The Routledge Handbook of Bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands

In recent years the bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands has seen enormous progress. This new and exciting research is synthesised, contextualised and expanded upon in The Routledge Handbook of Bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. The volume is divided into two broad sections, one dealing with mainland and island Southeast Asia, and a second section dealing with the Pacific islands. A multi-scalar approach is employed to the bio-social dimensions of Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands with contributions alternating between region and/or site specific scales of operation to the individual or personal scale. The more personal level of osteobiographies enriches the understanding of the lived experience in past communities. Including a number of contributions from sub-disciplinary approaches tangential to bioarchaeology the book provides a broad theoretical and methodological approach. Providing new information on the globally relevant topics of farming, population mobility, subsistence and health, no other volume provides such a range of coverage on these important themes.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Bioarchaeology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Chapter 2 The Population History of Mainland and Island Southeast Asia Chapter 3 Human cultural, technological and adaptive changes from the end of the Pleistocene to the mid-Holocene in Southeast Asia Chapter 4 Prehistoric Mortuary Traditions in Cambodia Chapter 5 Frail, foreign or favoured? A contextualized case study from Bronze Age northeast Thailand Chapter 6 Reflections on life and times in Neolithic Vietnam: One person’s story Chapter 7 Investigating Activity and Mobility Patterns during the mid-Holocene in northern Vietnam Chapter 8 Reconstructing diet at An Son and Hoa Diem: implications for understanding southeast Asian subsistence patterns Chapter 9 Infant and child health and disease with agricultural intensification in mainland Southeast Asia Chapter 10 To Follow in Their Footsteps: An Examination of the Burial Identity of the Elderly from Non Nok Tha Chapter 11 Age-at-death estimation in a sample of prehistoric Southeast Asian adolescents and adults Chapter 12 Cremation in Mainland Southeast Asia: An Overview Chapter 13 Social Affiliation, Settlement Pattern Histories and Subsistence Change in Neolithic Borneo Chapter 14 Field anthropology in Southeast Asia and the Pacific: initial steps toward a regional overview and the Pain Haka case study Chapter 15 Dealing with Death in Late Neolithic to Metal Period Nagsabaran, the Philippines Chapter 16 Implications of pathological changes in cremated human remains from Palawan, Philippines, for Island Southeast Asian archaeology Chapter 17 Bioarchaeology in the Pacific Islands: A temporal and geographical examination of nutritional and infectious disease Chapter 18 Human biology and population histories in the Pacific – Is there such thing as a Lapita People? Chapter 19 Socio-environmental adaption to the montane rainforests of New Guinea Chapter 20 Is there a ‘Lapita diet’? A comparison of Lapita and post-Lapita skeletal samples from four Pacific island archaeological sites Chapter 21 Dogs and People in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Chapter 22 Scratching Out a Living: Chickens in Ancient Pacific Economies Chapter 23 Adapting to Palau Chapter 24 Under the Latte: Osteobiography and Social Context of a Burial Assemblage at Tumon Bay, Guam Chapter 25 Diet and subsistence in Remote Oceania: an analysis using oral indicators of diet Chapter 26 Dental Calculus and Plant Diet in Oceania Chapter 27 What archaeologists want human biologists to tell them, about Teouma for example Chapter 28 The Ancestors Speak: Kōiwi tangata, mātauranga Māori and the development of biological anthropology in New Zealand Chapter 29 Meta-themes in the bioarchaeology of the Asia pacific region.

About the Author :
Marc Oxenham is Reader of Archaeology and Biological Anthropology at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University. Hallie Buckley is Associate Professor at the Department of Anatomy of the Otago School of Medical Sciences, University of Otago.

Review :
"The editors and all of the contributors to this important volume are to be thanked for summarising so astutely and comprehensively the current state of play. It will indeed be fascinating to reflect a decade hence on the additional insights that must inevitably be forthcoming." Charlies Higham, University of Otago, New Zealand