Human Bones in Archaeology

The human skeleton, often ignored or even discarded by early archaeologists, has become of great interest and importance to their modern counterparts. Known as physical anthropology, the study of skeletons is a vital part of environmental archaeology. Human bones provide accurate evidence for the physical characteristics of a previous community, and are a major source of evidence for diseases that scar bone, such as tuberculosis, leprosy, and syphilis, and their subsequent evolution within ...