Reddit reviews The Bone Woman: A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo

I was asked for sources last night I an am returning with some that I hope will get you started on your love of both forensic anthropology (who doesn't love dead bodies and good stories? right?!) and social sciences. I mean, humans--we're crazy, fam!

For u/fireballs619 , u/Jack_Ramsey , u/DawdlingDaily, u/F-this,

Thanks to u/GirlWhoCried_BadWolf and u/fascinatedCat for making me laugh <3

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To start, the book that sparked a lot of Forensic Osteologist's careers is The Bone Woman, by Clea Koff and unfortunately I haven't been able to find it in straight PDF. It's cheap and a quick but riveting read. A great autobiography of what it's like to be a modern osteologist, why the work is important, what we know, how we know it and how that looks in the modern world. She worked uncovering mass graves from the genocide in Rowanda and Kosovo.

And here is a good paper on Forensic Anthropology (osteology) on how one goes about figuring out the gender, age, stature, geographical lineage and perhaps identifying the remains of a person. As you can see, there are calculations, but also one admits that human variation is often beyond the ability to calculate on a spreadsheet.

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(late add) I forgot to add something on wear patterns and how we can tell and how we can't tell what a person or group of people's specialized labor was. This paper should break that down as it talks about techniques. Tracing Patterns of Activity in the Human Skeleton: An Overview of Methods, Problems, and Limits (You may need to sign up but the paper itself is free)

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Next I wanted to take some time and really talk to some of the people who may be confused about why they're positive that there was gender hierarchy in labor (one more important than the other) throughout history with men being more important than women. Listen, everyone, you're not wrong...you're just also not completely right either. You have to look at human culture on more than just a single timeline (x). You also have different geographical/ecological challenges for each culture that effect the way they look (y). You also have economy, be it agricultural, industrial, gather/hunter (note we are now putting gather in front, for those of you who haven't been paying attention because gathering produced more calories per work hour), horticulturalist, nomadic animal husbandry..etc...(z). Actually, I can keep adding axis after axis of important parts of human culture all the way through the alphabet. Now if you visualize in your mind these axis defining each culture you would see, each one unique but also grouped, somewhat similar with others. However, they'll be a whole host of cultures that look nothing like that. So it's hard to be universal about things. Moreover, some of y'all are working on old and often slightly discredited information. Turns out, the pillars of our big social sciences, the guys who wrote it first--were kinda racist and misogynist. I know SHOCKING!!! Their science may not be completely wrong, but sometimes those -isms kept them from asking the right questions and often, they used a lot of assumptions we now know are wrong. So, yes, you can quote research or books or seen movies about some anthropologist somewhere saying something about gender hierarchy in labor, but how old is it? Whose research is the author using? Are they asking the important questions? Just like technology, social sciences have moved fast and if you are interested, you need to keep up. (btw, can we start pushing for more updated text books?) Here's a link on the ways in which women, asking the questions, are changing the face in which we see human history and culture. Gender, Households, and Society: An Introduction Elizabeth M. Brumfiel Cynthia Robin

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Domesticating gender: Neolithic patterns from the southern Levant, Jane Peterson is a great paper, (also given freely by the author which we should all say THANK YOU for), that not only looks at a pretty significant period of time but more importantly Peterson writes a lot about why the questions we ask about gender are often misguided by modern gender assumptions. "Abstract: This paper examines the extant evidence regarding gender reconstructions and relations for the Neolithicof the southern Levant of southwest Asia. Data from human skeletal remains, mortuary contexts, architecture, and figurative art provide the empirical bases for a broad assessment of gender in the realms of productive labor, social organization, and ideology. Overall, little evidence is found to support that Neo-lithic societies in this region were organized hierarchically in terms of gender. "

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Here's some meat and potatoes for ya: "Abstract: ... Interlimb strength proportions among Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age women were most similar to those of living semi-elite rowers. These results suggest that, in contrast to men, rigorous manual labor was a more important component of prehistoric women’s behavior than was terrestrial mobility through thousands of years of European agriculture, at levels far exceeding those of modern women..." Prehistoric women’s manual labor exceeded that of athletes through the first 5500 years of farming in Central Europe Alison A. Macintosh, Ron Pinhasi, and Jay T. Stock

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and one last paper that narrows down these concepts into very specific research by the same authors above. Abstract: The Bronze Age to Iron Age transition was associated with morphological change among females, with a significant increase in right-biased asymmetry and a concomitant reduction in sexual dimorphism. Relative to biomechanical properties, humeral length variation and asymmetry were low though some significant sexual dimorphism and temporal change was found. It was among females that the lateralization of humeral biomechanical properties, and variation within them, changed most profoundly through time. This suggests that the introduction of the ard and plow, metallurgical innovation, task specialization, and socioeconomic change through ∼ 5400 years of agriculture impacted upper limb loading in Central European women to a greater extent than men Divergence in male and female manipulative behaviors with the intensification of metallurgy in Central Europe. Macintosh , Pinhasi Stock J

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Forensic Anthropology/Osteology is a pretty complicated place and I wanted to give a similar to similar research that tells a story. That is, of course, different from, let's say New World transitioning cultures who may have invented different farming techniques (they did) and so their labor divisions and wear patterns look different. This should give you a really round idea of what they do, from broad theory to exact, specific science. Also for the scientists here and those who wonder why I picked these specific papers. My intention was for you all to actually be able to read it and because of the commodification of human knowledge, a lot of the science is locked behind paywalls. I chose papers you all can access, either by submitting some information and getting it free, or just by direct link. The only one that is pay is Clea Koffs book--but honestly, you should read that.

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finally....down here, if you got this far, is a treat from me to you. This is a great set of papers, a statement and a reply under the title "The Osteological Paradox Reconsidered" by Mark Nathan Cohen and replied by James W. Wood and George R Milner. It's about osteology---but it's funny and it shows the debates of the facts and the perspectives on the truth. I guess it's my way of saying, the science isn't 100% positive proof, but what is when we're talking variables beyond what we already know. The Osteological Paradox, Reconsidered. "The commentators are evenly divided between those who heartily loathed the paper and those who basically liked it but wanted to make additional points or suggest ways of tackling some of the problems we discussed. Since our intention was to spark debate, we welcome all the comments, even those accusing us of scientific snobbery, nihilism, and aiding and abetting the sinister pro-state. pro-civilization forces---though how we can be both nihilist and pro-civilization is something of a mystery to us."

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Enjoy!