ABSTRACT
This handbook examines human responses to climatic and environmental changes in the past,and their impacts on disease patterns, nutritional status, migration, and interpersonal violence. Bioarchaeology—the study of archaeological human skeletons—provides direct evidence of the human experience of past climate and environmental changes and serves as an important complement to paleoclimate, historical, and archaeological approaches to changes we may expect with global warming.
Comprising 27 chapters from experts across a broad range of time periods and geographical regions, this book addresses hypotheses about how climate and environmental changes impact human health and well-being, factors that promote resilience, and circumstances that make migration or interpersonal violence a more likely outcome. The volume highlights the potential relevance of bioarchaeological analysis to contemporary challenges by organizing the chapters into a framework outlined by the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. Planning for a warmer world requires knowledge about humans as biological organisms with a deep connection to Earth's ecosystems balanced by an appreciation of how historical and socio-cultural circumstances, socioeconomic inequality, degrees of urbanization, community mobility, and social institutions play a role in shaping long-term outcomes for human communities.
Containing a wealth of nuanced perspectives about human-environmental relations, book is key reading for students of environmental archaeology, bioarchaeology, and the history of disease. By providing a longer view of contemporary challenges, it may also interest readers in public health, public policy, and planning.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|140 pages
Good health and well-being
chapter 2|24 pages
Exploring the third “epidemiological transition”
chapter 4|23 pages
Living on the edge
chapter 7|19 pages
Respiratory disease in the Middle Nile Valley
chapter 8|16 pages
Health and disease at the marshes
part II|120 pages
Socioeconomic and gender equality, no poverty or hunger
chapter 10|16 pages
Urban environments
chapter 11|16 pages
Social variation in an urban environment and its impacts on stress
chapter 13|18 pages
Resilience and change
chapter 14|22 pages
A bioarchaeology of madness
part III|100 pages
Peace, justice, and strong institutions
chapter 16|15 pages
The climate change–witch execution connection
chapter 18|13 pages
Environmental, behavioral, and bodily change
part IV|134 pages
Life on land