Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoples
Subtitle
Historical and Evolutionary Dimensions of Intracemetary Bioarchaeology in Spanish Florida
"Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoples" offers clear, accessible explanations of complex methods for observing evolutionary effects in populations. Christopher Stojanowski’s intimate knowledge of the historical, archaeological and skeletal data illuminates the existing narrative of diet, disease and demography in Spanish Florida. Employing intracemetery analyses, he demonstrates how such an approach can provide likely explanations for variability in lived experiences as observed in the bioarchaeological record in instances where historical information is either silent or ambiguous.
Stojanowski forgoes the traditional broadly comparative analysis of Native American populations and instead looks at the physical person who lived in the historic Southeast. What did they eat? Did they die from chronic or acute diseases? With whom did they attend a Spanish church? Where were they buried in death within the church and why? The answers to these questions allow us to infer much about the lives of mission peoples.
Bio
Christopher Stojanowski is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU. As a bioarchaeologist, he specializes in the analysis of human skeletal remains and dentition. He uses information from ancient sites to reconstruct the lives of past peoples, focusing on the Holocene skeletal record of the New World and Africa.
Praise for this book
Stojanowski takes you on an amazing trip to different historic Spanish missions in the southeastern United States. These missions are filled with skeletons that are a chorus of Native American voices speaking of church services they attended both in life and in death.
Keith P. Jacobi Author of "Last Rites for the Tipu Maya: Genetic Structuring in a Colonial Cemetery"
“'Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoples' is a must-have for any student or scholar of bioarchaeology. … An instant anthropological classic.”
Richard C. Sutter Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne
