The Bioarchaeology of Social Identity

Rachel E. Scott - University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: Bioarchaeology offers a powerful, though often underutilized, means for investigating identity in past societies.  Not only are identities created and expressed through the manipulation of the physical body, but also the body forms a basis for and shapes social relations and identities.  Because of this reciprocal relationship, we can access identities in the past through the contextual analysis of human remains.  This talk demonstrates the potential of the bioarchaeology of social identity using two case studies from Ireland.  First, the cemetery on Omey Island, County Galway is examined within its larger historical and cultural context in order to explore the interaction between society and the individual in the constitution of identity in early medieval Ireland (c. AD 400-1200).  The early Irish life course is reconstructed by integrating human skeletal, archaeological, and historical data.  In this cultural narrative of aging, multiple aspects of identity intersect to define the stages of the typical life.  The ways in which individuals negotiated this prescribed pathway are then illustrated by telling the life histories of particular persons.  Second, future research on leprosy in later medieval Ireland (c. AD 1200-1550) will investigate how physical illness can alter the social identity of individuals and how societies define themselves through the exclusion of certain categories of people.