Conclusions and Future Directions

Abstract

This final chapter will summarize the previous chapters and discuss the potential for additional research. The methods I have proposed in Chapters 3 and 4, and demonstrated in Chapter 5 only represent a selection of the techniques bioarchaeologists can use to address day-to-day life. Other areas that need additional research include: collaboration between archaeology and bioarchaeology, bioarchaeological methods, and anthropologically oriented research. Bioarchaeologists have had access to many of these lines of evidence, but have yet to be conceptualized as components of everyday life. Like activity and diet, various types of data can elucidate the experience of the individual and the community. Two areas of bioarchaeological research that have begun to question lived experience include osteobiographical approaches and the bioarchaeology of care. Both of these fields have considered life events and social identities that would have framed everyday experience; however, these studies typically do not examine entire groups or communities, but rather focus on a single person. Furthermore, these approaches do not frame their research in terms of everyday experience, but rather address it peripherally. This book presents an argument for why studies of day-to-day practice are important in anthropological research and how bioarchaeological studies can contribute to this dialogue.