This book provides groundbreaking insights into groups that have become invisible within the archaeological record by placing disability studies (DS) and critical disability studies (CDS) at the centre of historical archaeology. The authors begin by discussing spoon theory—referenced in the book’s cover, which features historical spoons—a metaphor that can help people with disabilities or chronic conditions measure and manage their energy levels throughout the day. Their work extends beyond simply calling for an archaeology of disability; instead, they aim to build the foundation for what they term crip archaeology, defined as “an approach to theory, method, and practice that transforms (bio)archaeology as an interpretive, political and disciplinary project by accounting for disabled subjects, debilitating biopower, and disability expertise as part of anti-ableist praxis” (p.4). The book is based on research from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century USA.
The volume examines practices and methodologies in archaeology that have historically excluded diverse ‘bodyminds’—a term used in DS to emphasise the fundamental interconnection between physical and mental health and ability. Its aims are threefold: to review DS and CDS as they relate to archaeology; to examine the connections between colonialism, eugenics and institutional practices; and to revisit site interpretations in order to illustrate crip archaeology’s potential to transform our understanding of the past, particularly by moving beyond current medicalised definitions of disability. These aims align with disability justice and oppressive ideologies and structures within (bio)archaeology that exclude participation of researchers in the discipline.
Chapter 1 introduces fundamental concepts, including models of disability (e.g. the medical and social models) and impairment. It also outlines the methodological approach of encountering evidence, which draws on critical disability archaeology and engages with theories of biopolitics—historically implicated in excluding many bodies from full citizenship—and necropolitics.
Chapter 2 examines the history of eugenics alongside the development of racial sciences in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These systems functioned to produce harm through the naturalisation of inequality, often mediated through the classification of disability. The bodies of disabled people were used by medical professionals in state facilities, as well as by academics in museums and universities, contributing to the construction of authority and professional reputation.
As a bioarchaeologist interested in the experiences in the past of people with disabilities, the construction of disability is especially relevant to me. Palaeopathology has typically emphasised trauma and pathology in skeletal remains, reflecting a medicalised view of disability. The authors argue that debility is a more useful analytical lens, shifting focus from disability as an identity to disability as an outcome of necropolitical violence. Here, debilitation is understood as a biopolitical or necropolitical strategy that inflicts suffering and brings populations closer to death. Some recent work in the bioarchaeology of care (BoC), particularly research incorporating social approaches and assessing the necropolitical formation of anatomical collections, is beginning to foreground this perspective.
Chapter 3 explores eugenic ideologies in nation building, presenting archaeological case studies of state-created disability categories and charitable institutions such as almshouses and workhouses, where aid was divided between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. The chapter explores both ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ eugenics, which expanded during the Progressive Era (1890s–1920s) through interconnected institutional systems designed to remove, isolate and discipline individuals deemed undesirable. Almshouses, workhouses, lunatic asylums and foundling houses eventually gave way to state hospitals for the disabled, shaped by intersecting identities such as race, gender and socioeconomic status. The authors discuss positive eugenics, enacted through the coercion of reproduction, one example being the Orange Valley Plantation in Jamaica, where it was considered more economical to work enslaved individuals to death and replace them through the reproduction of more bodies.
The chapter further demonstrates how the social lens of positive eugenics underpins debates surrounding infanticide and the criminalisation of abortion and medical decision-making. The work of Thomas Crist (Reference Crist2005), who asserted criminality following the discovery of foetal remains belonging to three individuals in privies in nineteenth-century New York, is critically assessed. However, these foetuses may be the results of induced abortions, stillbirths or both, and may have been disposed of to avoid drawing attention to a pregnancy loss or birth control. This analytical lens will be particularly useful when critically engaging with interpretations of infanticide in bioarchaeology.
Chapter 4 interrogates the relationship between eugenics, biomedicine and disabled bodyminds, with a focus on pain management. The authors introduce disability justice principles, which move beyond moral judgements about dependence on pain medication and instead foreground the role of ableist systems. A crip-archaeology framework enables the identification of such ableism while also recognising community-based care practices, including self-medication. Substances such as opiates, alcohol and tobacco in archaeological case studies are examined as coping mechanisms and as tools of social regulation.
Chapter 5 examines institutions as spaces of debilitation, opening with a harrowing quote from Walter Lindley (1903), a key figure in US public health and the development of medical institutions. The passage describes gynaecological operations performed on three women, illustrating the brutality of biomedical violence and eugenic ideology. One patient died, while the other two were sterilised without relief from their ailments. Lindley reflects that, despite the disappointing outcomes, the surgeries had at least ensured that the patients would not reproduce. The chapter also traces how institutions such as military forts and the plantations influenced later institution types, including boarding schools for Indigenous children, reform schools and sanatoria, which functioned as sites of discipline, control and bodily regulation.
Chapter 6 argues that ‘care’ has often been imposed on rather than chosen by people, framed through models of dependence on non-disabled caregivers rather than as a goal of independence and integration through voluntary, community-based care networks. It presents cautionary examples from archaeology and bioarchaeology to challenge medicalised models of care and to encourage less ableist, disability-centred interpretations. The authors emphasise the importance of challenging assumptions, such as the idea that disabled bodies are inherently lesser or that survival depends solely on the compassion of others.
The final chapter is forward looking, presenting practices and methodologies that the authors argue are necessary to make the field more just and inclusive for diverse bodyminds. These include critically engaging with the assumptions of the BoC model and developing community-engaged crip archaeologies.
The book includes a helpful glossary of key terms, is written in accessible language, and the layout is thoughtfully designed to reduce visual crowding and to enhance readability. This is a must-read for all (bio)archaeologists.
