12:383 Osteobiography

Overview: This course focuses on the methods used to determine age, sex, stature, and ancestry from human skeletal remains. Taphonomy and methods to reconstruct behaviour, assess pathological conditions and trauma will also be covered. Ethics of working with human skeletal remains and method history and critical assessment will be emphasized. An osteobiography forms the foundation of bioarchaeological and forensic anthropological research. The emphasis in this course is on the osteobiography in bioarchaeology and its use to understand the lives of past peoples on both an individual and population level. While the methods used in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology are similar, the emphasis, expectations and goals are different. This course does not prepare students to conduct forensic anthropological analyses, but will provide a foundational understanding of the techniques of skeletal analysis. This course builds on Human Osteology (12:363) and students are expected to be able to identify human skeletal remains in detail (bone recognition, feature identification etc.).

Students will work with human skeletal remains from the Brandon University Teaching Collection and may have the opportunity to work with archaeological human skeletal remains. Ethics are always a priority when working with human remains and as a result are emphasized in this course. Students will go through the entire process of completing an osteobiography from creating and completing a skeletal inventory, documenting taphonomic changes, assessing age, sex, ancestry, stature, pathological conditions and trauma. Students will also be expected to interpret the osteobiography and be able to discuss the individual upon which it is based.