Introduction: Health, Well-Being, and Ability in Archaeology

Abstract

This thematic volume explores how health, well-being, and ability are constructed in the past and in the present. The volume’s authors undo and question deeply ingrained assumptions about what constitutes a “normative” body. They do so by not only looking at how bodies have been medicalized and envisioned in the past, but also how our own profession and discipline discriminates against certain types of bodies in the present.