Themes in Osteoarchaeology

Learning Outcomes

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• undertake analysis and presentation of quantitative data.
• lead seminars and discussion groups

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• of the ethical issues surrounding working with human remains
• of the varying theoretical approaches to the analysis of human and animal skeletal remains
• of skeletal remains as a resource for studying past variability in diet and subsistence, health and disease, social structure and organisation, speciation and extinction, ideology and religious belief, and population history and migration
• of human-animal interactions in the past

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• evaluate results of skeletal analyses and studies
• critique osteoarchaeological data and interpretations derived from it
• pose and tackle archaeological questions using skeletal data
• critique specific techniques and methods of osteological analysis
• integrate theoretical issues and archaeological questions with empirical data

Topics may vary according to staff availability, but issues typically covered include:

• Subsistence of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans
• The beginning of domestication and its ongoing processes: zoo-archaeological and genetic evidence
• Food provisioning in complex societies
• Bioarchaeology: status and inequality
• Ethnicity and identity
• Migration and mobility through the application of isotopic analyses
• The use of isotopic analyses in the determination of diet
• Bioarchaeology of disability and care

This module is taught by a combination of lectures, to introduce the key areas of consideration, and seminars, in which students and staff can discuss the issues raised in more detail, and as they relate to specific case studies. In addition, students will deliver presentations around their own areas of enquiry, with opportunities for peer feedback and learning.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Oral presentation

• Assessment Type: Formative
• Feedback: Verbal feedback from staff and students to be given immediately after presentation.
• Final Assessment: No
• Group Work: No

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.