In Activity, diet and social practice, Sarah Schrader reports on the day-to-day lives of ancient Nubians from the Third Cataract of the Nile at Tombos, blending bioarchaeological methods with embodiment and practice theory to reveal their fight to maintain cultural independence in the face of colonisation from neighbouring Egypt. Part of the ‘Bioarchaeology and Social Theory’ series by Springer, this work uses osteoarthritis, entheseal changes (changes to the connective tissue between tendons and bone) and stable isotope analysis to recreate the everyday activities of people living through this turbulent period of Nubian history.

The central concept, that skeletal tissues are shaped by the daily experiences of the individual, is developed from various aspects of social archaeology, which are introduced to the reader in Chapters 1 and 2. Schrader uses examples from ethnography and archaeology to demonstrate how choices (or impositions) about food preparation and consumption can be used to reflect social, cultural and political structures; through the anthropology of labour, she explains how physical activity can be interpreted not just as an economic necessity, but as a social practice that can be used to exert control or agency. It is argued that the plastic nature of the human skeleton allows the body to adapt to these everyday activities, and as such, the skeleton comes to embody the lived experience of historic individuals on a personal, social and economic level.

With the theoretical framework established, the book moves on to present how strenuous and repetitive activities can manifest as osteoarthritis and entheseal change in Chapter 3. The factors that contribute to the development and progression of osteoarthritis are illustrated using carefully chosen evidence from bioarchaeological and clinical studies, suggesting that different types of repetitive actions cause differences in the location and prevalence of osteoarthritis between different groups of people. Entheses are similarly described and Schrader provides a useful review of the current state of research into entheseal changes. The limitations of the various methodological approaches and scoring systems are discussed, but this could have included a more robust critique to explain why entheses, and particularly osteoarthritis, have attracted a great deal of controversy when used to infer activity patterns in archaeological assemblages. This is somewhat rectified by the interrogation of several case studies that have examined both markers, and demonstrated the complexity of their relationship, both with each other and with interpreting physical activity.

In Chapter 4, the focus shifts to diet and foodways. Here, the reader is reminded that while adequate nutrition is vital for survival, humans actually exert a great deal of control over the types of foods that they choose to eat, depending on personal preference and sociocultural influences. Bioarchaeologists have a number of tools at their disposal to reconstruct historic diets, most notably stable isotope analysis. Schrader employs this method to advance the earlier discussion of political agency through diet, by demonstrating how ancient Nubians living under Egyptian military control maintained their traditional, indigenous diet throughout the period of occupation. Interpreted as an act of resistance, this vividly highlights how practice theory and bioarchaeology can combine to expose a rich seam of data on everyday life in the past.

Building on the theoretical and methodological approaches set up in the previous chapters, Activity, diet and social practice culminates with an investigation into the day-to-day activities of the people of Tombos, an Egyptian outpost in Upper Nubia that became a post-colonial town following the Egyptian withdrawal. While some of the findings may be interpreted optimistically, it is enjoyable to see how Schrader has woven bioarchaeological evidence with practice theory to form a picture of life in ancient Tombos and to demonstrate how the inhabitants were able to maintain their cultural identity while also incorporating aspects of Egyptian life into their daily routines.

While Schrader examines what bioarchaeological research can reveal about social, political and cultural structures in the past, Barra O'Donnabhain and Maria Lozada have put together an edited volume that focuses on the sociopolitical context of the research itself and how it has been used to reinforce or challenge these structures in the present. Archaeological human remains: legacies of imperialism, communism and colonialism builds on an earlier volume (O'Donnabhain & Lozada 2014) by examining the formative contributions, subsequent development and future directions of bioarchaeological research in nine countries from around the world. The imperial perspective comes from France, Germany and Portugal, while Senegal, Chile, Egypt and New Zealand represent the colonised nations. Russia and China provide the communist angle.

What comes across most strongly from the beginning of each chapter is just how diverse the origins of bioarchaeology really are. Geologists, ethnographers, anatomists, antiquarians, merchant adventurers, and even Tsar Peter the Great, have all been involved in the development of the subject, whether they were undertaking personal research projects, working to amass large skeletal collections or establishing national research institutions. Although even here, at the genesis of the discipline, the power dynamics between the imperial nations and their colonial territories are made clear. Ikram points out that Western scholars were examining mummies and skeletal remains from Egypt as early as the seventeenth century (with varying degrees of scientific rigour) simply because they were interested and because they could. Buckley and Petchy, as well as Gokee and Thiaw, outline how New Zealand and Senegal, respectively, experienced a similar influx of adventurers and scholars from the nineteenth century onwards, and Berger and Pachenkina demonstrate that even China could not escape the reach of the many explorers and ethnographers who were keen to study the foreign cultures and peoples of the Far East. The sense of entitlement precipitated by these early research expeditions is palpable, and the various authors make it clear how this resulted in the destruction and removal of many important cultural artefacts, not least human remains.

Back in Europe, the academic landscape was dominated by interest in the fossil record. Knusel and Maureille point to the rich collection of early human and Neanderthal material that was being excavated in France, and Santos notes that the Portuguese were also keen to discover human fossils in their own country. In Russia, Moiseyev, Buzhilova and Murphy relate how early expeditions to explore the far reaches of the country were instructed to collect information on geology and the histories of the people who lived there. By the late nineteenth century, scholars in Germany, France and Portugal had built up large collections of skeletal remains, and physical anthropology was beginning to be taught at universities. Scholars in Russia and China were also beginning to carry out research on archaeological and modern humans.

Despite the hugely varied backgrounds of the scholars and institutions working with human remains in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book makes it very clear that one topic more than any other came to define the study of physical anthropology across the globe: craniometry. The emphasis on the comparative anatomy of modern humans, archaeological humans and even non-human primates echoes strongly throughout each chapter, with European researchers keen to establish a hierarchy of race, whether they were working at home or abroad. Interestingly, while Paul Broca is discussed in the French chapter, there is little mention of his pioneering work on the development of racial typographies. Grupe and Wahl are more forthcoming about the dark side of craniometric research in their chapter on Germany. In fact, the majority of authors make sure to stress how skeletal remains were used to promote imperial ideologies: in Senegal, where the locals were considered to belong to the lower races, European scholars could not understand how the, clearly, African individuals interred alongside incredible megalithic structures had gained the technology to build them (the answer—through trade with white Mediterranean populations). Similar conclusions were reached in Egypt, where the ancients were supposed to have descended from early European groups. In Portugal, studies of craniometric variation were tied to national identity, and researchers were concerned with demonstrating how interbreeding with Indigenous people from the colonies, and with earlier settlers from north Africa, had not diluted the ‘European’ characteristics of the Portuguese themselves. Early studies in Chile mirror this outlook, with Retamal, Pacheco and Uribe describing how state-sponsored projects were used to promote a homogenised national identity that overlooked the diverse ethnic and geographic groups that existed in the country. Only in Russia and China did researchers take a more egalitarian approach, using craniometrics to reconstruct population histories and the movement of early human groups into East Asia, rather than to establish the superiority of one race over another.

The violent events of the twentieth century affected bioarchaeological research across the globe, and it is from here that the focus of each chapter begins to diverge. While some countries were able to use these conflicts as an opportunity to expand their research portfolio and distance themselves from the old nationalistic, colonial and communist ideologies of the past, it becomes obvious as one moves through the different chapters that these influences still cast a long shadow over the current state of research in many parts of the world. The former scenario is demonstrated particularly clearly in Chile, where the disappearance of large numbers of people under the military regime has since taken bioarchaeology in a more forensic direction. At the same time, the exceptional collections of well-preserved pre-Columbian human remains have attracted generous state funding as well as interest from overseas scholars. In Portugal, large skeletal collections containing modern individuals with biographical information have allowed academics to test and develop methodologies for the estimation of age, sex and stature. German institutions have become world-leaders in biomolecular research, while the French excel at stats-based methods of analysis. The picture from Russia and China is more mixed. Despite possessing large collections of human skeletal remains from a variety of geographic regions and temporal periods, these chapters note that little research has been published in the Western world since the end of the twentieth century. Both Russia and China are now opening up to international collaborations, however, and show great promise in the fields of human origins and dispersals and biomolecular investigations. Research in Egypt and Senegal has not, however, been so fortunate, and it is in these chapters that the reader is confronted with the true legacy of colonialism, particularly with regard to the lack of regional academics, training programmes and state funding. The chapter on New Zealand is more optimistic, and the authors are able to point to a wealth of legislation and ethical guidelines that have fostered friendly collaboration between Indigenous and European Kiwis on a number of archaeological projects.

While each of the chapters in Archaeological human remains: legacies of imperialism, communism and colonialism is effective at communicating the origins and development of bioarchaeological research in each individual country, the great strength of the book lies in the wider perspective that is provided when the chapters are considered together. It is this global view that demonstrates how many European nations continue to benefit from the legacy of their imperial past, while many of the former colonies are still fighting to overcome these historic imbalances of power.

The word ‘massacre’ invokes terrible images of bloodshed and butchery, atrocities that are carried out on a grand scale and involve the deaths of hundreds of men, women and children. In Massacres: bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology approaches, Cheryl Anderson and Debra Martin challenge this assumption by bringing together a diverse range of chapters that examine not only the manner and scale of violent killings, but also draw attention to the psychosocial factors that allow these events to take place, and the emotional and political ramifications for survivors and perpetrators alike. This is a further examination of the theme of how social, political and cultural structures shape everyday human activity. Unlike Activity, diet and social practice, however, this edited volume focuses on the darker aspects of human nature and the processes that allow seemingly normal individuals to carry out extreme acts of violence against their fellow human beings.

The first part of the book focuses on evidence of massacres from the archaeological record, identifying unusual mortuary behaviours, examining the demography of victims and recording physical evidence for traumatic injury. De Vore, Jacobi and Dye begin with a useful appraisal of the term ‘massacre’ and propose a three-tiered definition that recognises the much more frequently occurring small-scale massacres that involved relatively low numbers of individuals. Kendell presents further evidence for this type of massacre by exploring the Smithsonian Institute's vast skeletal database of Arikara-related material. An example of a large-scale massacre is provided by Willey, whose careful reanalysis of material from Crow Creek, South Dakota, reveals the indiscriminate nature of the killings and the extent of the violence that took place there in the fourteenth century. In an attempt to reveal possible motives for mass killings, Pilloud and Schwitalla compare the characteristics of prehistoric Californian mass graves with those of modern massacre assemblages. Motivation is also explored by Toyne in a fascinating case study at the Chachapoya site of Kuelap in Peru. What initially appears to have been a massacre in the more traditional sense is argued to represent a brutal act of dominance intended to send a political message to the survivors. Osterholtz also explores the use of massacres as a form of domination and control in her reappraisal of the assemblage from Sacred Ridge, Colorado (one of the infamous examples of extreme processing from the Four Corners region of the USA). Here she argues that the consistent patterns of violent trauma, irrespective of the age and sex of the victims, implies that the perpetrators dehumanised their prey to the extent where they could inflict pain and suffering without experiencing any damaging emotional consequences.

Although the psychological and emotional impact of mass killings is touched upon in several of the archaeological chapters, it is the more recent accounts of violence from Cambodia, Uganda and the U.S.-Mexican border where these themes resonate most strongly. Fleischman et al. provide a moving account of the analysis of mass graves from the Killing Fields of Cambodia, where osteological evidence has been used to corroborate eye-witness accounts of the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. The curation and display of the bones of victims acts as a memorial to the dead and a cultural reminder of the violence that took place. While the majority of Cambodians are comfortable with this treatment of the remains, the situation in Uganda is very different. Here the survivors are haunted by the spirits of the dead who cannot find peace until they have been identified and given a proper burial, with claims that these ghosts roam the fields at night wailing for help. In many cases, this is almost impossible, as the atrocities committed by government and rebel forces resulted in the displacement of large numbers of the population, and many victims died far from their families and homes. Redeker, Steadman and Hanebrink do an excellent job of communicating how cultural ideas about death and the ongoing political and economic situation mean that many survivors continue to suffer as they struggle to come to terms with the violent events of the past. This provides a poignant demonstration of how massacres continue to influence politics and culture long after the events have taken place.

The final two chapters focus on events currently taking place at the U.S.-Mexican border. Bird makes a compelling argument for this to be treated as an extended massacre, pointing to recent changes in border security that have funnelled would-be migrants through the harshest areas of the Sonoran Desert in an attempt to avoid immigration checkpoints. She points to the American government's divisive socio-political rhetoric that encourages fear of migrants and creates an ‘us-and-them’ mentality, claims echoed by Latham, O'Daniel and Maiers. They argue that this treatment amounts to structural violence against undocumented border crossers and ultimately leads to their dehumanisation, allowing the American public to view these deaths as unimportant and insignificant to national concerns.

The arrangement of the chapters in this way, from prehistory to the current day, is extremely effective in demonstrating the varied nature of massacres and their outcomes, but also creates a growing sense of responsibility in the reader. As Harrod points out in the concluding chapter, it is up to us as bioarchaeologists and forensic investigators to identify and document these violent events of the past and present so that they are not forgotten or ignored by the wider community. In doing so, we can help the victims regain their dignity and their humanity, and allow the survivors to move forward and begin to heal.