1 Introduction: Establishing a Bioarchaeology of Community

Abstract

In this chapter, we introduce our volume and focus on defining the various ways in which the term community is used by bioarchaeologists in this volume, especially with respect to the theoretical ideas within the emerging social and theoretical bioarchaeology. We also provide an initial summary concerning each of the chapters and how each author, or set of authors, focuses on community within their research. Our goals are: (1) to discuss the possibilities and limitations of identifying different types of past community or communities; (2) to expand on methods in bioarchaeology that can be used to identify community; and (3) to develop theoretically based bioarchaeological research on community in order to elucidate meaningful relationships that structured past people's lives.