How does one bring together the disparate threads of a career studying human remains that spans decades, continents, and even millennia? Susan Pfeiffer, a biological anthropologist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, attempts just that in Osteobiographies: The Discovery, Interpretation, and Repatriation of Human Remains. The book is an engaging narrative hopscotch through Pfeiffer's career, with an emphasis on repatriation, restitution, and work with descendant communities.
Following an introductory chapter outlining terms and introducing the field of bioarchaeology, the book is divided into two sections reflecting Pfeiffer's research foci in North America and Africa. The two are linked by her ongoing research interests in “those whose lives and livelihoods were ultimately constrained by the natural world” (p. 99) and her consideration of the modern sociopolitical context of human remains and the people (living and dead) who are affected by their study. The first half of Pfeiffer's career centered on ancestral Huron-Wendat communities and others living in the Lower Great Lakes region of eastern North America after the recession of glacial waters around 13,000 years ago. Later, Pfeiffer shifted her research focus to hunter-gatherer communities in eastern and southern Africa, specifically the study of pillar cemeteries around Lake Turkana and ancestral Khoe-San groups in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Each section moves through case studies of research on human biocultural interaction with the environment, as well as powerful descriptions of communities taking control of their heritage and the remains of their ancestors.
It is important to note that Pfeiffer's use of the term “osteobiography” differs from that of other recent scholars. Indeed, although Pfeiffer acknowledges the origins of the term in Frank and Julie Saul's foundational work in the 1970s, she does not engage with the proliferation of osteobiographical approaches of the last few decades. Instead, osteobiography in her formulation is more akin to “bioarchaeological storytelling” than an approach specifically engaging with individual life histories. That said, some of the individuals she highlights as case studies throughout the book are described through well-written osteobiographical narratives, such as the Late Archaic young woman from Ontario with evidence for probable osteogenesis imperfecta. Furthermore, the osteobiography of amputated limbs from a medical waste pit associated with the War of 1812 and Pfeiffer's attempt to create a “collective osteobiography” from an ancestral Huron-Wendat ossuary represent innovative directions in bioarchaeological scholarship.
The greatest strength of the book is Pfeiffer's earnest descriptions of community collaboration and repatriation efforts throughout her career. As such issues rightly become ever more pressing in our field, Pfeiffer normalizes bioarchaeologists’ responsibility—to both the people they study and their descendants—to care for human remains and seek restitution wherever possible. Pfeiffer repeatedly demonstrates the value of learning about the past from human remains while also keeping space for the crucial work of repatriation. Importantly, her case studies show that these two concepts do not have to stand in opposition (as they are framed too often) but rather should work in tandem.
In placing emphasis on repatriation and restitution, Pfeiffer joins other recent scholars in opening a black box of bioarchaeology: the “postmortem lives” of the collections we study. The typological and racialized origins of our field are well known, as are the often-dubious origins of major skeletal reference collections. However, each lesser-known research collection has its own history, a history typically left out of the academic scholarship we produce through the study of these remains. In tracing the movement of skeletal bodies through time and space, Pfeiffer links them to wider trends in physical anthropology while maintaining the unique historical contingencies that shape their continued postmortem journeys and the circumstances of their repatriation. In the stories Pfeiffer weaves about these remains, she moves from explorations of what the bones tell us about their lives to what their afterlives tell us about the politics and practicalities of justice.
This book perhaps will be of most interest to early-career scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates. The engaging storytelling and case studies are interspersed with inset boxes that delve deeper into definitions, methodologies, and historical context. The citations are useful connections to broader literature and do not overwhelm.
Most significantly, the book outlines the contours of a career in bioarchaeology, tracing how questions were formulated, how intellectual passions matured, and how community relationships were nurtured. Pfeiffer deftly intertwines her personal experiences with the shifting methodological and ideological directions of the field while also outlining a path for working with and for communities. Osteobiographies shows us where we have been and, most importantly, where we need to go as a field.
