2016; Craig-Atkins et al. 2018; Eerkins et al. 2016; Greenwald et al. 2016) and may hold some future potential for shedding light on mobility practices involving juveniles, as sudden changes in dietary intake (measured through carbon and nitrogen isotope values) could be indicative of their involvement in movement and the resultant consumption of isotopically different foods.
Radiogenic Strontium Isotopes
Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) provide a now-common bioarchaeological measure of human movements across the globe. Strontium-87 varies in regional abundance relative to the stable isotope 86Sr, due primarily to underlying geologic differences in mineral age and type but also contributions from exogenous sources (Bentley 2006; Ericson 1985). Weathered bedrock releases strontium into surrounding soils and groundwater; due to its high atomic mass, 87Sr/86Sr ratios do not fractionate and pass unaltered into local plants and animals and, through their consumption, into humans (Beard and Johnson 2000; Graustein 1989; Hurst and Davis 1981; Price et al. 1994). Consequently, 87Sr/86Sr ratios derived from human teeth or bone that differ from regionally bioavailable strontium may be indicative of mobility or migration event(s) at different stages of the life course prior to death and interment.
Stable Oxygen Isotopes
Stable oxygen (δ18O) isotopes incorporated into human skeletal tissues reflect the geographic area in which these isotopes were ingested, enabling bioarchaeologists to assess past human movements. Regional differences in the amount of bioavailable oxygen isotopes from local meteoric and surface water (δ18Ow) derive from a composite averaging of multifaceted environmental contributors including air temperature, humidity, latitude, distance from the sea, and altitude (Dansgaard 1964; Gat 1996; Longinelli 1984; Luz and Kolodny 1985; Luz et al. 1984). Additional natural phenomena similarly affect local δ18Ow values in complex ways, ranging from flowing rivers to evaporation and seasonal fluctuations in precipitation (Knudson 2009; Price et al. 2010). Human δ18O body water values, in turn, are obtained primarily from the liquids that people drink, although other metabolic processes (Bryant and Froelich 1995; Kohn 1996; Longinelli 1984; Luz and Kolodny 1985; Luz et al. 1984) and cultural practices (Brettell et al. 2012; Knudson 2009; Lisowska-Gaczorek et al. 2020; Price et al. 2010) may also influence these values.
Other Isotopes
While strontium and oxygen isotopes are by far the most ubiquitous biogeochemical measures of mobility in the bioarchaeological literature, analyses of other isotopes may also contribute to discussions of past human movement. Like strontium, radiogenic lead isotope ratios (in bioarchaeology, primarily 206Pb/204Pb, although many other ratios including 207Pb/204Pb and 208Pb/204Pb can also be evaluated) are found naturally in the underlying geology and vary regionally (Faure 1986; Komárek et al. 2008), which permits assessments of human mobility among past groups (Gale 1989; Gulson et al. 1997; Montgomery et al. 2000; Samuelsen and Potra 2020). However, some debate has arisen regarding whether these isotopes primarily become incorporated into human tissues through the consumption of food and water or, given the reduced ability of the body to absorb lead alongside food, if soil/dust inhalation and ingestion provide a more likely means by which these heavy isotopes are introduced (Kamenov 2008; Maddaloni et al. 1998; Turner et al. 2009; Underwood 1977). Moreover, measures of mobility based on geologic outputs are only effective when sampling pre-metallurgical populations, as societies with culturally induced lead exposure no longer possess ratios reflective of geographic residence, but cultural residence instead (Montgomery et al. 2005, 2010a). Such “cultural focusing” can be a useful means by which to distinguish occupational, status, or ethnic/cultural groups, as well as the presence of nonlocal migrants with differential exposure to lead isotopes (Montgomery et al. 2005, p. 135; Montgomery et al. 2010a). Similarly, stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from bone collagen—traditionally used to evaluate dietary intake—have been employed as a supplementary measure of mobility, based on the premise that differential access to or cultural preferences for certain foods can support the identification of migrants and more broadly assist with investigations into group mobility, membership, and social identity (Cox and Sealy 1997; Gregoricka 2013b; Gregoricka et al. 2020; Sealy 2006).
The Bioarchaeology of Mobility and Migration in Action
Social and Ethnic Identities
Bioarchaeological studies have important implications for better understanding ties between social identity and migration in the ancient world. As encapsulated by embodiment theory, social identities may impact individuals biologically and can thus be inscribed onto skeletal remains (Joyce 2005; Sofaer 2006), acting as useful indicators of group membership among past populations where mobility or migration is suspected to have contributed to the overall composition of a community. It follows that the skeletons of those engaging in migration manifest these journeys as well as subsequent biological and social adaptations to their new location (whether temporary or permanent). This perspective is especially valuable when identifying local peoples as well as nonlocal migrants using bioarchaeological methods, as these discoveries may reveal particular ethnic cohorts within past communities.
Ethnicity has been variably defined by anthropologists. Generally, ethnic identity is based on real or fictive shared ancestor(s) (Jones 1997; Knudson and Stojanowski 2008) and/or defined by economic or social boundaries that determine membership and which must be continuously reaffirmed (Barth 1969). Under some conditions, ethnic groups may represent the most vulnerable or socially marginalized within the larger population, thus facilitating an examination of those who may otherwise be archaeologically invisible (Geller 2017; Joyce 2005; Sofaer 2006). In other cases, agential migrants may actively drive change in their post-migration residence, reshaping the social identities of those local to the region and even redefining the ways in which ethnicity and group membership are perceived. Zakrzewski (2011) sought to examine ethnicity and ethnic identity among those buried in a medieval Islamic cemetery (8th–11th century AD) in Ecija, Spain, hypothesizing that these individuals likely made up a biologically heterogeneous group composed not only of locals but possibly invading Berbers and Arabs from North Africa and the Middle East who conquered the region in the eighth century. After measuring 122 crania from both males and females, she found considerable craniometric variability at Ecija relative to comparative groups from Africa and Europe, suggestive of genetic heterogeneity characteristic of a diverse population whose inhabitants demonstrated biological affinities to populations on both continents. Zakrzewski (2011) concluded that the Arab conquest of Iberia best explains the observed diversity at the site, but correspondingly, that the expansion of Islam into the region may have served as a unifying factor in identity construction that overrode other biological or social aspects of identity as part of a complex intermingling of migration, religion, and conquest.
Additionally, Blom (2005) examined cranial vault modification among southern Andean populations (AD 500–1100) within the Tiwanaku sphere of interaction to assess mobility, group affiliation, and diversity among those inhabiting highland and lowland sites. She found that 100% of those with modification residing in lowland coastal regions (Moquegua Valley) exhibited the fronto-occipital style, while the majority (88%) of modified highland individuals in the Katari Valley (northeast of Tiwanaku) demonstrated the annular type. Situated between the two, the Tiwanaku Valley (including the capital city and large urban settlement of Tiwanaku) contained individuals exhibiting both styles in equal numbers (50% each). Blom (2005) interpreted these patterns as a sign of social and ethnic homogeneity among different regional populations outside Tiwanaku, likely a powerful means by which local identity was constructed and explicitly presented to convey cultural belonging. Conversely, diversity in vault shape at Tiwanaku suggests that this center represented a liminal and dynamic border area that drew diverse social groups who resided side by side and interacted with one another but, nevertheless, whose regional and ethnic identities were still clearly demarcated. Subsequently, bioarchaeological analysis of cranial vault modification revealed movement into the Tiwanaku core from both highland and lowland areas that traversed geographic borders but maintained social boundaries through the strong, tangible visuals of modified crania.
Nevertheless, these so-called markers of ethnic identity may have been a form of social mimicry in which those with less power attempted to emulate those with greater authority. For instance, Egyptian- and Nubian-style burials from Tombos in ancient Nubia dating to the New Kingdom period (1550–1069 BC) revealed variable radiogenic strontium isotope ratios indicative of the presence of both locals and nonlocals (Buzon et al. 2007). Given Egypt’s expansion into Nubia during this time, it was expected that both local Nubians and immigrant Egyptians had resided together at Tombos. Nevertheless, while some nonlocal strontium ratios were associated with burials using Egyptian features, a sizable number (n=31) of Egyptian-style burials contained individuals with local Nubian signatures. The authors subsequently interpreted these individuals as either the children of Egyptian migrants born and raised locally who would have incorporated local strontium ratios into their enamel, or as Nubians local to the area who were interred with Egyptian features (Buzon and Simonetti 2013; Buzon et al. 2007). This “Egyptianization” may have represented a highly visible means by which local Nubians established a relationship with the Egyptian administration and ruling elite, conveying their allegiances to the Egyptian empire even in death. More importantly, however, it illustrates how mortuary treatment can serve to maintain, negotiate, and manipulate the ethnic identities of deceased individuals and, in possibly mimicking the burial traditions of nonlocals, skew our interpretation of past migrations and subsequent interactions.
Similar issues may arise with a reliance on cranial modification as a strict measure of status or group identity. In evaluating the Omo M10 cemetery complex in the Moquegua Valley of southern Peru, Hoshower et al. (1995) proposed that those with lower socioeconomic status might have employed cranial modification to strategically confer social benefits to their children. Blom (2005), on the other hand, found no correlation between cranial modification and traditional measures of social status (ranging from grave goods to tomb architecture) within Tiwanaku society and instead linked cranial modification to group identity. Moreover, social norms of conformity may have prevented such cranial emulation from occurring in the first place, perhaps similar to strict edicts regarding donning Inca clothing and headdress specific to one’s town, with punishment reserved for those who dressed outside these social boundaries (Blom 2005). Subsequently, it remains unlikely that imitations of body modification would have been undertaken despite the appeal to permanently link the bodies of one’s children with those more ideologically, economically, or politically advantaged; instead, these modifications were likely socially policed by the local community in an effort to sustain internal boundaries (Torres-Rouff 2020).
Kinship Analysis and Postmarital Residence
Intra-cemetery (i.e., intra-site, or kinship) analyses, in which shared traits are thought to be indicative of a greater degree of relatedness between individuals, may enable bioarchaeologists to identify biological kin or family groups at a single site (e.g., Alt and Vach 1995; Stojanowski 2013) and, more pertinently to the bioarchaeology of migration, postmarital residence patterns (Lane and Sublett 1972; Pilloud and Larsen 2011; Stojanowski and Schillaci 2006). Despite the potential risks associated with migration, the sociopolitical or economic prospect of marriage may have been a significant motivating factor behind exogamous marriage among some past societies (Tung 2012). Such migratory practices, in conjunction with the ability of bioarchaeologists to extract information about gendered behaviors, can shed light on engendered patterns of power and authority, inequality, socioeconomic status, and other socially differentiated and negotiated roles (Martin et al. 2013a; Pessar and Mahler 2003). Here, transnationalism and gender theory intersect, as these gendered mobility patterns are unlikely to be unidirectional. Instead, such patterns foster ongoing, long-term relationships between groups as part of broader social processes in which migrants continue to maintain relationships with their homeland (Brettell 2008, 2016; Glick Schiller 1995; Glick Schiller et al. 1992). Correspondingly, migrants must construct and navigate social identities influenced by both origin and post-migration cultures and environments, influences that indelibly affect skeletal remains.
Bioarchaeological approaches to kinship analysis and postmarital residence patterns more directly evaluate relatedness using the skeletons of the individuals who themselves may have migrated to a region as part of exogamous marriage practices, helping us avoid relying too heavily on oversimplified linkages between sex-specific grave goods and geographic origins or ethnic identity (e.g., Allen and Richardson 1971; Schillaci and Stojanowski 2003). The identification of nonlocals may not only reflect discernible patterns of matrilocality or patrilocality but, more broadly, speak to political and socioeconomic societal structures that have the potential to reveal complex intraregional social organization and interregional interactions (Schillaci and Stojanowski 2002). Nevertheless, while biological distance analyses necessarily rely on genetic relatedness to identify kin, this biological definition of affinity is decidedly Western and modern, and alternative, nonbiological kin structures (i.e., fictive kinship, fictive ancestry, social relatedness) may have held equal or greater importance among past populations (Gregoricka 2013a; Johnson and Paul 2016; Lozada 2011a; Meyer et al. 2012; Pilloud and Larsen 2011). Such relationships have been demonstrated in ethnographic work ranging from the compadrazgo of Hispanic communities (Foster 1953; Mintz and Wolf 1950) to the !kun!a (namesakes) of the Dobe !Kung (Howell 2017; Lee 1979, 2003), and have also been recognized among immigrant populations (Ebaugh and Curry 2000), LGBTQ+ communities (Weston 1991), and Black and White American families (Allen et al. 2011; Chatters et al. 1994).
Bioarchaeological evidence of postmarital residential mobility has been derived from craniometric and nonmetric analyses (e.g., Hubbe et al. 2009; Nystrom and Malcom 2010; Schillaci and Stojanowski 2003; Stefan 1999; Tomczack and Powell 2003; Velasco 2018), dental metric and nonmetric analyses (e.g., Alt et al. 1997; Cook and Aubry 2014; Prevedorou and Stojanowski 2017), and isotopic analyses (e.g., Bentley 2013; Bentley et al. 2005, 2012; Eerkins et al. 2014). At the coastal Early Bronze Age cemetery of Tsepi in Marathon, Greece, multivariate statistical analyses of cranial nonmetric variation as well as dental metric and nonmetric trait data revealed not only that the cemetery was organized into kin-specific areas with related females interred together, but that males exhibited more variation in cranial nonmetric traits than females, suggesting a postmarital residence strategy in which matrilocal females obtained male partners who migrated from other populations (Prevedorou and Stojanowski 2017). The authors contend that this practice of male exogamy in the Aegean may be explained by economics, as nonlocal males could have driven interregional trade networks for local communities. Further, matrilocality was not uncommon in the region, particularly among island communities with economies dependent on maritime trade and subsistence (Prevedorou and Stojanowski 2017). Consequently, the cranial nonmetric biodistance analyses employed here demonstrate our ability to discern potential kin groupings and complex socioeconomic patterns of interaction and exchange (of goods and mates) instigated by migration, all of which provide critical insight into the maintenance and negotiation of social and biological identities.
Beyond phenotypic assessments of relatedness using biodistance analyses, aDNA analysis can also contribute in important ways to studies of kinship and postmarital residence using genotypic information (e.g., Alt et al. 2016; Amorim et al. 2018; Baca et al. 2012; Bolnick and Smith 2007; Cui et al. 2015; Drosou et al. 2018; Dudar et al. 2003; Haak et al. 2008; Knipper et al. 2017; Mendisco et al. 2018; Mittnik et al. 2019; Schroeder et al. 2019). At the Neolithic mortuary cave site of Treilles in Avreyon, France, nuclear DNA (including Y chromosome) and mtDNA successfully extracted from 29 individuals not only identified the presence of considerably more male burials than female but also revealed low Y chromosome haplotype diversity coupled with high diversity among mtDNA haplotypes (Lacan et al. 2011). These results suggest that males received preferential burial in the cave and that similar paternal lineages reflective of limited gene flow may indicate patrilocality (Lacan et al. 2011). This fits with the more diverse haplotypes exhibited among extracted mtDNA, indicative of the movement of females and not males as part of exogamous practices. These results were supported by later biogeochemical analyses of dental enamel, which revealed more variable radiogenic strontium isotopes ratios among Neolithic females than males both in France and across central Europe (Bentley 2013; Bentley et al. 2012). Together, these data establish the utility of aDNA analysis in identifying human movement and complementing other forms of bioarchaeological evidence for migration. More pertinently, this evidence highlights the role of female mobility as integral to maintaining Neolithic societal structures and cementing interregional alliances and economic networks.
Forced Migration and Enslavement
Bioarchaeological indicators of migration can offer valuable insight into not only mobility and subsequent social organization among communities in the past but also coerced movements and social control associated with enslavement (Blakey 2001; Harrod and Martin 2015). Such studies better contextualize the circumstances surrounding the lives and deaths of those captive or enslaved women, men, and children whose voices are rarely heard in historic records (Harrod and Martin 2015). In particular, bioarchaeology offers a direct means of assessing pathways of forced migration as part of broader investigations into the exploitation of enslaved or captive individuals. By ascertaining such pathways, theoretically grounded examinations of structural violence suffered by those forced to cross sociopolitical or cultural borders can commence, including subsequent investigations into both physical violence and long-term stress (de la Cova 2012, 2017; Farmer 2004; Galtung 1969; Horevitz 2009; Klaus 2012; Nystrom 2014).
Previous studies have attempted to track coerced movements and the geographic origins of such individuals using radiogenic and stable isotopes (e.g., Bastos et al. 2016; Cox and Sealy 1997; Goodman et al. 2009; Laffoon et al. 2018; Price et al. 2006, 2007; Schroeder et al. 2009; Tung and Knudson 2011; White et al. 2000, 2002), dental modifications (e.g., Handler et al. 1982; Schroeder et al. 2014; Tiesler 2002; Wasterlain et al. 2016), biodistance analyses (e.g., Coelho et al. 2017; Wasterlain et al. 2016), and aDNA analyses (e.g., Barquera et al. 2020). For example, skeletons recovered from an area of urban disposal dating to the 15th–17th centuries AD in Lagos, Portugal, were accompanied by ornaments suggestive of African origins (Wasterlain et al. 2016). Observations of tooth modification in which the mesial and distal angles of both maxillary and mandibular incisors and canines were filed were akin to techniques practiced in sub-Saharan Africa, a supposition corroborated by craniomorphometric analyses of the same individuals. Together with contextual evidence including burial location and associated grave goods, these osteological data indicate that these were enslaved peoples captured and forcibly taken to Portugal. These individuals likely came from multiple regions in Africa that cannot yet be pinpointed given that numerous ethnic groups in western and central Africa modified their teeth in similar ways (Wasterlain et al. 2016). Nevertheless, the ability of dental modification to demarcate social identity, and thus an individual’s status as a potential nonlocal, demonstrates the value of body modifiers in providing information on not only voluntary but coerced mobility that may contribute significantly to our knowledge of enslavement, colonialism, and structural violence.
Cranial modification may also expose coerced mobility associated with captivity, interpersonal violence, and warfare. Kurin et al. (2016) found that among the Late Intermediate period (AD 1000–1400) Chanka of the Andahuaylas highlands of Peru, those with modified crania suffered antemortem and perimortem cranial injury at considerably higher rates (55.7%) than those with unmodified crania (30.2%). They argued that this disparity was indicative of internal warfare within their polity, as cranial modification would have been an overt signal of group affiliation and would thus have made those individuals more susceptible to targeted, violent attacks. Additionally, mobility plays a key role in distinguishing internal from external warfare. Internal warfare is often characterized ethnographically and historically by the abduction of young women of childbearing age who suffer disproportionately from violent, traumatic injury relative to natal group females, while external warfare typically involves the migration of nonlocal men into a community to assist with warfare (Kurin et al. 2016). Among the Chanka, two young females (one of whom exhibited a modified skull) identified as nonlocal by radiogenic strontium isotopes both experienced cranial trauma, suggesting that while their captors sought nonlocal females, no particular group only consisting of individuals with modified crania were targeted (Kurin et al. 2016). This study highlights the importance of evaluating mobility when examining the nuances of past interpersonal violence and the ways in which cranial modification can shed light not only on group affiliation but on the interplay between violence, sex, and social identity.
Contact, Interaction, and Admixture
The bioarchaeology of contact following mobility or migration, as well as subsequent short-term reactions and long-term biological and social adaptations to such encounters (i.e., population replacement, admixture/gene flow, interpersonal violence, colonialism, imperialism), is strengthened by a deeper understanding of the role that mobility plays in patterns of interaction between two or more communities. For instance, considerable debate has long surrounded the population history of Southeast Asia, with competing hypotheses variably arguing for admixture with migrating East Asian Neolithic farmers (two-layered immigration hypothesis) or for continuity and relative genetic isolation of Indigenous Southeast Asian peoples, with little to no admixture (regional continuity model) (Matsumura and Hudson 2005). Matsumura and Hudson (2005) sought to test these hypotheses by examining dental metric and nonmetric traits from the teeth of more than 4,000 individuals from 42 prehistoric and historic sites across Southeast and East Asia. These measurements and features identified close affinities between early prehistoric Southeast Asian communities and modern Australo-Melanesian samples but revealed increasing admixture with East Asians over time, beginning in the early Neolithic and continuing into the subsequent Metal Age and modern era (Matsumura and Hudson 2005). These data bolster the two-layer immigration hypothesis in which the diffusion of agriculture prompted East Asians to migrate into Southeast Asia, where they subsequently interacted with Indigenous communities. This study highlights the ability of biodistance analyses to illuminate complex questions involving the impact of migration, not on the migrants themselves but on local Indigenous populations with whom such migrants came into contact. Such admixture would have certainly affected how individual and group identities were constructed and negotiated, signaling both a biological and social shift in self and group perception.
Methodological advances in the bioarchaeology of migration similarly permit more meaningful examinations of mobility and contact among commingled skeletal remains. Commingled collections present unique logistical challenges and are thus often understudied, despite representing a vast amount of untapped bioarchaeological data that provide key insight into human behavior among past groups (Adams and Byrd 2008, 2014; Osterholtz 2016; Osterholtz et al. 2014; Sheridan 2017). Ullinger et al. (2005) explored morphological variation using teeth from commingled assemblages in the southern Levant dating to the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, a contentious transitional period marked by considerable cultural change often attributed to migration and subsequent conquest, societal collapse, and population replacement. After comparing nonmetric trait variations between these collections and others in the Near East, Ullinger et al. (2005) found greater phenetic similarities between peoples from Late Bronze Age Dothan and Early Iron Age Lachish than between these and any other group in the broader region. These data were later corroborated by homogeneous strontium and oxygen isotope values at Tell Dothan, suggesting that these individuals were not highly mobile (Gregoricka and Sheridan 2017). Together, these studies indicate that population continuity (and not conquest and subsequent population replacement by invading Israelites or other immigrant communities) better characterizes this transition, and that the substantial changes observed in the archaeological record during this time were primarily driven by local agents and not external forces. In this case, both dental nonmetric traits and isotope analyses were used to evaluate population mobility and interaction, and rule out migration as a driving force for change. These findings emphasize the importance of utilizing commingled assemblages to ensure more holistic assessments of human movement in the past, particularly in regions where commingling (whether intentional or unintentional) occurred regularly.
Recently, aDNA analyses have provided more definitive evidence of migration. Insights derived from these studies shed light on debates surrounding whether the diffusion of ideas and material culture was responsible for social change, or if the actual movements of people and subsequent contact and admixture acted as a primary driver. One of the most well-known and heavily studied migrations in the archaeological record occurred during the Early Bronze Age, when the nomadic Yamnaya herders of the Eurasian steppes were thought to have migrated westward into Europe, where they encountered populations of settled Neolithic farmers (Furholt 2018; Kristiansen et al. 2017). Such migrations—primarily posited because of an abrupt transformation in material culture, mortuary practices, and language—may have led to the reshaping of European demographics and the emergence of the Corded Ware culture (Furholt 2018; Kristiansen et al. 2017). In separate studies seeking to answer questions about a possible Yamnaya migration, its ties to the spread of Indo-European languages throughout the continent, and any subsequent genetic impact on European population structure, Allentoft et al. (2015) and Haak et al. (2015) examined whole genomes and genome-wide markers, respectively, from 170 individuals dating to the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages. Both studies revealed significant Yamnaya genetic contributions to ancestry among central Europeans ~4,500 years ago, suggestive of considerable admixture with local Neolithic farmers (Allentoft et al. 2015; Haak et al. 2015). These discoveries led Haak et al. (2015, p. 211) to describe this as a “massive migration” event, a phrase later criticized by Furholt (2018), who together with others (e.g., Heyd 2017; Kristiansen et al. 2017) argued that interpretations of genetic data need to better engage archaeological theory to avoid the pitfalls of simplistic and uninformative diffusion-migration dichotomies characteristic of traditional culture-historical paradigms. According to Furholt (2018), such binary perspectives fail to recognize the complexity of migration as a gradual and continuous process, an alternative interpretation of the genetic data strongly supported by archaeological evidence.
Climate Change
Climate change and resultant environmental degradation can influence the ways in which human communities engage with their landscapes, interact with nearby populations, and renegotiate their own socioeconomic structures (Robbins Schug 2011, 2020a). These communities adapt (with varying degrees of success) by employing variable, complex, and population-specific strategies to buffer themselves against shifts in climate (Morrissey 2015; Robbins Schug et al. 2018; Stojanowski and Knudson 2014). The bioarchaeology of resilience (Martin et al. 2013b) provides one means of assessing the adaptive responses of local agents to environmental change, ranging from creating alliances (e.g., Harrod and Martin 2014) to engaging in interpersonal violence (e.g., Harrod and Martin 2014; Martin and Harrod 2020; Pillloud et al. 2020; Robbins Schug et al. 2012; Tung et al. 2016) or, of particular interest here, instigating mobility and migration. While climate stress does not inevitably or deterministically lead to outcomes of violence or changes in group mobility (Harrod and Martin 2014; Morrissey 2015; Robbins Schug et al. 2018), human movement and subsequent modifications to social organization can be viewed as a strategy by which past populations sought to actively cope with external environmental stressors.
Changes to mobility tied to climate change are perhaps best evaluated through isotopic analyses, as biogeochemical signatures provide a more direct measure of diachronic shifts in human movement over both an individual’s life course and among community members within and across generations (e.g., Gregoricka 2016, 2020b; Knudson et al. 2015; Kusaka et al. 2012). At the site of Gobero in central Niger, radiogenic strontium isotope analyses were performed on individuals dating to the Early and Middle Holocene to evaluate the effects of aridity and climatic degradation on the movements of local communities (Stojanowski and Knudson 2014). The wetter and more humid Early Holocene revealed first-generation adult migrants who had eventually settled at Gobero, while juveniles buried at the site exhibited only local ratios consistent with a more sedentary lifestyle. Conversely, individuals dating to the more arid and climatically unstable Middle Holocene demonstrated more nonlocal strontium isotope ratios in both enamel and bone, suggesting that increased mobility may have served as an adaptive strategy to combat water and/or food insecurity during the most severe arid phases (Stojanowski and Knudson 2014). These results provide a clear example of the resiliency of human populations in the face of climate change and their ability to actively adapt to the pressures of climate stress. This study also highlights the ability of smaller-scale societies to more effectively adapt to climate stress due to the absence of rigid social hierarchies, potentially enabling an easier shift towards greater or lessened mobility in response to environmental change relative to more complex societies (Robbins Schug 2020b).
Disease Transmission
As individuals move, they inevitably bring with them not only their own cultural traditions and social identities but also biological agents including infectious diseases (or disease vectors) to their post-migration destination (Campbell and Crawford 2012; Findlater and Bogoch 2018). Mobility and migration subsequently play a major role in the geographic distribution of pathogens, not only today (e.g., Bayer et al. 2009; Field et al. 2010; Findlater and Bogoch 2018) but also in the past. Well-known historic examples of disease transmission following migration include the devastating introduction of smallpox to the Americas by European colonizers (e.g., Boyd 1990; Lindo et al. 2016; Merbs 1992) and the spread of Black Death throughout Eurasia (e.g., Andrades Valtueña et al. 2017; Spyrou et al. 2016, 2018). Major debate also continues to surround the origin and spread of treponematoses and whether the disease originated in Afro-Eurasia, the Americas, or both (Baker and Armelagos 1988; Baker et al. 2020; Cook and Powell 2012; Meyer et al. 2002; Powell and Cook 2005). Nevertheless, bioarchaeological evidence of disease transmission is more challenging to assess, and few bioarchaeological studies have sought to directly link pathogen distribution and mobility patterns.
One such study by Roberts et al. (2013) sought to investigate the relationship between human mobility and the spread of treponematosis in late Medieval Hull, an English port city and center for international trade. Dental enamel from six individuals exhibiting treponemal lesions was analyzed for strontium and oxygen isotope ratios and compared to six control individuals whose skeletons demonstrated no evidence for treponemal infection to evaluate whether nonlocal individuals were more likely to have suffered from the disease. Although Roberts et al. (2013) identified a handful of migrants using both isotopes, no pattern was found linking childhood geographic origins to the expression of treponemal lesions. While those without lesions could have possibly contracted and died of treponematosis prior to the disease affecting bone (see Wood et al. 1992), initial results indicated that infected individuals could have contracted the disease in England and not abroad, and that migrants were not more likely to exacerbate the spread of treponematoses in England.
Ancient DNA can similarly illuminate how migration among human populations can drive the spread of infectious disease. Such patterns of co-mobility are particularly revealing in the aDNA of pathogens extracted from human teeth or bone. Andrades Valtueña et al. (2017) examined 563 human skeletal tissue samples from Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Russia as well as central and eastern Europe for signs of the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Together with Y. pestis genomes from a prior study in southern Siberia (Rasmussen et al. 2015), six additional genomes from Russia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, and Croatia were recovered, all of which belonged to a single and unique clade. Their resultant phylogenies suggested one of two possibilities: the Y. pestis bacterium entered central and eastern Europe numerous times within a 1,000-year period, or the plague arrived only once from central Eurasia in the Neolithic before later moving back to southern Siberia in the Bronze Age (Andrades Valtueña et al. 2017). To further evaluate the likelihood of each scenario, the authors turned to human genomic (Allentoft et al. 2015; Haak et al. 2015) and archaeological evidence from the same period. Ancient DNA evidence for the migration of the Yamnaya from the Pontic steppe into eastern and central Europe by the Early Bronze Age, coupled with archaeological changes in material culture and mortuary practices associated with contact and trade, coincide with the early appearance of Y. pestis in eastern Europe. This led Andrades Valtueña et al. (2017) to conclude that the second scenario, in which the plague traveled with the Yamnaya westwards into Europe, was the best interpretation for the aDNA Y. pestis genomes. Using aDNA from human and pathogen sources thus offers two independent lines of genetic evidence that together can help us reconstruct and refine archaeological interpretations of mobility among past populations.
Conclusions
Bioarchaeology has in many ways reenergized migration studies of past peoples over the last two decades. More than ever before, methodological and theoretical developments have facilitated new ways of reconstructing mobility practices using human skeletal remains. Improving our ability to identify both short- and long-term migration through observations of body modification, analyses of biological distance, and applications of biogeochemical and aDNA techniques has enabled us to move beyond the simple dichotomous classification of past individuals as either local or nonlocal and, instead, demonstrates the potential of bioarchaeology to reveal broader patterns of social organization, social and ethnic identities, fictive kinship, postmarital residence, nuanced gender roles and relations, detailed life courses, responses to climate stress, and pathways of disease transmission.
At the same time, far from exposing overarching, predictive models of mobility associated with particular forms of social organization or external factors including contact or climate change, bioarchaeology reveals that mobility and migration are inherently heterogeneous and complex social processes. Those individuals and groups that engage in migratory behaviors are not homogeneous or part of discrete, closed biological populations driven by a single-minded, collective agency (Furholt 2018). Instead, a variety of population-specific social, political, economic, and historical contexts, composed of a multifaceted array of internal and external stimuli, drive agential decisions taken by individual actors and social groups to engage in mobility or migration (Furholt 2018, 2019a; Kristiansen et al. 2017; van Dommelen 2014).
To get at such complexities and meaningfully capture past migration processes, as well as the versatility and resilience exhibited by those engaging in mobile behaviors, theoretical models of mobility must be integrated more fully into bioarchaeological investigations (e.g., Anthony 1990; Burmeister 2000; Furholt 2018, 2019b; Kristiansen et al. 2017). Embodiment, structural violence, life course, and gender theory all provide powerful bioarchaeological frameworks for the interpretation of skeletal data that are too often underutilized. Intersectional approaches that take into consideration the impact of interconnected and fluid social identities (sex, gender, age, status, ethnicity) on human movement are particularly imperative, as bodies undergoing migration processes are themselves complex amalgamations of biosocial experiences and cannot be fully understood otherwise (Geller 2017; Torres-Rouff and Knudson 2017; Yaussey 2019). As bioarchaeology continues to move forward in mobility and migration studies, such perspectives should be further linked to archaeological and anthropological theory as part of broader attempts to explain the diversity and dynamics of human movement, interaction, and identity construction. In particular, incorporating transnational theoretical concepts alongside embodiment theory may facilitate new and important insights into aspects of the ancient migration experience by enabling a more holistic examination of how hybrid social identities tied to mobility can biologically impact human bodies. Further contextualizing these data with site, regional, and interregional archaeological records will also lead to a better comprehension of both short- and long-term migratory behaviors within and across cultures.
Bioarchaeological inquiry has clearly demonstrated that mobility and migration are not simply deviations from a purported “norm” of sedentism; instead, movement is an essential part of what it means to be human (Cabana and Clark 2011; Campbell and Crawford 2012; Greenblatt 2010; Tsuda et al. 2015). In concert with theoretical integration, bioarchaeologists must also move forward by more deeply and critically exploring the motivations behind why individuals and communities of the past engaged in these practices, as well as the subsequent outcomes of human movement on both individual actors and broader social structures (Anthony 1990; Cabana and Clark 2011; Campbell and Crawford 2012; van Dommelen 2014). Such investigations should necessarily include not only those who move but also those affected by incoming migrating groups with whom they interact (Tsuda et al. 2015; van Dommelen 2014). As bioarchaeologists are uniquely equipped to capture the biological, social, and genetic impacts inscribed onto or inherited within the body before, during, and after migration, this is one of the most promising avenues for enhancing our understanding of the motivations and consequences behind human movement in the past.
Demonstrating the relevance of bioarchaeology to mobility and migration studies must also remain an important goal for our discipline. Indeed, many archaeologists and bioarchaeologists alike have pointed out that investigating mobility and migration in the ancient world has very real and relevant applications to contemporary society (e.g., Baker and Tsuda 2015; Campbell and Crawford 2012; Tung 2012). One more obvious applied area of focus has been in forensic anthropology. Forensic techniques derived from bioarchaeology can aid in the identification of some of the many thousands of migrant bodies discovered along the Mexico-United States border through the development of biological (sex, age, stature, ancestry) and cultural (culturally specific personal effects such as clothing, religious iconography, etc.) profiles, as well as through DNA and isotopic analyses (Anderson et al. 2008; Juarez 2008; Kramer et al. 2020; Tung 2012). Such work seeks to not only bring closure to families with missing loved ones but also purports a broader goal of utilizing identifications to gain better insight into the motivations behind such decisions and behaviors in the first place (Anderson 2008).
Bioarchaeologists need to continue leading this charge by making our work on past mobility and migration more explicitly relevant, living up to the claims of significance and applicability we have set for ourselves by implementing changes that would affect and improve migration policy as well as predictive models for disease transmission or demographic shifts for the present. Important steps forward to achieve such relevance include publishing bioarchaeological papers in non-anthropological academic journal venues where they are more likely to get attention from those involved in contemporary issues of planning and policy making (Smith 2012, 2015; Stojanowski and Duncan 2015); writing in more accessible language (Tseng 2012) for science media outlets or popular press books targeting a broader audience (Stojanowski and Duncan 2015; see also De León 2015); exploring alternative means of outreach through podcasting (e.g., Rivera 2020), fictional osteobiographies (Boutin 2011; Boutin and Callahan 2019), and social media (Killgrove 2019; Sheridan 2017); and promoting underrepresented voices as part of actively working to decolonize bioarchaeology (e.g., Blakey 2001; Geller 2017; Pérez 2017; Robertson 2018; Watkins 2018, 2020). Particularly as violence, sociopolitical and economic conditions, and environmental stressors continue to instigate migration in the modern world (e.g., Brown 2008), the consequences of such enormous demographic and ethnic shifts across political and cultural borders necessitate planning that would benefit from the longue durée of bioarchaeological insight.
References Cited
Adams, B., and Byrd, J. (eds.) (2008). Recovery, Analysis, and Identification of Commingled Human Remains, Human Press, Totowa, NJ.
Adams, B., and Byrd, J. (eds.) (2014). Commingled Human Remains: Methods in Recovery, Analysis, and Identification, Academic Press, Boston.
Adams, W. Y. (1968) Invasion, diffusion, evolution? Antiquity 42: 194–215.
Adams, W. Y., Van Gerven, D. P., and Levy, R. S. (1978). The retreat from migrationism. Annual Review of Anthropology 7: 483–532.
Agarwal, S. C. (2016). Bone morphologies and histories: Life course approaches in bioarchaeology. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 159: S130–S149.
Agarwal, S. C., and Glencross, B. A. (2011). Building a social bioarchaeology. In Agarwal, S.C., and Glencross, B.A. (eds.), Social Bioarchaeology, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp. 1–11.
Allen, K., Blieszner, R., and Roberto, K. (2011). Perspectives on extended family and fictive kin in the later years. Journal of Family Issues 32: 1156–1177.
Allen, W., and Richardson III, J. (1971). The reconstruction of kinship from archaeological data: The concepts, the methods, and the feasibility. American Antiquity 36: 41–53.
Allentoft, M., Sikora, M., Sjögren, K.-G., Rasmussen, S., Rasmussen, M., Stenderup, J., et al. (2015). Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia. Nature 522: 167–172.
Alt, K. W., and Pichler, S. L. (1998). Artificial modifications of human teeth. In Alt, K. W., Rösing, F. W., and Teschler-Nicola, M. (eds.), Dental Anthropology: Fundamentals, Limits, and Prospects, Springer, Berlin, pp. 387–415.
Alt, K. W., Pichler, S., Vach, W., Klíma, B., Vlcek, E., and Sedlmeier, J. (1997). Twenty-five thousand-year-old triple burial from Dolní Vestonice: An Ice-Age family? American Journal of Physical Anthropology 102: 123–131.
Alt, K. W., and Vach, W. (1995). Odontological kinship analysis in skeletal remains: Concepts, methods, and results. Forensic Science International 74: 99–113.
Alt, K. W., Zesch, S., Garrido-Pena, R., Knipper, C., Szécsényi-Nagy, A., Roth, C., et al. (2016). A community in life and death: The Late Neolithic Megalithic tomb at Alto de Reinoso (Burgos, Spain). PLoS ONE 11: e0146176.
Amorim, C. E. G., Vai, S., Posth, C., Modi, A., Koncz, I., Hakenbeck, S., et al. (2018). Understanding 6th-century barbarian social organization and migration through paleogenomics. Nature Communications 9: 3547.
Anderson, B. (2008). Identifying the dead: Methods utilized by the Pima County (Arizona) Office of the Medical Examiner for Undocumented Border Crossers: 2011–2006. Journal of Forensic Sciences 53: 8–15.
Anderson, B., Birkby, W. H., and Fenton, T. (2008). Identifying southwest Hispanics using nonmetric traits and the cultural profile. Journal of Forensic Sciences 53: 29–33.
Andrades Valtueña, A., Mittnik, A., Key, F., Haak, W., Allmäe, R., Belinskij, A., et al. (2017). The Stone Age plague and its persistence in Eurasia. Current Biology 27: 3683–3691.
Anthony, D. W. (1990). Migration in archaeology: The baby and the bathwater. American Anthropologist 92: 895–914.
Anthony, D. W. (1997). Prehistoric migration as social process. In Chapman, J., and Hamerow, H. (eds.), Migrations and Invasions in Archaeological Explanation, Archaeopress, Oxford, pp. 21–32.
Anthony, D. W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Antón, S. (1989). Intentional cranial vault deformation and induced changes of the cranial base and face. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 79: 253–267.
Baca, M., Doan, K., Sobczyk, M., Stankovic, A., and Węgleński, P. (2012). Ancient DNA reveals kinship burial patterns of a pre-Columbian Andean community. BMC Genetics 13: 30.
Baker, B. J., and Armelagos, G. J. (1988). The origin and antiquity of syphilis: Paleopathological diagnosis and interpretation. Current Anthropology 29: 703–738.
Baker, B. J., Crane-Kramer, G., Dee, M. W., Gregoricka, L. A., Henneberg, M., Lee, C., et al. (2020). Advancing the understanding of treponemal disease in the past and present. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 171(S70): 5–41.
Baker, B. J., and Tsuda, T. (2015). Bridging the past and present in assessing migration. In Baker, B. J., and Tsuda, T. (eds.), Migration and Disruptions: Toward a Unifying Theory of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 3–14.
Bakewell, O. (2008). ‘Keeping them in their place’: The ambivalent relationship between development and migration in Africa. Third World Quarterly 29: 1341–1358.
Balasse, M. (2002). Reconstructing dietary and environmental history from enamel isotopic analysis: Time resolution of intra-tooth sequential sampling. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 12: 155–165.
Balasse, M., Ambrose, S., Smith, A., and Price, T. D. (2002). The seasonal mobility model for prehistoric herders in the south-western Cape of South Africa assessed by isotopic analysis of sheep tooth enamel. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 917–932.
Barnes, E. (1994). Developmental Defects of the Axial Skeleton in Paleopathology, University Press of Colorado, Niwot.
Barnes, E. (2012). Atlas of Developmental Field Anomalies of the Human Skeleton: A Paleopathology Perspective, Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ.
Barquera, R., Lamniids, T. C., Lankapalli, A. K., Kocher, A., Hernández-Zaragoza, D. I., Nelson, E. A., et al. (2020). Origin and health status of first-generation Africans from early colonial Mexico. Current Biology 30: 1–14.
Barrett, J. C. (2012). Agency: A revisionist account. In Hodder, I. (ed.), Archaeological Theory Today, 2nd ed., Polity Press, Cambridge, pp. 146–166.
Barth, F. (1969). Introduction. In Barth, F. (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, Waveland Press, Long Grove, IL, pp. 9–38.
Bastos, M. Q. R., Santos, R. V., de Souza, S. M. F. M., Rodrigues-Carvalho, C., Tykot, R. H., Cook, D. C., and Santos, R. V. (2016). Isotopic study of geographic origins and diet of enslaved Africans buried in two Brazilian cemeteries. Journal of Archaeological Science 70: 82–90.
Baustian, K. M., Osterholtz, A. J., and Cook, D. C. (2014). Taking analyses of commingled remains into the future: Challenges and prospects. In Osterholtz, A. J., Baustian, K. M., and Martin, D. L. (eds.), Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains, Springer, New York, pp. 265–274.
Bayer, A. M., Hunter, G. C., Gilman, R. H., Cornejo de Carpio, J. G., Naquira, C., Bern, C., and Levy, M. Z. (2009). Chagas disease, migration and community settlement patterns in Arequipa, Peru. PLoS Neglected Tropical Disease 3: e567.
Beard, B., and Johnson, C. (2000). Strontium isotope composition of skeletal material can determine the birth place and geographic mobility of humans and animals. Journal of Forensic Sciences 45: 1049–1061.
Beaumont, J., and Montgomery, J. (2016). The Great Irish Famine: Identifying starvation in the tissues of victims using stable isotope analysis of bone and incremental dentine collagen. PLoS ONE 11: e0160065.
Bentley, R. (2006). Strontium isotopes from the earth to the archaeological skeleton: A review. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 13: 135–187.
Bentley, R. A. (2013). Mobility and the diversity of Early Neolithic lives: Isotopic evidence from skeletons. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 32: 303–312.
Bentley, R. A., Bickle, P., Fibiger, L., Nowell, G. M., Dale, C. W., Hedges, R. E. M., et al. (2012). Community differentiation and kinship among Europe’s first farmers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109: 9326–9330.
Bentley, R. A., and Knipper, C. (2005). Transhumance at the early Neolithic settlement at Vaihingen (Germany). Antiquity 79(306): Project Gallery. Available at: <http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/bentley306/>, accessed 13 May 2020.
Bentley, R. A., Pietrusewsky, M., Douglas, M. T., and Atkinson, T. C. (2005). Matrilocality during the prehistoric transition to agriculture in Thailand? Antiquity 79: 865–881.
Berger, E., Yang, L., and Ye, W. (2019). Foot binding in a Ming Dynasty cemetery near Xi’an, China. International Journal of Paleopathology 24: 79–88.
Bernardini, W. (2011). Migration in fluid social landscapes. In Cabana, G., and Clark, J. (eds.), Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 31–44.
Binford, L. (1962). Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28: 217–225.
Binford, L. (1968). Some comments on historical versus processual archaeology. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 24: 267–275.
Binford, L. (1980). Willow smoke and dogs’ tails: Hunter-gatherer settlement systems and archaeological site formation. American Antiquity 45: 4–20.
Blakey, M. L. (2001). Bioarchaeology of the African Diaspora in the Americas: Its origins and scope. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 387–422.
Blom, D. E. (2005). Embodying borders: Human body modification and diversity in Tiwanaku society. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 24: 1–24.
Bolnick, D., and Smith, D. (2007). Migration and social structure among the Hopewell: Evidence from ancient DNA. American Antiquity 72: 627–644.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. by R. Nice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice, trans. by R. Nice, Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
Boutin, A. T. (2011). Crafting a bioarchaeology of personhood: Osteobiographical narratives from Alalakh. In Baadsgaard, A., Boutin, A.T., and Buikstra, J.E. (eds.), Breathing New Life into the Evidence of Death: Contemporary Approaches to Bioarchaeology, School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 109–133.
Boutin, A. (2016). Exploring the social construction of disability: An application of the bioarchaeology of personhood model to a pathological skeleton from ancient Bahrain. International Journal of Paleopathology 12: 17–28.
Boutin, A., and Callahan, M. P. (2019). Increasing empathy and reducing prejudice: An argument for fictive osteobiographical narrative. Bioarchaeology International 3: 1–10.
Boutin, A. T., and Porter, B. W. (2019). The Elders of Early Dilmun: A bioarchaeological analysis of age and masculinity from the Peter B. Cornwall Collection. In Williams, K. D., and Gregoricka, L. A. (eds.), Mortuary and Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Bronze Age Arabia, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 220–239.
Boyd, R. T. (1990). Demographic history, 1774–1874. In Sturtevant, W. C. (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 7, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, pp. 135–148.
Brettell, C. (2008). Theorizing migration in anthropology: The social construction of networks, identities, communities, and globalscapes. In Brettell, C., and Hollifield, J. (eds.), Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines, Routledge, New York, pp. 113–159.
Brettell, C. (2016). Perspectives on migration theory – Anthropology. In White, M. (ed.), International Handbook of Migration and Population Distribution, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 41–67.
Brettell, R., Montgomery, J., and Evans, J. (2012). Brewing and stewing: The effect of culturally mediated behaviour on the oxygen isotope composition of ingested fluids and implications for human provenance studies. Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry 27: 778–785.
Briggs, A. W., Stenzel, U., Johnson, P. L. F., Green, R. E., Kelso, J., Prüfer, K., et al. (2007). Patterns of damage in genomic DNA sequences from a Neandertal. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104: 14616–14621.
Bromage, T., Lacruz, R. S., Hogg, R., Goldman, H. M., McFarlin, S., Warshaw, J., et al. (2009). Lamellar bone is an incremental tissue reconciling enamel rhythms, body size, and organismal life history. Calcified Tissue International 84: 388–404.
Brown, O. (2008). Migration and Climate Change, IOM Migration Research Series No. 31, International Organization for Migration, Geneva.
Brummell, A. C. (1979). A model of intraurban mobility. Economic Geography 55: 338–352.
Bryant, J., and Froelich, P. (1995). A model of oxygen isotope fractionation in body water of large mammals. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 59: 4523–4537.
Buikstra, J. E., and Ubelaker, D. H. (1994). Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains, Research Series No. 44, Arkansas Archaeological Survey, Fayetteville.
Burger, J., Hummel, S., Hermann, B., and Henke, W. (1999). DNA preservation: A microsatellite-DNA study on ancient skeletal remains. Electrophoresis 20: 1722–1728.
Burmeister, S. (2000). Archaeology and migration: Approaches to an archaeological proof of migration. Current Anthropology 41: 539–567.
Burmeister, S. (2016). Archaeological research on migration as a multidisciplinary challenge. Medieval Worlds 4: 42–64.
Burnett, S. E., and Irish, J. D. (2017). Introduction to a world view of bioculturally modified teeth. In Burnett, S. E., and Irish, J. D. (eds.), A World View of Bioculturally Modified Teeth, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 1–16.
Buzon, M., and Simonetti, A. (2013). Strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) variability in the Nile Valley: Identifying residential mobility during ancient Egyptian and Nubian sociopolitical changes in the New Kingdom and Napatan periods. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 151: 1–9.
Buzon, M., Simonetti, A., and Creaser, R. (2007). Migration in the Nile Valley during the New Kingdom period: A preliminary strontium isotope study. Journal of Archaeological Science 34: 1391–1401.
Byrnes, J., and Muller, J. (2017). Mind the gap: Bridging disability studies and bioarchaeology – An introduction. In Byrnes, J., and Muller, J. (eds.), Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability: Theoretical, Ethnohistorical, and Methodological Perspectives, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 1–18.
Cabana, G. S. (2011). The problematic relationship between migration and culture change. In Cabana, G. S., and Clark, J. (eds.), Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 17–28.
Cabana, G. S., and Clark, J. J. (2011). Migration in anthropology: Where we stand. In Cabana, G. S., and Clark, J. J. (eds.), Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 3–15.
Cameron, C. (2013). How people moved among ancient societies: Broadening the view. American Anthropologist 115: 218–231.
Campbell, B. C., and Crawford, M. H. (2012). Perspectives on human migration: Introduction. In Crawford, M. H., and Campbell, B. C. (eds.), Causes and Consequences of Human Migration, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–8.
Carson, E. (2006). Maximum likelihood estimation of human craniometric heritabilities. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 131: 169–180.
Case, D., Jones, L., and Offenbecker, A. (2017). Skeletal kinship analyses using developmental anomalies of the foot. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 27: 192–205.
Chatters, L., Taylor, R., and Jayakody, R. (1994). Fictive kinship relations in Black extended families. Journal of Comparative Family Studies 25: 297–312.
Chapman, J., and Dolukhanov, P. (1992). The baby and the bathwater: Pulling the plug on migrations. American Anthropologist 94: 169–174.
Chapman, J., and Hamerow, H. (1997). On the move again: Migrations and invasions in archaeological explanation. In Chapman, J., and Hamerow, H. (eds.), Migrations and Invasions in Archaeological Explanation, Archaeopress, Oxford, pp. 1–10.
Chawanaputorn, D., Patanaporn, V., Malikaew, P., Khongkhunthian, P., and Reichart, P. (2007). Facial and dental characteristics of Padaung women (long-neck Karen) wearing brass neck coils in Mae Hong Son Province, Thailand. American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics 131: 639–645.
Cho, S., Crenshaw, K. W., and McCall, L. (2013). Toward a field of intersectionality studies: Theory, applications, and praxis. Signs 38: 785–810.
Clark, B. J., and Wilkie, L. A. (2006). The prism of self: Gender and personhood. In Nelson, S. (ed.), Handbook of Gender in Archaeology, AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD, pp. 333–364.
Clark, J. J. (2001). Tracking Prehistoric Migrations: Pueblo Settlers among the Tonto Basin Hohokam, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Coelho, C., Navega, D., Cunha, E., Ferreira, M. T., and Wasterlain, S. N. (2017). Ancestry estimation based on morphoscopic traits in a sample of African slaves from Lagos, Portugal (15th–17th centuries). International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 27: 320–326.
Conkey, M. W., and Spector, J. D. (1984). Archaeology and the study of gender. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7: 1–38.
Connell, J., Dasgupta, B., Laishley, R., and Lipton, M. (1976). Migration from Rural Areas, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Cook, D. C., and Powell, M. L. (2012). Treponematosis: Past, present, and future. In Grauer, A. L. (ed.), A Companion to Paleopathology, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp. 472–491.
Cook, R., and Aubry, B. (2014). Aggregation, interregional interaction, and postmarital residence patterning: A study of biological variation in the late prehistoric middle Ohio Valley. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 154: 270–278.
Cox, G., and Sealy, J. (1997). Investigating identity and life histories: Isotopic analysis and historical documentation of slave skeletons found on the Cape Town Foreshore, South Africa. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1: 207–224.
Craig-Atkins, E., Towers, J., and Beaumont, J. (2018). The role of infant life histories in the construction of identities in death: An incremental isotope study of dietary and physiological status among children afforded differential burial. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 167: 644–655.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43: 1241–1299.
Cresswell, T., and Uteng, T. P. (2008). Gendered mobilities: Towards an holistic understanding. In Uteng, T. P., and Cresswell, T. (eds.), Gendered Mobilities, Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 1–12.
Cui, Y., Song, L., Wei, D., Pang, Y., Wang, N., Ning, C., et al. (2015). Identification of kinship and occupant status in Mongolian noble burials of the Yuan Dynasty through a multidisciplinary approach. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 370: 20130378.
Cummings, S. R., Ling, X., and Stone, K. (1997). Consequences of foot binding among older women in Beijing, China. American Journal Public Health 87: 1677–1679.
Cunha, E., and Ubelaker, D. H. (2020). Evaluation of ancestry from human skeletal remains: A concise review. Forensic Sciences Research 5: 89–97.
Dansgaard, W. (1964). Stable isotopes in precipitation. Tellus 16: 436–468.
de la Cova, C. (2012). Patterns of trauma and violence in 19th-century-born African American and Euro-American females. International Journal of Paleopathology 2: 61-68.
de la Cova, C. (2017). Fractured lives: Structural violence, trauma, and recidivism in urban and institutionalized 19th-century-born African Americans and Euro-Americans. In Tegemeyer, C., and Martin, D. (eds.), Broken Bones, Broken Bodies, Lexington Press, Lanham, MD, pp. 153–180.
De León, J. (2015). The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail, University of California Press, Oakland.
Díaz-Andreu, M., Lucy, S., Babić, S., and Edwards, D. N. (2005). The Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity, and Religion, Routledge, London.
Drosou, K., Price, C., and Brown, T. A. (2018). The kinship of two 12th century dynasty mummies revealed by ancient DNA sequencing. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 17: 793–797.
Dudar, J. C., Waye, J. S., and Saunders, S. R. (2003). Determination of a kinship system using ancient DNA, mortuary practice, and historic records in an Upper Canadian pioneer cemetery. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 13: 232–246.
Dudzik, B., and Kolatorowicz, A. (2016). Craniometric data analysis and estimation of biodistance. In Pilloud, M. A., and Hefner, J. T. (eds.), Biological Distance Analysis: Forensic and Bioarchaeological Perspectives, Academic Press, London, pp. 35–60.
Duncan, W. N., and Hofling, C. A. (2011). Why the head? Cranial modification as protection and ensoulment among the Maya. Ancient Mesoamerica 22: 199–210.
Dupras, T., and Tocheri, M. (2007). Reconstructing infant weaning histories at Roman period Kellis, Egypt using stable isotope analysis of dentition. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 134: 63–74.
Ebaugh, H. R., and Curry, M. (2000). Fictive kin as social capital in new immigrant communities. Sociological Perspectives 43: 18–209.
Eerkins, J. W., Barfod, G. H., Leventhal, A., Jorgenson, G. A., and Cambra, R. (2014). Matrilocality in the Middle Period in San Francisco Bay? New evidence from strontium isotopes at CA-SCL-287. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 34: 211–227.
Eerkins, J. W., Sullivan, K., and Greenwald, A. M. (2016). Stable isotope analysis of serial samples of third molars as insight into inter- and intra-individual variation in ancient diet. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 5: 656–663.
Ericson, J. (1985). Strontium isotope characterization in the study of prehistoric human ecology. Journal of Human Evolution 14: 503–514.
Esser, H. (2004). Does the ‘new’ immigration require a ‘new’ theory of intergenerational integration? International Migration Review 38: 1126–1159.
Falconer, D. S. (1989). Introduction to Quantitative Genetics, 3rd ed., Longman, London.
Farmer, P. (2004). An anthropology of structural violence. Current Anthropology 45: 305–325.
Faure, G. (1986). Principles of Isotope Geology, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
Field, V., Gautret, P., Schlagenhauf, P., Burchard, G.-D., Caumes, E., Jensenius, M., et al. (2010). Travel and migration associated infectious disease morbidity in Europe, 2008. BMC Infectious Diseases 10: 330.
Findlater, A., and Bogoch, I. I. (2018). Human mobility and the global spread of infectious diseases: A focus on air travel. Trends in Parasitology 34: 772-783.
Fisher, D., and Fox, D. (1998). Oxygen isotopes in mammoth teeth: Sample design, mineralization patterns, and enamel-dentin comparisons. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 18: 41A–42A.
Fix, A. G. (2004). Kin-structured migration: Causes and consequences. American Journal of Human Biology 16: 387–394.
Fix, A. G. (2012). Kin-structured migration and colonization. In Crawford, M. H., and Campbell, B. C. (eds.), Causes and Consequences of Human Migration: An Evolutionary Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 87–100.
Foster, G. M. (1953). Cofradía and compadrazgo in Spain and Spanish America. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9: 1–28.
Fowler, C. (2004). The Archaeology of Personhood: An Anthropological Approach, Routledge, New York.
Fowler, C. (2016). Relational personhood revisited. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 26: 397–412.
Frank, A. G. (1967). Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, Monthly Review Press, New York.
Frei, K. M., Mannering, U., Kristiansen, K., Allentoft, M. E., Wilson, A.S., Skals, I., et al. (2015). Tracing the dynamic life story of a Bronze Age female. Scientific Reports 5: 10431.
Frieman, C. J., Teather, A., and Morgan, C. (2019). Bodies in motion: Narratives and counter narratives of gendered mobility in European later prehistory. Norwegian Archaeological Review 52: 148–169.
Furholt, M. (2018). Massive migrations? The impact of recent aDNA studies on our view of third millennium Europe. European Journal of Archaeology 21: 159–191.
Furholt, M. (2019a). Re-integrating archaeology: A contribution to aDNA studies and the migration discourse on the 3rd millennium BC in Europe. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 85: 115–129.
Furholt, M. (2019b). De-contaminating the aDNA-archaeology dialogue on mobility and migration: Discussing the culture-historical legacy. Current Swedish Archaeology 27: 53–68.
Gale, N. H. (1989). Lead isotope analyses applied to provenance studies – A brief review. In Maniatis, Y. (ed.), Archaeometry, Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 469–503.
Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research 6: 167–191.
Gamba, C., Jones, E. R., Teasdale, M. D., McLaughlin, R. L., Gonzalez-Fortes, G., Mattiangeli, V., et al. (2014). Genome flux and stasis in a five millennium transect of European prehistory. Nature Communications 5(5257): 1–9.
Gat, J. (1996). Oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in the hydrologic cycle. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 24: 225–262.
Geller, P. L. (2006). Altering identities: Body modifications and the pre-Columbian Maya. In Gowland, R., and Knüsel, C. (eds.), Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains, Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp. 279–291.
Geller, P.L. (2008). Conceiving sex: Fomenting a feminist bioarchaeology. Journal of Social Archaeology 8: 113–138.
Geller, P. L. (2009). Identity and difference: Complicating gender in archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 38: 65–81.
Geller, P. L. (2011). Getting a head start in life: Pre-Columbian Maya cranial modification from infancy to ancestorhood. In Bonogofsky, M. (ed.), The Bioarchaeology of the Human Head, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 241–261.
Geller, P. L. (2017). The Bioarchaeology of Socio-Sexual Lives: Queering Common Sense about Sex, Gender, and Sexuality, Springer, Cham, Switzerland.
Gerling, C., Bánffy, E., Dani, J., Köhler, K., Kulcsár, G., Pike, A. W. G., Szeverényi, V., and Heyd, V. (2012). Immigration and transhumance in the Early Bronze Age Carpathian Basin. Antiquity 86: 1097–1111.
Gibson, R. (2015). Effects of long term corseting on the female skeleton: A preliminary morphological examination. Nexus: The Canadian Student Journal of Anthropology 23: 45–60.
Gibson, R. (2017). “To Mold the Wax of the Woman”: An Examination of Changes in Skeletal Morphology due to Corseting, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington, DC.
Glick Schiller, N. (1995). From immigrant to transmigrant: Theorizing transnational migration. Anthropological Quarterly 68: 48–63.
Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L., and Szanton Blanc, C. (1992). Transnationalism: A new analytical framework for understanding migration. In Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L., and Szanton Blanc, C. (eds.), Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New York, pp. 1–24.
Goodman, A. H., Jones, J., Reid, J., Mack, M. E., Blakey, M. L., Amarasiriwardena, D., Burton, P., and Coleman, D. (2009). Isotopic and elemental chemistry of teeth: Implications for places of birth, forced migration patterns, nutritional status, and pollution. In Blakey, M. L., and Rankin-Hill, L. M. (eds.), Skeletal Biology of the New York African Burial Ground, Part 1, Howard University, Washington, DC, pp. 95–118.
Goodwin, W. H. (2014). DNA and skeletal analysis in bioarchaeology and human osteology. In Smith, C. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, Springer, New York, pp. 2149–2155.
Graustein, W. (1989). 87Sr/86Sr ratios measure the sources and flow of strontium in terrestrial ecosystems. In Rundel, P., Ehleringer, R., and Nagy, K. (eds.), Stable Isotopes in Ecological Research, Springer, New York, pp. 491–512.
Gravlee, C. (2005). How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 139: 47–57.
Greenblatt, S. (2010). A mobility studies manifesto. In Greenblatt, S. (ed.), Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 250–253.
Greenwald, A. M., Eerkins, J. W., and Bartelink, E. J. (2016). Stable isotope evidence of juvenile foraging in prehistoric central California. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 7: 146–154.
Gregoricka, L. A. (2013a). Residential mobility and social identity in the periphery: Strontium isotope analysis of archaeological tooth enamel from southeastern Arabia. Journal of Archaeological Science 40: 452–464.
Gregoricka, L. A. (2013b). Geographic origins and dietary transitions during the Bronze Age in the Oman Peninsula. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 152: 353–369.
Gregoricka, L. A. (2014). Assessing life history from commingled assemblages: The biogeochemistry of inter-tooth variability in Bronze Age Arabia. Journal of Archaeological Science 47: 10–21.
Gregoricka, L. A. (2016). Human response to climate change during the Umm an-Nar/Wadi Suq transition in the United Arab Emirates. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 26: 211–220.
Gregoricka, L. A. (2020a). Negotiating contact in the periphery: Commingled mortuary practices and identity construction in Bronze Age Arabia. In Knudson, K., and Stojanowski, C. (eds.), Identity Revisited: The Bioarchaeology of Identity in the Americas and Beyond, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 85–106.
Gregoricka, L. A. (2020b). Aridity and adaptation among Arabian Bronze Age communities: Investigating mobility and climate change using isotope analysis. In Robbins Schug, G. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Climate and Environmental Change, Routledge, New York, in press.
Gregoricka, L. A., and Sheridan, S. G. (2017). Continuity or conquest? A multi-isotope approach to investigating identity in the Early Iron Age of the southern Levant. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 162: 73–89.
Gregoricka, L. A., Ullinger, J. M., and Sheridan, S. G. (2020). Status, kinship, and place of burial at Early Bronze Age Bab adh-Dhra’: A biogeochemical comparison of charnel house human remains. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 171: 319–335.
Groves, S., Roberts, C., Johnstone, C., Hall, R., and Dobney, K. (2003). A high status burial from Ripon Cathedral, North Yorkshire, England: Differential diagnosis of a chest deformity. International Journal of Osteoarcheology 13: 358–368.
Gulson, B. L., Jameson, C. W., and Gillings, B. R. (1997). Stable lead isotopes in teeth as indicators of past domicile: A potential new tool in forensic science? Journal of Forensic Sciences 42: 787–791.
Haak, W., Brandt, G., de Jong, H.N., Meyer, C., Ganslmeier, R., Heyd, V., et al. (2008). Ancient DNA, strontium isotopes, and osteological analyses shed light on social and kinship organisation of the Later Stone Age. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 18226–18231.
Haak, W., Lazaridis, I., Patterson, N., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Llamas, B., et al. (2015). Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature 522: 207–211.
Hagerstrand, T. (1967). Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Halfon, N., Larson, K., Lu, M., Tullis, E., and Russ, S. (2014). Lifecourse health development: Past, present and future. Maternal and Child Health Journal 18: 344–365.
Handler, J. S., Corruccini, R. S., and Mutaw, R. J. (1982). Tooth mutilation in the Caribbean: Evidence from a slave burial population in Barbados. Journal of Human Evolution 11: 297–313.
Harrod, R. P., and Martin, D. L. (2014). Bioarchaeology of Climate Change and Violence, Springer, New York.
Harrod, R. P., and Martin, D. L. (2015). Bioarchaeological case studies of slavery, captivity, and other forms of exploitation. In Marshall, L. W. (ed.), The Archaeology of Slavery: A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, pp. 41–63.
Hauser, G., and De Stefano, G. F. (1989). Epigenetic Variants of the Human Skull, Schweizerbart, Stuttgartt.
Hefner, J. T., Pilloud, M. A., Buikstra, J. E., and Vogelsberg, C. C. M. (2016). A brief history of biological distance analysis. In Pilloud, M. A., and Hefner, J. T. (eds.), Biological Distance Analysis: Forensic and Bioarchaeological Perspectives, Academic Press, London, pp. 3–22.
Herrera, B., Hanihara, T., and Godde, K. (2014). Comparability of multiple data types from the Bering Strait region: Cranial and dental metrics and nonmetrics, mtDNA, and Y-chromosome DNA. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 154: 334–348.
Hertz, R. (1960 [1906]). Death and the Right Hand, trans. by R. Needham and C. Needham, The Free Press, Glencoe, IL.
Heyd, V. (2017). Kossinna’s smile. Antiquity 91: 348–359.
Hillson, S. (1996). Dental Anthropology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Hillson, S., FitzGerald, C., and Flinn, H. (2005). Alternative dental measurements: Proposals and relationships with other measurements. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 126: 413–426.
Hodder, I. (1982). Theoretical archaeology: A reactionary views. In Hodder, I. (ed.), Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–16.
Hodder, I. (2004). Theory and practice in archaeology, Routledge, London.
Holt, S. (2009). Individuals and variation: Stable isotope analysis of weaning using dental serial sections, Unpublished M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Horevitz, E. (2009). Understanding the anthropology of immigration and migration. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 19: 745–758.
Hosek, L., and Robb, J. (2019). Osteobiography: A platform for bioarchaeological research. Bioarchaeology International 3: 1–15.
Hoshower, L. M., Buikstra, J. E., Goldstein, P. S., and Webster, A. D. (1995). Artificial cranial deformation at the Omo M10 Site: A Tiwanaku complex from the Moquegua Valley, Peru. Latin American Antiquity 6: 145–164.
Howell, N. (2017). Demography of the Dobe !Kung, 2nd ed., Routledge, New York.
Howells, W. W. (1973). Cranial Variation in Man: A Study by Multivariate Analysis of Patterns of Difference among Recent Human Populations, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Howells, W. W. (1989) Skull Shapes and the Map: Craniometric Analysis in the Dispersion of modern Homo, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Howells, W. W. (1995). Who’s Who in Skulls: Ethnic Identification of Crania from Measurements, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Howells, W. W. (1996). Howells’ craniometric data on the internet. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 101: 441–442.
Hubbard, A. R., Guatelli-Steinberg, D., and Irish, J. D. (2015). Do nuclear DNA and dental nonmetric data produce similar reconstructions of regional population history? American Journal of Physical Anthropology 157: 295–304.
Hubbe, M., Neves, W. A., de Oliveira, E.C., and Strauss, A. (2009). Postmarital residence practice in southern Brazilian coastal groups: Continuity and change. Latin American Antiquity 20: 267–278.
Hurst, R., and Davis, T. (1981). Strontium isotopes as tracers of airborne fly ash from coal-fired power plants. Environmental Geology 3: 363–367.
Insoll, T. (2007). Introduction: Configuring identities in archaeology. In Insoll, T. (ed.), The Archaeology of Identities: A Reader, Routledge, New York, pp. 1–22.
Johnson, A. L. (2004). The goals of processual archaeology. In Johnson, A. L. (ed.), Processual Archaeology: Exploring Analytical Strategies, Frames of Reference, and Culture Process, Praeger, Westport, CT, pp. 1–30.
Johnson, K. M., and Paul, K. S. (2016). Bioarchaeology and kinship: Integrating theory, social relatedness, and biology in ancient family research. Journal of Archaeological Research 24: 75–123.
Jones, S. (1997). The Archaeology of Ethnicity: Constructing Identities in the Past and Present, Routledge, New York.
Jones, S. (2005). Transhumance re-examined. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11: 357–359.
Joyce, R. A. (2005). Archaeology of the body. Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 139–158.
Jørkov, M. L., Heinemeier, J., and Lynnerup, N. (2009). The petrous bone – A new sampling site for identifying early dietary patterns in stable isotopic studies. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 138: 199–209.
Juarez, C. A. (2008). Strontium and geolocation, the pathway to identification for deceased undocumented Mexican border-crossers. Journal of Forensic Sciences 53: 46–49.
Kamenov, G. D. (2008). High precision Pb isotopic measurements of teeth and environmental samples from Sofia (Bulgaria). Environmental Geology 55: 669–680.
Kana’iaupuni, S. M. (2000). Reframing the migration question: An analysis of men, women, and gender in Mexico. Social Forces 78: 1311–1347.
Kearney, M. (1986). From the invisible hand to visible feet: Anthropological studies of migration and development. Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 331–361.
Kearney, M. (1995). The local and the global: The anthropology of globalization and transnationalism. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 547–565.
Kearney, M. (2004). The classifying and value-filtering missions of borders. Anthropological Theory 4: 131–156.
Kelly, R. L. (1992). Mobility/sedentism: Concepts, archaeological measures, and effects. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 43–66.
Keshishian, J. M. (1979). Anatomy of a Burmese beauty secret. National Geographic 155: 798–801.
Kieser, J. A. (1990). Human Adult Odontometrics: The Study of Variation in Adult Tooth Size, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Killgrove, K. (2019). Bioarchaeology and the media: Anthropology scicomm in a post-truth landscape. In Buikstra, J. E. (ed.), Bioarchaeologists Speak Out, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 305–324.
Kivisto, P. (2001). Theorizing transnational immigration: A critical review of current efforts. Ethnic and Racial Studies 24: 549–577.
Kjellström, A. (2014). Interpreting violence: A bioarchaeological perspective of violence from medieval central Sweden. In Knüsel, C., and Smith, M. J. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict, Routledge, New York, pp. 237–250.
Klaus, H. D. (2012). The bioarchaeology of structural violence: A theoretical model and a case study. In Martin, D. L., Harrod, R. P. and Pérez, V. R. (eds.), The Bioarchaeology of Violence, University of Florida Press, Gainesville, pp. 29–62.
Knipper, C., Mittnik, A., Massy, K., Kociumaka, C., Kucukkalipci, I., Maus, M., et al. (2017). Female exogamy and gene pool diversification at the transition from the Final Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age in central Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114: 10083–10088.
Knudson, K. (2009). Oxygen isotope analysis in a land of environmental extremes: The complexities of isotopic work in the Andes. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 19: 171–191.
Knudson, K. J., Stanish, C., Lozada Cerna, M. C., Faull, K. F., and Tantaleán, H. (2016). Intra-individual variability and strontium isotope measurements: A methodological study using 87Sr/86Sr data from Pampa de los Gentiles, Chincha Valley, Peru. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 5: 590–597.
Knudson, K. J., and Stojanowski, C. M. (2008). New directions in bioarchaeology: Recent contributions to the study of human social identities. Journal of Archaeological Research 16: 397–432.
Knudson, K. J., and Stojanowski, C. M. (2009). The bioarchaeology of identity. In Knudson, K. J., and Stojanowski, C. M. (eds.), Bioarchaeology and Identity in the Americas, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 1–23.
Knudson, K. J., Torres-Rouff, C., and Stojanowski, C. M. (2015). Investigating human responses to political and environmental change through paleodiet and paleomobility. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 157: 179–201.
Kohn, M. (1996). Predicting animal d18O: Accounting for diet and physiological adaptation. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 60: 4811–4829.
Komárek, M., Ettler, V., Chrastný, V., and Mihaljevič, M. (2008). Lead isotopes in environmental science: A review. Environment International 34: 562–577.
Kossinna, G. (1911). Die Herkunft der Germanen. Zur Methode der Siedlungsarchäologie, Würzburg, Kabitzsch.
Kramer, R. T., Bartelink, E. J., Herrmann, N. P., Bataille, C. P., and Spradley, K. (2020). Application of stable isotopes and geostatistics to infer region of geographical origin for deceased undocumented Latin American migrants. In Parra, R. C., Zapico, S. C., and Ubelaker, D. H. (eds.), Forensic Science and Humanitarian Action: Interacting with the Dead and the Living, John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ, pp. 425–440.
Kristiansen, K. (1989). Prehistoric migrations - The case of the Single Grave and Corded Ware Culture. Journal of Danish Archaeology 8: 211–225.
Kristiansen, K., Allentoft, M. E., Frei, K. M., Iversen, R., Johannsen, N. J., Kroonen, G., et al. (2017). Re-theorising mobility and the formation of culture and language among the Corded Ware Culture in Europe. Antiquity 91: 334–347.
Kurin, D.S., Lofaro, E. M., Gómez Choque, D.E., and Krigbaum, J. (2016). A bioarchaeological and biogeochemical study of warfare and mobility in Andahuaylas, Peru (ca. AD 1160–1260). International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 26: 93–103.
Kusaka, S., Nakano, T, Morita, W., and Nakatsukasa, M. (2012). Strontium isotope analysis to reveal migration in relation to climate change and ritual tooth ablation of Jomon skeletal remains from western Japan. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31: 551–563.
Lacan, M., Keyser, C., Ricaut, F.-X., Brucato, N., Tarrús, J., Bosch, A., Guilaine, J., Crubézy, E., and Ludes, B. (2011). Ancient DNA reveals male diffusion through the Neolithic Mediterranean route. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108: 9788–9791.
Laffoon, J. E., Esperson, R., and Mickleburgh, H. L. (2018). The life history of an enslaved African: Multiple isotope evidence for forced childhood migration from Africa to the Caribbean and associated dietary change. Archaeometry 60: 350–365.
Lamberg-Karlovsky, C. (2009). Structure, agency and commerce in the ancient Near East. Iranica Antiqua 44: 47–88.
Lane, R. A., and Sublett, A. J. (1972). Osteology of social organization: Residence pattern. American Antiquity 37: 186–201.
Larsen, C. S. (2015). Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human Skeleton, 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Larsen, C. S. (2017). Forward. In Burnett, S. E., and Irish, J. D. (eds.), A World View of Bioculturally Modified Teeth, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. xv–xvii.
Larsen, C. S. (2018). Bioarchaeology in perspective: From classifications of the dead to conditions of the living. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 165: 865–878.
Lee, C. (2019). A bioarchaeological and biocultural investigation of Chinese footbinding at the Xuecun archaeological site, Henan Province, China. International Journal of Paleopathology 25: 9–19.
Lee, E. S. (1966). A theory of migration. Demography 3: 47–57.
Lee, R. B. (1979). The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Lee, R. B. (2003). Dobe Ju/’hoansi, 3rd ed., Wadsworth, Belmont, CA.
Levitt, P., DeWind, J., and Vertovec, S. (2003). International perspectives on transnational migration: An introduction. International Migration Review 37: 565–575.
Lewis, G. J. (1982). Human Migration: A Geographical Perspective, St. Martin’s Press, New York.
Lindahl, T. (1993). Instability and decay of the primary structure of DNA. Nature 362: 709–715.
Lindo, J., Huerta-Sánchez, E., Nakagome, S., Rasmussen, M., Petzelt, B., Mitchell, J., et al. (2016). A time transect of exomes from a Native American population before and after European contact. Nature Communications 7: 13175.
Lisowska-Gaczorek, A., Szostek, K., Pawlyta, J., and Cienkosz-Stepanczak, B. (2020). Oxygen isotopic fractionation in rat bones as a result of consuming thermally processed water – Bioarchaeological applications. Geochronometria 47: 1–12.
Longinelli, A. (1984). Oxygen isotopes in mammal bone phosphate: A new tool for paleohydrological and paleoclimatogical research? Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 48: 385–390.
Lovell, N., and Dawson, L. (2003). Intra- and inter-tooth analysis of hypoplastic and hypocalcified enamel defects. Journal of Human Ecology 14: 241–248.
Lozada, M. C. (2011a). Cultural determinants of ancestry: A lesson for studies of biological relatedness and ethnicity in the past. In Baadsgaard, A., Boutin, A. T., and Buikstra, J. E. (eds.), Breathing New Life into the Evidence of Death: Contemporary Approaches to Bioarchaeology, School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 135–149.
Lozada, M. C. (2011b). Marking ethnicity through premortem cranial modification among the pre-Inca Chiribaya, Peru. In Bonogofsky, M. (ed.), The Bioarchaeology of the Human Head, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 228–240.
Lucy, S. (2005). The archaeology of age. In Díaz-Andreu, M., Lucy, S., Babić, S., and Edwards, D. N. (eds.), The Archaeology of Identity: Approaches to Gender, Age, Status, Ethnicity, and Religion, Routledge, London, pp. 43–66.
Luz, B., and Kolodny, Y. (1985). Oxygen isotope variations in bone phosphate of biogenic apatites, IV: Mammal teeth and bones. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 75: 29–36.
Luz, B., Kolodny, Y., and Horowitz, M. (1984). Fractionation of oxygen isotopes between mammalian bone-phosphate and environmental drinking water. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 48: 1689–1693.
Maddaloni, M., Lolacono, N., Manton, W., Blum, C., Drexler, J., and Graziano, J. (1998). Bioavailability of soilborne lead in adults, by stable isotope dilution. Environmental Health Perspectives 106: 1589–1594.
Maggiano, C., Maggiano, I., Tiesler, V., Chi-Keb, J. R., and Stout, S. D. (2015). Methods and theory in bone modeling drift: Comparing spatial analyses of primary bone distributions in the human humerus. Journal of Anatomy 228: 190–202.
Maggiano, C. M., White, C. D., Stern, R. A., Salvador Peralta, J., and Longstaffe, F. J. (2019). Oxygen isotope microanalysis across incremental layers of human bone. Journal of Archaeological Science 111: 105028.
Maggiano, I., Maggiano, C., Tiesler, V., Kierdorf, H., Stout, S. D., and Schultz, M. (2011). A distinct region of microarchitectural variation in femoral compact bone: Histomorphology of the endosteal lamellar pocket. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 21: 743–750.
Maggiano, I., Maggiano, C., Tiesler, V., Chi-Keb, J., and Stout, S. (2015). Drifting diaphyses: Asymmetry in diametric growth and adaptation along the humeral and femoral length. Anatomical Record 298: 1689–1699.
Mahler, S., and Pessar, P. (2001). Gendered geographies of power: Analyzing gender across transnational spaces. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 7: 442–459.
Malkki, L. (1992). National geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity among scholars and refugees. Cultural Anthropology 7: 24–44.
Malkki, L. (1995). Refugees and exile: From “refugee studies” to the national order of things. Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 495–523.
Martin, D., and Harrod, R. (2020). The climate change-witch execution connection: Living with environmental uncertainties on the Colorado Plateau (AD 800–1350). In Robbins Schug, G. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Climate and Environmental Change, Routledge, New York, in press.
Martin, D. L., Harrod, R. P., and Pérez, V. R. (2013a). Bioarchaeology: An Integrated Approach to Working with Human Remains, Springer, New York.
Martin, D. L., Harrod, R. P., and Pérez, V. R. (2013b). Bioarchaeology of Populations: Understanding Adaptation and Resilience, Springer, New York.
Matsumura, H., and Hudson, M. J. (2005). Dental perspectives on the population history of Southeast Asia. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 127: 182–209.
McCall, L. (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs 30: 1771–1800.
Mendisco, F., Keyser, C., Seldes, V., Nielsen, A. E., Gabriela Russo, M., Crubézy, E., and Ludes, B. (2018). An insight into the burial practices of the late pre-Hispanic Los Amarillos community (northwestern Argentina) through the study of ancient DNA. Journal of Archaeological Science 91: 12–19.
Merbs, C. F. (1992). A new world of infectious disease. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 35: 3–42.
Meskell, L. M., and Joyce, R. A. (2003). Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and Egyptian Experience, Routledge, New York.
Meyer, C., Ganslmeier, R., Dresely, V., and Alt, K. W. (2012). New approaches to the reconstruction of kinship and social structure based on bioarchaeological analysis of Neolithic multiple and collective graves. In Kolář, J., and Trampota, F. (eds.), Theoretical and Methodological Considerations in Central European Neolithic Archaeology, Archaeopress, Oxford, pp. 11–23.
Meyer, C., Jung, C., Kohl, T., Poenicke, A., Poppe, A., and Alt, K. W. (2002). Syphilis 2001 – A palaeopathological reappraisal. Homo 53: 39–58.
Miller, D., and Tilley, C. (1984). Theoretical perspectives. In Miller, D., and Tilley, C. (eds.), Ideology, Power and Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1–16.
Milner, G. R., and Larsen, C. S. (1991). Teeth as artifacts of human behavior: Intentional mutilation and accidental modification. In Kelley, M. A., and Larsen, C. S. (eds.), Advances in Dental Anthropology, Wiley-Liss, New York, pp. 357–378.
Mintz, S. W., and Wolf, E. R. (1950). An analysis of ritual co-parenthood (compadrazgo). Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6: 341–368.
Misner, L. M., Halvorson, A. C., Dreier, J. L., Ubelaker, D. H., and Foran, D. R. (2009). The correlation between skeletal weathering and DNA quality and quantity. Journal of Forensic Sciences 54: 822–828.
Mittnik, A., Massy, K., Knipper, C., Wittenborn, F., Friedrich, R., Pfrengle, S., et al. (2019). Kinship-based social inequality in Bronze Age Europe. Science 366: 731–734.
Montgomery, J., Budd, P., and Evans, J. (2000). Reconstructing the lifetime movements of ancient people: A Neolithic case study from southern England. European Journal of Archaeology 3: 370–385.
Montgomery, J., Evans, J., Chenery, S., Pashley, V., and Killgrove, K. (2010a). “Gleaming, white and deadly”: Using lead to track human exposure and geographic origins in the Roman period in Britain. Journal of Roman Archaeology S78: 199–226.
Montgomery, J., Evans, J., and Horstwood, M. (2010b). Evidence for long-term averaging of strontium in bovine enamel using TIMS and LA-MC-ICP-MS strontium isotope intra-molar profiles. Environmental Archaeology 15: 32–42.
Montgomery, J., Evans, J. A., Powlesland, D., and Roberts, C. A. (2005). Continuity or colonization in Anglo-Saxon England? Isotope evidence for mobility, subsistence practice, and status at West Heslerton. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 126: 123–138.
Moorrees, C. F. A., and Reed, R. B. (1964). Correlations among crown diameters of human teeth. Archives of Oral Biology 9: 685–697.
Moral, E. (2016). Que(e)rying sex and gender in archaeology: A critique of the “third” and other sexual categories. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 23: 788–809.
Morokvásic, M. (1984). Birds of passage are also women. International Migration Review 18: 886–907.
Morrissey, J. (2015). Rethinking “causation” and “disruption”: The environment-migration nexus in northern Ethiopia. In Baker, B. J., and Tsuda, T. (eds.), Migration and Disruptions: Toward a Unifying Theory of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 196–222.
Moutafi, I., and Voutsaki, S. (2016). Commingled burials and shifting notions of the self at the onset of the Mycenaean Era (1700–1500 BCE): The case of the Ayios Vasilios North Cemetery, Laconia. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 10: 780–790.
Mower, J. P. (1999). Deliberate ante-mortem dental modification and its implications in archaeology, ethnography and anthropology. Papers from the Institute of Archaeology 10: 37–53.
Nawyn, S. J. (2010). Gender and migration: Integrating feminist theory into migration studies. Sociology Compass 4: 749–765.
Nieves-Colón, M. A., and Stone, A. C. (2019). Ancient DNA analysis of archaeological remains. In Katzenberg, M. A., and Grauer, A. L. (eds.), Biological Anthropology of the Human Skeleton, 3rd ed., John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ, pp. 515–544.
Nystrom, K. C. (2014). The bioarchaeology of structural violence and dissection in the 19th-century United States. American Anthropologist 116: 765–779.
Nystrom, K. C., and Malcom, C. M. (2010). Sex-specific phenotypic variability and social organization in the Chiribaya of southern Peru. Latin American Antiquity 21: 375–397.
Ossenberg, N. S. (1970). The influence of artificial cranial deformation on discontinuous morphological traits. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 33: 357–371.
Ossenberg, N. S. (2013). Brief communication: Cranial nonmetric trait database on the internet. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 152: 551–553.
Osterholtz, A. J. (ed.) (2016). Theoretical Approaches to Analysis and Interpretation of Commingled Human Remains, Springer, New York.
Osterholtz, A. J., Baustian, K. M., and Martin, D. L. (eds.) (2014). Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains: Working Toward Improved Theory, Method, and Data, Springer, New York.
Passey, B., and Cerling, T. (2002). Tooth enamel mineralization in ungulates: Implications for recovering a primary isotopic time-series. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 66: 3225–3234.
Paul, K. S., and Stojanowski, C. M. (2017). Comparative performance of deciduous and permanent dental morphology in detecting biological relatives. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164: 97–116.
Pérez, V. R. (2017). Minority rules: Social capital, scientific obligations, and the struggle to decolonize biological anthropology. Paper presented at the 86th annual meeting, American Association of Physical Anthropologists, New Orleans, LA.
Pessar, P. R. (2003). Anthropology and the engendering of migration studies. In Foner, N. (ed.), American Arrivals: Anthropology Engages the New Immigrants, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM, pp. 75–88.
Pessar, P. R., and Mahler, S. J. (2003). Transnational migration: Bringing gender in. International Migration Review 37: 812–846.
Pilloud, M. A., and Larsen, C. S. (2011). “Official” and “practical” kin: Inferring social and community structure from dental phenotype at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 145: 519–530.
Pillloud, M. A., Schwitalla, A. W., and Broehl, K. A. (2020). Biological and cultural adaptations to climate change in prehistoric central California. In Robbins Schug, G. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Climate and Environmental Change, Routledge, New York, in press.
Pinhasi, R., Fernandes, D., Sirak, K., Novak, M., Connell, S., Alpaslan-Roodenberg, S., et al. (2015). Optimal ancient DNA yields from the inner ear part of the human petrous bone. PLoS ONE 10: e0129102.
Pink, C. M., Maier, C., Pilloud, M. A., and Hefner, J. T. (2016). Cranial nonmetric and morphoscopic data sets. In Pilloud, M. A., and Hefner, J. T. (eds.), Biological Distance Analysis: Forensic and Bioarchaeological Perspectives, Academic Press, London, pp. 91–107.
Powell, M. L., and Cook, D. C. (eds.) (2005). The Myth of Syphilis, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Prevedorou, E., and Stojanowski, C. M. (2017). Biological kinship, postmarital residence and the emergence of cemetery formalisation at prehistoric Marathon. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 27: 580–597.
Price, T., Burton, J., Sharer, R., Buikstra, J., Wright, L., Traxler, L., and Miller, K. (2010). Kings and commoners at Copan: Isotopic evidence for origins and movement in the Classic Maya period. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29: 15–32.
Price, T. D., Burton, J. H., Wright, L., White, C. D., and Longstaffe, F. (2007). Victims of sacrifice: Isotopic evidence for place of origin. In Tiesler, V., and Cucina, A. (eds.), New Perspectives on Human Sacrifice and Ritual Body Treatments in Ancient Maya Society, Springer, New York, pp. 263–292.
Price, T. D., Johnson, C. M., Ezzo, J. A., Ericson, J., and Burton, J. H. (1994). Residential mobility in the prehistoric southwest United States: A preliminary study using strontium isotope analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 21: 315–330.
Price. T. D., Tiesler, V., and Burton, J. H. (2006). Early African diaspora in colonial Campeche, Mexico: Strontium isotopic evidence. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 130: 485–490.
Raff, J. A. (2019). Ancient DNA and bioarcheology. In O’Rourke, D. H. (ed.), A Companion to Anthropological Genetics, John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ, pp. 187–197.
Rasmussen, S., Allentoft, M. E., Nielsen, K., Orlando, L., Sikora, M., Sjögren, K.-G., et al. (2015). Early divergent strains of Yersinia pestis in Eurasia 5,000 years ago. Cell 163: 571–582.
Ratnagar, S. (2001). The Bronze Age: Unique instance of a pre-industrial world system? Current Anthropology 42: 351–365.
Ravenstein, E. G. (1889). The laws of migration. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 52: 241–305.
Relethford, J. H. (2004). Global patterns of isolation by distance based on genetic and morphological data. Human Biology 76: 499–513.
Relethford, J. H. (2016). Biological distances and population genetics in bioarchaeology. In Pilloud, M. A., and Hefner, J. T. (eds.), Biological Distance Analysis: Forensic and Bioarchaeological Perspectives, Academic Press, London, pp. 23–33.
Renfrew, C. (1982). Explanation revisited. In Renfrew, C., Rowlands, M. J., and Segraves, B. A. (eds.), Theory and Explanation in Archaeology, Academic Press, New York, pp. 5–23.
Rivera, M. B. C. (2020). The Arch and Anth Podcast: Education, outreach and representation, Abstract. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 171: 235.
Robbins Schug, G. (2011). Bioarchaeology and Climate Change: A View from South Asian Prehistory, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Robbins Schug, G. (ed.) (2020a). The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Climate and Environmental Change, Routledge, New York.
Robbins Schug, G. (2020b). A bioarchaeology of climate and environmental change. In Robbins Schug, G. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Climate and Environmental Change, Routledge, New York, in press.
Robbins Schug, G., Grey, K. M., Mushrif-Tripathy, V., and Sankhyan, A. R. (2012). A peaceful realm? Trauma and social differentiation at Harappa. International Journal of Paleopathology 2: 136–147.
Robbins Schug, G., Parnell, E. K., and Harrod, R. (2018). Changing the climate: Bioarchaeology responds to deterministic thinking about human-environmental interactions in the past. In Buikstra, J. (ed.), Bioarchaeologists Speak Out, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 133–159.
Roberts, C. A., Millard, A. R., Nowell, G. M., Gröcke, D. R., Macpherson, C. G., Pearson, D. G., and Evans, D. H. (2013). Isotopic tracing of the impact of mobility on infectious disease: The origin of people with treponematosis buried in Hull, England, in the Late Medieval period. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 150: 273–285.
Robertson, H. (2018). Decolonizing bioarchaeology: An autoethnographic reflection. New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry 9: 19-33.
Rohland, N., and Hofreiter, M. (2007). Ancient DNA extraction from bones and teeth. Nature Protocols 2: 1756–1762.
Rouse, I. (1986). Migrations in Prehistory: Inferring Population Movement from Cultural Remains, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Samuelsen, J. R., and Potra, A. (2020). Biologically available Pb: A method for ancient human sourcing using Pb isotopes from prehistoric animal tooth enamel. Journal of Archaeological Science 115: 105079.
Sandberg, P., Passey, B., Lee-Thorp, J., Sponheimer, M., Ditchfield, P., and van Gerven, D. (2012). Intra-tooth stable isotope analysis of human dental tissues: Laser ablation of enamel and serial sections of dentine collagen in permanent first molars and canines, Abstract. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 147: 257.
Sawyer, S., Krause, J., Guschanski, K., Savolainen, V., and Pääbo, S. (2012). Temporal patterns of nucleotide misincorporations and DNA fragmentation in ancient DNA. PLoS ONE 7: e34131.
Schillaci, M. A., and Stojanowski, C. M. (2002). A reassessment of matrilocality in Chacoan culture. American Antiquity 67: 343–356.
Schillaci, M. A., and Stojanowski, C. M. (2003). Postmarital residence and biological variation at Pueblo Bonito. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 120: 1–15.
Schroeder, H., Haviser, J. B., and Price, T. D. (2014). The Zoutsteeg three: Three new cases of African types of dental modification from Saint Martin, Dutch Caribbean. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 24: 688–696.
Schroeder, H., Margaryan, A., Szmyt, M., Theulot, B., Włodarczak, P., Rasmussen, S., et al. (2019). Blood ties: Unraveling ancestry, kinship, and violence in a Late Neolithic mass grave. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116: 10705–10710.
Schroeder, H., O’Connell, T. C., Evans, J. A., Shule, K. A., and Hedges, R. E. M. (2009). Trans-Atlantic slavery: Isotopic evidence for forced migrations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 139: 547–557.
Scott, G. R., and Turner, C. G., II. (1997). The Anthropology of Modern Human Teeth: Dental Morphology and Its Variation in Recent Human Populations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sealy, J. (2006). Diet, mobility, and settlement pattern among Holocene hunter-gatherers in southernmost Africa. Current Anthropology 47: 569–595.
Sealy, J., Armstrong, R., and Schrire, C. (1995). Beyond lifetime averages: Tracing life histories through isotopic analysis of different calcified tissues from archaeological human skeletons. Antiquity 69: 290–300.
Shanks, M., and Tilley, C. (1982). Ideology, symbolic power, and ritual communication: A reinterpretation of Neolithic mortuary practices. In Hodder, I. (ed.), Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 129–154.
Sheller, M. (2008). Gendered mobilities: Epilogue. In Uteng, T. P., and Cresswell, T. (eds.), Gendered Mobilities, Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 257–264.
Shendure, J., and Hanlee, J. (2008). Next-generation DNA sequencing. Nature Biotechnology 26: 1135–1145.
Sheridan, S. G. (2017). Bioarchaeology in the ancient Near East: Challenges and future directions for the southern Levant. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 162(S63): 110–152.
Sjøvold, T. (1984). A report on the heritability of some cranial measurements and non-metric traits. In Van Vark, G. N., and Howells, W. W. (eds.), Multivariate Statistical Methods in Physical Anthropology, Springer, New York, pp. 223–246.
Skeldon, R. (1995). The challenge facing migration research: A case for greater awareness. Progress in Human Geography 19: 91–96.
Smith, C. I., Chamberlain, A. T., Riley, M. S., Stringer, C., and Collins, M. J. (2003). The thermal history of human fossils and the likelihood of successful DNA amplification. Journal of Human Evolution 45: 203–217.
Smith, G. E. (1915). The Migrations of Early Culture, Longmans, Green and Co., London.
Smith, G. E. (1933). The Diffusion of Culture, Watts and Co., London.
Smith, H. F., Hulsey, B. I., West, F. L., and Cabana, G. S. (2016). Do biological distances reflect genetic distances? A comparison of craniometric and genetic distances at local and global scales. In Pilloud, M. A., and Hefner, J. T. (eds.), Biological Distance Analysis: Forensic and Bioarchaeological Perspectives, Academic Press, London, pp. 157–179.
Smith, M. E. (2012). The role of ancient cities in research on contemporary urbanization. UGEC (Urbanization and Global Environmental Change) Viewpoints 8: 15–19.
Smith, M. E. (2015). Blog post: Is archaeology relevant? Is “relevance” irrelevant? Publishing Archaeology, 14 February 2015. <https://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2015/02/is-archaeology-relevant-is-relevance.html>. Accessed 12 October 2019.
Sofaer, J. R. (2006). The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sofaer, J. (2011a). Towards a social bioarchaeology of age. In Agarwal, S. C., and Glencross, B. A. (eds.), Social Bioarchaeology, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp. 285–311.
Sofaer, J. (2011b). Human ontogeny and material change at the Bronze Age tell of Százhalombatta, Hungary. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 21: 217–227.
Sørensen, M. L. S. (2013). Identity, gender, and dress in the European Bronze Age. In Fokkens, H., and Harding, A. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 216–233.
Spyrou, M. A., Tukhbatova, R. I., Feldman, M., Drath, J., Kacki, S., de Heredia, B., et al. (2016). Historical Y. pestis genomes reveal the European Black Death as the source of ancient and modern plague pandemics. Cell Host Microbe 19: 874-881.
Spyrou, M. A., Tukhbatova, R. I., Wang, C.-C., Andrades Valtueña, A., Lankapalli, A. K., Kondrashin, V. V., et al. (2018). Analysis of 3800-year-old Yersinia pestis genomes suggests Bronze Age origin for bubonic plague. Nature Communications 9: 2234.
Stefan, V. H. (1999). Craniometric variation and homogeneity in prehistoric/protohistoric Rapa Nui (Eastern Island) regional populations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 110: 407–419.
Stein, G. J. (1999). Material culture and social identity: The evidence for a 4th millennium BC Mesopotamian Uruk colony at Hacinebi, Turkey. Paléorient 25: 11–22.
Stodder, A. L. W., and Palkovich, A. M. (2012). Osteobiography and bioarchaeology. In Stodder, A. L. W., and Palkovich, A. M. (eds.), The Bioarchaeology of Individuals, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 1–8.
Stojanowski, C. M. (2013). Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoples: Historical and Evolutionary Dimensions of Intracemetery Bioarchaeology in Spanish Florida, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Stojanowski, C. M., and Duncan, W. N. (2015). Engaging bodies in the public imagination: Bioarchaeology as social science, science, and humanities. American Journal of Human Biology 27: 51–60.
Stojanowski, C. M., and Knudson, K. J. (2014). Changing patterns of mobility as a response to climatic deterioration and aridification in the middle Holocene southern Sahara. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 154: 79–93.
Stojanowski, C. M., and Schillaci, M. A. (2006). Phenotypic approaches for understanding patterns of intracemetery biological variation. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 49: 49–88.
Stone, P. K. (2012). Binding women: Ethnology, skeletal deformations, and violence against women. International Journal of Paleopathology 2: 53–60.
Stone, P. K. (2020). Bound to please: The shaping of female beauty, gender theory, structural violence, and bioarchaeological investigations. In Sheridan, S. G., and Gregoricka, L. A. (eds.), Purposeful Pain: The Bioarchaeology of Intentional Suffering, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 39–62.
Storey, A. A., and Jones, T. L. (2011). Diffusionism in archaeological theory: The good, the bad, and the ugly. In Jones, T. L., Storey, A. A., Matisoo-Smith, E. A., and Miguel Ramírez-Aliaga, J. (eds.), Polynesians in America: Pre-Columbian Contacts with the New World, AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD, pp. 7-24.
Subramanian, S. (2008). Embodying the space between: Unmapping writing about racialised and gendered mobilities. In Uteng, T. P., and Cresswell, T. (eds.), Gendered Mobilities, Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 35–45.
Suga, S. (1979). Comparative histology of progressive mineralization pattern of developing incisor enamel of rodents. Journal of Dental Research 58: 1025–1026.
Suga, S., Ohno, S., Misu, M., and Kondo, K. (1979). Progressive mineralization pattern of the bovine developing enamel. Japanese Journal of Oral Biology 21: 117–139.
Tiesler, V. (2002). New cases of an African tooth decoration from colonial Campeche, Mexico. Homo 52: 277–282.
Tiesler, V. (2014). The Bioarchaeology of Artificial Cranial Modifications: New Approaches to Head Shaping and Its Meanings in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Beyond, Springer, New York.
Tiesler, V., Cucina, A., and Ramírez-Salomón, M. (2017). Permanent dental modifications among the ancient Maya: Procedures, health risks, and social identities. In Burnett, S. E., and Irish, J. D. (eds.), A World View of Bioculturally Modified Teeth, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 270–284.
Tiesler, V., and Zabala, P. (2017). Survival and abandonment of indigenous head-shaping practices in Iberian America after European contact. In Murphy, M. S., and Klaus, H. D. (eds.), Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed: Toward a Global Bioarchaeology of Contact and Colonialism, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 281–311.
Tomczack, P. D., and Powell, J. F. (2003). Postmarital residence practices in the Windover population: Sex-based dental variation as an indicator of patrilocality. American Antiquity 68: 93–108.
Torres-Rouff, C. (2002). Cranial vault modification and ethnicity in Middle Horizon San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Current Anthropology 43: 163–171.
Torres-Rouff, C. (2020). Binding, wrapping, constricting, and constraining the head: A consideration of cranial vault modification and the pain of infants. In Sheridan, S. G., and Gregoricka, L. A. (eds.), Purposeful Pain: The Bioarchaeology of Intentional Suffering, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 233–252.
Torres-Rouff, C., and Knudson, K. J. (2017). Integrating identities: An innovative bioarchaeological and biogeochemical approach to analyzing the multiplicity of identities in the mortuary record. Current Anthropology 58: 381–409.
Trigger, B. G. (1980). Archaeology and the image of the American Indian. American Antiquity 45: 662–676.
Trigger, B. G. (2003). Artifacts and Ideas: Essays in Archaeology, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ.
Trigger, B. G. (2006). A History of Archaeological Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Tseng, V. (2012). The uses of research in policy and practice. Social Policy Report 26: 1–22.
Tsuda, T., Baker, B. J., Eder, J. F., Knudson, K. J., Maupin, J., Meierotto, L., and Scott, R. E. (2015). Unifying themes in studies of ancient and contemporary migrations. In Baker, B. J., and Tsuda, T. (eds.), Migration and Disruptions: Toward a Unifying Theory of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 15–32.
Tung, T. (2012). The bioarchaeology of migration. The SAA Archaeological Record 2012(May): 42–45.
Tung, T. A., and Knudson, K. J. (2011). Identifying locals, migrants, and captives in the Wari heartland: A bioarchaeological and biogeochemical study of human remains from Conchopata, Peru. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 30: 247–261.
Tung, T. A., Miller, M., DeSantis, L., Sharp, E. A., and Kelly, J. (2016). Patterns of violence and diet among children during a time of imperial decline and climate change in the ancient Peruvian Andes. In VanDerwarker, A. M., and Wilson, G. D. (eds.), The Archaeology of Food and Warfare, Springer, New York, pp. 193–228.
Turner, C. G. II, Nichol, C. R., and Scott, G. R. (1991). Scoring procedures for key morphological traits of the permanent dentition. In Kelley, M. A. and Larsen, C. S. (eds.), Advances in Dental Anthropology, Wiley-Liss, New York, pp. 13–31.
Turner, B. L., Kamenov, G. D., Kingston, J. D., and Armelagos, G. J. (2009). Insights into immigration and social class at Machu Picchu, Peru based on oxygen, strontium, and lead isotopic analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 36: 317–332.
Ullinger, J. M., Sheridan, S. G., Hawkey, D. E., Turner II, C. G., and Cooley, R. (2005). Bioarchaeological analysis of cultural transition in the southern Levant using dental nonmetric traits. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128: 466–476.
Underwood, E. J. (1977). Trace Elements in Human and Animal Nutrition, 4th ed., Academic Press, London.
van Dommelen, P. (2014). Moving on: Archaeological perspectives on mobility and migration. World Archaeology 46: 477–483.
Velasco, M. C. (2018). Open sepulchers and closed boundaries? Biodistance analysis of cemetery structure and postmarital residence in the late Prehispanic Andes. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 166: 906–920.
Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System, Academic Press, New York.
Wasterlain, S. N., Neves, M. J., and Ferreira, M. T. (2016). Dental modifications in a skeletal sample of enslaved Africans found at Lagos (Portugal). International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 26: 621–632.
Watkins, R. (2018). Anatomical collections as the anthropological other: Some considerations. In Stone, P. (ed.), Bioarchaeological Analyses and Bodies, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 27–47.
Watkins, R. (2020). An alter(ed)native perspective on historical bioarchaeology. Historical Archaeology 54: 17-33.
Wendrich, W., and Barnard, H. (2008). The archaeology of mobility: Definitions of research approaches. In Barnard, H., and Wendrich, W. (eds.), The Archaeology of Mobility: Old World and New World Nomadism, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology University of California, Los Angeles, pp. 1–21.
Wescott, D. J. (2005). Population variation in femur subtrochanteric shape. Journal of Forensic Sciences 50: 286–293.
Weston, K. (1991). Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship, Columbia University Press, New York.
White, C. D., Spence, M. W., Longstaffe, F. J., and Law, K. R. (2000). Testing the nature of Teotihuacan imperialism at Kaminaljuyu using phosphate oxygen-isotope ratios. Journal of Anthropological Research 56: 535–558.
White, C. D., Spence, M. W., and Longstaffe, F. J. (2002). Geographic identities of the sacrificial victims at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid. Latin American Antiquity 13: 217–236.
Willman, J. C., Shackelford, L., and Demeter, F. (2016). Incisor ablation among the late Upper Paleolithic people of Tam Hang (northern Laos). American Journal of Physical Anthropology 160: 519–528.
Wood, J. W., Milner, G. R., Harpending, H. C., and Weiss, K. M. (1992). The osteological paradox: Problems of inferring prehistoric health from skeletal samples. Current Anthropology 33: 343–370.
Wright, L. (2013). Examining childhood diets at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, through stable isotopic analysis of sequential enamel microsamples. Archaeometry 55: 113–133.
Yaussey, S. L. (2019). The intersections of industrialization: Variation in skeletal indicators of frailty by age, sex, and socioeconomic status in 18th and 19th-century England. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 170: 116–130.
Zakrzewski, S. (2011). Population migration, variation, and identity. In Agarwal, S. C., and Glencross, B. A. (eds.), Social Bioarchaeology, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 183–211.
Zhang, Q., Liu, P., Yeh, H.-Y., Man, X., Wang, L., Zhu, H., Wang, Q., and Zhang, Q. (2019). Intentional cranial modification from the Houtaomuga site in Jilin, China. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 169: 747–756.
Zvelebil, M., and Weber, A. W. (2013). Human bioarchaeology: Group identity and individual life histories – Introduction. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 32: 275–279.
Bibliography of Recent Literature
Adey, P., Bissell, D., Hannam, K., Merriman, P., and Sheller, M. (eds.) (2014). The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, Routledge, New York.
Allen, K. G., Mills, R. D., Knudson, K. J., and von Cramon-Taubadel, N. (2020). Biological diversity in an Islamic archaeological population: A radiogenic strontium isotope and craniometric analysis of affinity in Ottoman Romania. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 171: 569-583.
Allen, K. G., and von Cramon-Taubadel, N. (2017). A craniometric analysis of early modern Romania and Hungary: The roles of migration and conversion in shaping European Ottoman population history. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164: 477–487.
Arutinov, S.A. (2002). The diaspora as a process. Anthropology and Archaeology of Eurasia 41: 89–96.
Bar-Yosef, O., and Rocek, T. (eds.) (1998). Seasonality and Sedentism: Archaeological Perspectives from Old and New World Sites, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Beaudry, M. C., and Parno, T. G. (eds.) (2013). Archaeologies of Mobility and Movement, Springer, New York.
Bedrick, E., Lapidus, J., and Powell, J. (2000). Estimating the Mahalanobis distance from mixed continuous and discrete data. Biometrics 56: 394–401.
Bellwood, P. (ed.) (2013). The Global Prehistory of Human Migration, Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA.
Bennike, P., Dobat, A. S., Frei, K. M., Lynnerup, N., and Price, T. D. (2011). Who was in Harold Bluetooth’s army? Strontium isotope investigation of the cemetery at the Viking Age fortress at Trelleborg, Denmark. Antiquity 85: 476–489.
Bentley, R. A., and Knipper, C. (2005). Geographical patterns in biologically available strontium, carbon and oxygen isotope signatures in prehistoric SW Germany. Archaeometry 47: 629–644.
Bernbeck, R. (2008). An archaeology of multisited communities. In Barnard, H., and Wendrich, W. (eds.), The Archaeology of Mobility: Old World and New World Nomadism, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 43–77.
Bolhofner, K. L. (2017). Identity marker or medicinal treatment? An exploration of the practice and purpose of dental ablation in ancient Nubia. In Burnett, S. E., and Irish, J. D. (eds.), A World View of Bioculturally Modified Teeth, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 48–61.
Bourgeois, Q. (2017). The impact of male burials on the construction of Corded Ware identity. PLoS ONE 12: e0185971.
Brettell, C. B. (2013). Anthropology of migration. In Ness, I., and Bellwood, P. (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, John Wiley and Sons, Malden, MA, pp. 518–522.
Brettell, C. B. (2017). Marriage and migration. Annual Review of Anthropology 46: 81–97.
Brettell, C. B., and Hollifield, J. F. (eds.) (2008). Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, 2nd ed., Routledge, New York.
Budd, P., Millard, A., and Chenery, C. (2004). Investigating population movement by stable isotope analysis: A report from Britain. Antiquity 78: 127–141.
Buzon, M. (2006). Biological and ethnic identity in New Kingdom Nubia. Current Anthropology 47: 683–695.
Buzon, M., and Bowen, G. J. (2010). Oxygen and carbon isotope analysis of human tooth enamel from the New Kingdom site of Tombos in Nubia. Archaeometry 52: 855–868.
Cabana, G., and Clark, J. (eds.) (2011). Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Carlson, K. J., and Marchi, D. (eds.) (2014). Reconstructing Mobility: Environmental, Behavioral, and Morphological Determinants, Springer, New York.
Case, D. T., and Burnett, S. E. (2012). Identification of tarsal coalition and frequency estimates from skeletal samples. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 22: 667–684.
Chenery, C., Muldner, G., Evans, J., Eckardt, H., and Lewis, M. (2010). Strontium and stable isotope evidence for diet and mobility in Roman Gloucester, UK. Journal of Archaeological Science 37: 150–163.
Colburn, H. P., and Hughes, R. C. (2010). Movement and materiality: Mobile cores and the archaeology of political boundaries. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 25: 43–56.
Coppolillo, P. B. (2000). The landscape ecology of pastoral herding: Spatial analysis of land use and livestock production in East Africa. Human Ecology 28: 527–560.
Crawford, M. H., and Campbell, B. C. (eds.) (2012). Causes and Consequences of Human Migration: An Evolutionary Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Cresswell, T. (2010). Towards a politics of mobility. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28: 17–31.
Crowder, K. D., Montgomery, J., Filipek, K. L., and Evans, J. A. (2020). New biomolecular data and a possible region of origin for “headless Romans” and other burials from Britain. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 30: 102180.
Cucina, A. (ed.) (2015). Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Population Movement among the Prehispanic Maya, Springer, New York.
Damgaard, P. de B., Marchi, N., Rasmussen, S., Peyrot, M., Renaud, G., Korneliussen, T., et al. (2018). 137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes. Nature 557: 369–374.
Del Papa, M., and Perez, S. (2007). The influence of artificial cranial vault deformation on the expression of cranial nonmetric traits. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 134: 251–262.
Eckardt, H. (ed.) (2010). Roman Diasporas: Archaeological Approaches to Mobility and Diversity in the Roman Empire, JRA Supplementary Series 78, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Portsmouth, RI.
Ensor, B. E. (2011). Kinship theory in archaeology: From critiques to the study of transformations. American Antiquity 76: 203–227.
Ensor, B. E. (2013). The Archaeology of Kinship: Advancing Interpretation and Contributions to Theory, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Fletcher, A., Pearson, J., and Ambers, J. (2008). The manipulation of social and physical identity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18: 309–325.
Frei, K. M., Bergerbrant, S., Sjögren, K.-G., Jørkov, M. L., Lynnerup, N., Harvig, L., et al. (2019). Mapping human mobility during the third and second millennia BC in present-day Denmark. PLoS ONE 14: e0219850.
Frei, K. M., Villa, C., Jørkov, M. L., Allentoft, M. E., Kaul, F., Ethelberg, P., et al. (2017). A matter of months: High precision migration chronology of a Bronze Age female. PLoS ONE 12(6): e0178834.
Frieman, C. J., and Hofmann, D. (2020). Present pasts in the archaeology of genetics, identity, and migration in Europe: A critical essay. World Archaeology 51: 528–545.
Furholt, M. (2017). Translocal communities – Exploring mobility and migration in sedentary societies of the European Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Praehistorische Zeitschrift 92: 304–321.
Gamba, C., Fernández, E., Tirado, M., Deguilloux, M. F., Pemonge, M. H., Utrilla, P., et al. (2012). Ancient DNA from an Early Neolithic Iberian population supports a pioneer colonization by first farmers. Molecular Ecology 21: 45–56.
Giblin, J. I., Knudson, K. J., Bereczki, Z., Pálfi, G., and Pap, I. (2013). Strontium isotope analysis and human mobility during the Neolithic and Copper Age: A case study from the Great Hungarian Plain. Journal of Archaeological Science 40: 227–239.
Gibson, E. (2007). The archaeology of movement in a Mediterranean landscape. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 20: 61–87.
Godde, K., and Jantz, R. L. (2017). Evaluating Nubian population structure from cranial nonmetric traits: Gene flow, genetic drift, and population history of the Nubian Nile Valley. Human Biology 89: 255–279.
Goldberg, A., Günther, T. Rosenberg, N. A., and Jakobsson, M. (2017). Ancient X-chromosomes reveal contrasting sex bias in Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasian migrations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114: 2657–2662.
Gorman-Murray, A. (2009). Intimate mobilities: Emotional embodiment and queer migration. Social and Cultural Geography 10: 441–460.
Greenblatt, S. (ed.) (2010). Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Gregoricka, L. A. (2019). Temporal trends in mobility and subsistence economy among the tomb builders of Umm an-Nar Island. In Williams, K. D., and Gregoricka, L. A. (eds.), Mortuary and Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Bronze Age Arabia, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 201–219.
Gregoricka, L. A., Sheridan, S. G., and Schirtzinger, M. (2017). Reconstructing life histories using multi-tissue stable isotope analysis of commingled remains from St. Stephen’s Monastery in Jerusalem. Archaeometry 59: 148–163.
Hakenbeck, S. (2008). Migration in archaeology: Are we nearly there yet? Archaeological Review from Cambridge 23: 9–26.
Hallgrímsson, B., Ó Donnabháin, B., Blom, D. E., Lozada, M. C., and Willmore, K. T. (2005). Why are rare traits unilaterally expressed? Trait frequency and unilateral expression for cranial nonmetric traits in humans. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128: 14–25.
Hanihara, T., and Ishida, H. (2001). Frequency variations of discrete cranial traits in major human populations, I: Supernumerary ossicle variations. Journal of Anatomy 198: 689–706.
Hanihara, T., and Ishida, H. (2001). Frequency variations of discrete cranial traits in major human populations, II: Hypostotic variations. Journal of Anatomy 198: 707–725.
Hanihara, T., and Ishida, H. (2001). Frequency variations of discrete cranial traits in major human populations, III: Hyperostotic variations. Journal of Anatomy 199: 251–272.
Hanihara, T., and Ishida, H. (2001). Frequency variations of discrete cranial traits in major human populations, IV: Vessel and nerve related variations. Journal of Anatomy 199: 273–287.
Hanihara, T., and Ishida, H. (2001). Os incae: Variation in frequency in major human population groups. Journal of Anatomy 198: 137–152.
Hanihara, T., Ishida, H., and Dodo, Y. (2003). Characterization of biological diversity through analysis of discrete cranial traits. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 121: 241–251.
Härke, H. (2004). The debate on migration and identity in Europe. Antiquity 78: 453–456.
He, L., Liu, W., Temple, D. H., Wang, M., Zhang, Q., and von Cramon-Taubadel, N. (2019). Diachronic changes in craniofacial morphology among the middle-late Holocene populations from Hehuang region, northwest China. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 169: 55–65.
Hemphill, B. E., and Mallory, J. P. (2004). Horse-mounted invaders from the Russo-Kazakh steppe or agricultural colonists from western central Asia? A craniometric investigation of the Bronze Age settlement of Xinjiang. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 124: 199–222.
Hinz, M., Feeser, I., Sjögren, K.-G., and Müller, J. (2012). Demography and the intensity of cultural activities: An evaluation of Funnel Beaker societies (4200–2800 cal BC). Journal of Archaeological Science 39: 3331–3340.
Hofmann, D. (2016). Keep on walking: The role of migration in Linearbandkeramik life. Documenta Praehistorica 43: 235–251.
Hole, F. (2009). Pastoral mobility as an adaptation. In Szuchman, J. J. (ed.), Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 261–283.
Hubbe, M., Harvati, K., and Neves, W. (2011). Paleoamerican morphology in the context of European and East Asian Late Pleistocene variation: Implications for human dispersion into the New World. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 144: 442–453.
Ion, A. (2017). How interdisciplinary is interdisciplinarity? Revisiting the impact of aDNA research for the archaeology of human remains. Current Swedish Archaeology 25: 177–198.
Irish, J. (2005). Population continuity vs. discontinuity revisited: Dental affinities among late Paleolithic through Christian-era Nubians. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128: 520–535.
Irish, J. D. (2010). The mean measure of divergence (MMD): Its utility in model-free and model-bound analyses relative to the Mahalanobis D2 distance for nonmetric traits. American Journal of Human Biology 22: 378–395.
Judd, M. A., Gregoricka, L. A., and Foran, D. (2019). The monastic mosaic at Mount Nebo, Jordan: Biogeochemical and epigraphical evidence for diverse origins. Antiquity 93: 450–467.
Keller, M., Rott, A., Hoke, N., Schwarzberg, H., Regner-Kamlah, B., Harbeck, M., and Wahl, J. (2015). United in death – Related by blood? Genetic and archeometric analyses of skeletal remains from the Neolithic earthwork Bruchsal-Aue. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 157: 458–471.
Kendall, E. J., Montgomery, J., Evans, J. A., Stantis, C., and Mueller, V. (2013). Mobility, mortality, and the Middle Ages: Identification of migrant individuals in a 14th century Black Death cemetery population. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 150: 210–222.
Killgrove, K., and Montgomery, J. (2016). All roads lead to Rome: Exploring human migration to the eternal city through biochemistry of skeletons from two Imperial-era cemeteries (1st–3rd c. AD). PLoS ONE 11: e0147585.
Kim, M. (2010). Gender and international marriage migration. Sociology Compass 4: 718–731.
Kintigh, K. W., Altschul, J. H., Beaudry, M. C., and Drennan, R. D. (2014). Grand challenges for archaeology. American Antiquity 79: 5–24.
Knipper, C., Maurer, A.-F., Peters, D., Meyer, C., Brauns, M., Galer, S. J. G., et al. (2012). Mobility in Thuringia or mobile Thuringians: A strontium isotope study from early medieval central Germany. In Kaiser, E., Burger, J., and Schier, W. (eds.), Population Dynamics in Prehistory and Early History: New Approaches using Stable Isotopes and Genetics, De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 287–310.
Knipper, C., Pichler, S. L., Brönnimann, D., Rissanen, H., Rosner, M., Spichtig, N., et al. (2018). A knot in the network: Residential mobility at the Late Iron Age proto-urban centre of Basel-Gasfabrik (Switzerland) revealed by isotope analyses. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 17: 735–753.
Knudson, K. J., and Buikstra, J. E. (2007). Residential mobility and resource use in the Chiribaya polity of southern Peru: Strontium isotope analysis of archaeological tooth enamel and bone. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 17: 563–580.
Knudson, K. J., and Price, T. D. (2007). Utility of multiple chemical techniques in archaeological residential mobility studies. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132: 25–39.
Knudson, K. J., and Torres-Rouff, C. (2009). Investigating cultural heterogeneity in San Pedro de Atacama, northern Chile, through biogeochemistry and bioarchaeology. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 138: 473–485.
Knudson, K., and Tung, T. (2011). Investigating regional mobility in the southern hinterland of the Wari empire: Biogeochemistry at the site of Beringa, Peru. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 145: 299–310.
Konigsberg, L. W. (2006). A post-Neumann history of biological and genetic distance studies in bioarchaeology. In Buikstra, J. E., and Beck, L. A. (eds.), Bioarchaeology: The Contextual Analysis of Human Remains, Academic Press, New York, pp. 263–279.
Kristiansen, K. (2014). Towards a new paradigm? The third science revolution and its possible consequences in archaeology. Current Swedish Archaeology 22: 11–34.
Kristiansen, K., and Larsson, T. B. (2005). The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Laffoon, J. E., Valcárcel Rojas, R., and Hofman, C. L. (2013). Oxygen and carbon isotope analysis of human dental enamel from the Caribbean: Implications for investigating individual origins. Archaeometry 55: 742–765.
Leary, J. (ed.) (2014). Past Mobilities: Archaeological Approaches to Movement and Mobility, Routledge, London.
MacRoberts, R. A., Barrocas Dias, C.M., Matos Ferandes, T., Luisa Santos, A., Umbelino, C., Gonçalves, A., et al. (2020). Diet and mobility during the Christian conquest of Iberia. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 30: 102210.
Makarewicz, C. A., and Sealy, J. (2015). Dietary reconstruction, mobility, and the analysis of ancient skeletal tissues: Expanding the prospects of stable isotope research in archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Science 56: 146–158.
Manalansan, M. F. (2006). Queer intersections: Sexuality and gender in migration studies. International Migration Review 40: 224–249.
Machicek, M., Chenery, C., Evans, J., Cameron, A., and Chamberlain, A. (2019). Pastoralist strategies and human mobility. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 11: 6649–6662.
Marchi, D. (2008). Relationships between limb cross-sectional geometry and mobility: The case of a Neolithic sample from Italy. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 137: 188–200.
Mashkour, M. (2003). Tracing ancient “nomads”: Isotopic research on the origins of vertical “transhumance” in the Zagros region. Nomadic Peoples 7: 36–47.
McIlvaine, B. K., Schepartz, L. A., Larsen, C. S., and Sciulli, P. W. (2014). Evidence for long-term migration on the Balkan peninsula using dental and cranial nonmetric data. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 153: 236–248.
Morriss, A. G., and Ribot, I. (2006). Morphometric cranial identity of prehistoric Malawians in the light of sub-Saharan African diversity. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 130: 10–25.
Murphy, M. S., and Klaus, H. D. (eds.) (2017). Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed: Toward a Global Bioarchaeology of Contact and Colonialism, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Naum, M. (2010). Re-emerging frontiers: Postcolonial theory and historical archaeology of the borderlands. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17: 101–131.
Ness, I., and Bellwood, P. (eds.) (2013). The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, John Wiley and Sons, Malden, MA.
Nikita, E. (2015). A critical review of the mean measure of divergence and Mahalanobis distances using artificial data and new approaches to the estimation of biodistances employing nonmetric traits. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 157: 284–294.
Nugent, S. E. (2019). Pastoralism and emergent complex settlement in the Middle Bronze Age, Azerbaijan: Isotopic analyses of mobility strategies in transformation. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 171: 120–141.
Olalde, I., Brace, S., Allentoft, M.E., Armit, I., Kristiansen, K., Booth, T., et al. (2018). The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe. Nature 555: 190–196.
Papastergiadis, N. (2000). The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization and Hybridity, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Pederzani, S., and Britton, K. (2019). Oxygen isotopes in bioarchaeology: Principles and applications, challenges and opportunities. Earth-Science Reviews 188: 77–107.
Perry, M. A. (2019). Anatomy of restlessness: Strontium isotopes and human migration in the Graeco-Roman Near East. In Yoo, J., Zerbini, A., and Barron, C. (eds.), Migration and Migrant Identities in the Near East from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Routledge, New York, pp. 171–188.
Pinhasi, R., and von Cramon-Taubadel, N. (2009). Craniometric data supports demic diffusion model for the spread of agriculture into Europe. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6747.
Prescott, C., and Glørstad, H. (2015). Expanding 3rd millennium transformations: Norway. In Prieto Martínez, M. P., and Salanova, L. (eds.), The Bell Beaker Transition in Europe: Mobility and Local Evolution during the 3rd Millennium BC, Oxbow, Oxford, pp. 77–87.
Price, T. D., Bentley, R. A., Lüning, J., Gronenborn, D., and Wahl, J. (2001). Prehistoric human migration in the Linearbandkeramik of central Europe. Antiquity 75: 593–603.
Price, T. D., Burton, J. H., and Bentley, R. A. (2002). The characterization of biologically available strontium isotope ratios for the study of prehistoric migration. Archaeometry 44: 117–135.
Price, T. D., Knipper, C., Grupe, G., and Smrcka, V. (2004). Strontium isotopes and prehistoric human migration: The Bell Beaker period in central Europe. European Journal of Archaeology 7: 9–40.
Prowse, T. L., Schwarcz, H. P., Garnsey, P., Knyf, M., Macchiarelli, R., and Bondioli, L. (2007). Isotopic evidence for age-related immigration to imperial Rome. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132: 510–519.
Racimo, F., Sikora, M., Linen, M. V., Schroeder, H. and Lalueza-Fox, C. (2020). Beyond broad strokes: Sociocultural insights from the study of ancient genomes. Nature Reviews Genetics 21: 355-366.
Reiter, S. S., and Frei, K. M. (2019). Interpreting past human mobility patterns: A model. European Journal of Archaeology 22: 454–469.
Relethford, J. (2004). Boas and beyond: Migration and craniometric variation. American Journal of Human Biology 16: 379–386.
Ricaut, F. X., Auriol, V., von Cramon-Taubadel, N., Keyser, C., Ludes, B., and Crubézy, E. (2010). Comparison between morphological and genetic data to estimate biological relationship: The case of the Egyin Gol necropolis (Mongolia). American Journal of Physical Anthropology 143: 355–364.
Roffey, S., Tucker, K., Filipek-Ogden, K., Montgomery, J., Cameron, J., O’Connell, T., Evans, J., Marter, P., and Taylor, G. M. (2017). Investigation of a medieval pilgrim burial excavated from the Leprosarium of St. Mary Magdalen Winchester, UK. PLoS Neglected Tropical Disease 11(1): e0005186.
Seymour, D. J. (2009). Distinctive places, suitable spaces: Conceptualizing mobile group occupational duration and landscape use. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 13: 255–281.
Shaw, C. N., and Stock, J. T. (2009). Intensity, repetitiveness, and directionality of habitual adolescent mobility patterns influence the tibial diaphysis morphology of athletes. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 140: 149–159.
Sheller, M. (2016). Mobility, freedom and public space. In Bergmann, S., and Sager, T. (eds.), The Ethics of Mobilities: Rethinking Place, Exclusion, Freedom and Environment, Routledge, London, pp. 25–38.
Sheller, M. (2018). Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes, Verso, London.
Sheller, M., and Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning A 38: 207–226.
Sheridan, S. G., and Gregoricka, L. A. (2015). Monks on the move: Evaluating pilgrimage to Byzantine St. Stephen’s monastery using strontium isotopes. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 158: 581–591.
Sjögren, K.-G., Olalde, I., Carver, S., Allentoft, M. E., Knowles, T., Kroonen, G., et al. (2020). Kinship and social organization in Copper Age Europe. A cross-disciplinary analysis of archaeology, DNA, isotopes, and anthropology from two Bell Beaker cemeteries. bioRxiv, in press.
Sjögren, K.-G., Price, T. D., and Kristiansen, K. (2016). Diet and mobility in the Corded Ware of central Europe. PLoS ONE 11(5): e0155083.
Sparacello, V. S., and Marchi, D. (2008). Mobility and subsistence economy: A diachronic comparison between two groups settled in the same geographical area (Liguria, Italy). American Journal of Physical Anthropology 136: 485–495.
Strauss, A., and Hubbe, M. (2010). Craniometric similarities within and between human populations in comparison with neutral genetic data. Human Biology 82: 315–330.
Suchowska-Ducke, P., Reiter, S. R., and Vandkilde, H. (eds.) (2015). Forging Identities: The Mobility of Culture in Bronze Age Europe, vol. I, Archaeopress, Oxford.
Tafuri, M. A., Bentley, R. A., Manzi, G., and di Lernia, S. (2006). Mobility and kinship in the prehistoric Sahara. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 25: 390–402.
Tica, C. I., and Martin, D. L. (eds.) (2019). Bioarchaeology of Frontiers and Borderlands, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Tung, T. (2008). Life on the move: Bioarchaeological contributions to the study of migration and diaspora communities in the Andes. In Silverman, H., and Isbell, W. H. (eds.), Handbook of South American Archaeology, Springer, New York, pp. 671–680.
Uteng, T. P., and Cresswell, T. (eds.) (2008). Gendered Mobilities, Ashgate, Aldershot.
Valentine, B., Kamenov, G. D., Kenoyer, J. M., Shinde, V., Mushrif-Tripathy, V., Otarola-Castillo, E., and Krigbaum, J. (2015). Evidence for patterns of selective urban migration in the greater Indus Valley (2600–1900 BC). PLoS ONE 10: e0123103.
Veeramah, K. R. (2018). The importance of fine-scale studies for integrating paleogenomics and archaeology. Current Opinion in Genetics and Development 53: 83–89.
Vertovec, S. (2007). New directions in the anthropology of migration and multiculturalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30: 961–978.
von Cramon-Taubadel, N., Stock, J. T., and Pinhasi, R. (2013). Skull and limb morphology differentially track population history and environmental factors in the transition to agriculture in Europe. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280: 20131337.
White, C. D., Price, T. D., and Longstaffe, F. J. (2007). Residential histories of the human sacrifices at the Moon Pyramid, Teotihuacan: Evidence from oxygen and strontium isotopes. Ancient Mesoamerica 18: 159–172.
White, C. D., Spence, M. W., Longstaffe, F. J., and Law, K. R. (2004). Demography and ethnic continuity in the Tlailotlacan enclave of Teotihuacan: The evidence from stable oxygen isotopes. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 123: 385–403.
Wong, M., Brandt, J. R., Ahrens, S., Jaouen, K., Bjørnstad, G., Naumann, E., et al. (2018). Pursuing pilgrims: Isotopic investigations of Roman and Byzantine mobility at Hierapolis, Turkey. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 17: 520–528.
Wright, L. (2005). Identifying immigrants to Tikal, Guatemala: Defining local variability in strontium isotope ratios of human tooth enamel. Journal of Archaeological Science 32: 555–566.
Wright, L. E. (2012). Immigration to Tikal, Guatemala: Evidence from stable strontium and oxygen isotopes. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31: 334–352.
Zakrzewski, S. (2007). Population continuity or population change: Formation of the ancient Egyptian state. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 132: 501–509.
Acknowledgments
Sincere thanks are extended to Dr. Gary Feinman for inviting me to write this manuscript. I would also like to thank Dr. Mark Moberg for his enthusiasm and willingness to discuss economic anthropological theory and fictive kinship, as well as the six reviewers whose comments improved this manuscript. Finally, thanks go to my mentors, collaborators, and colleagues in bioarchaeology whose inspiring work continues to challenge and further the impact of our discipline and without whose work this paper would not have been possible.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gregoricka, L.A. Moving Forward: A Bioarchaeology of Mobility and Migration. J Archaeol Res 29, 581–635 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-020-09155-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-020-09155-9