S.W.'s volume presents a bioarchaeology investigation of marginalised populations in the ancient Greek world. The work is the first of its kind. Studies of ancient Greek art and literature suggest that marginalised people experienced mockery, disenfranchisement, social exclusion, criminalisation, legal discrimination and poverty (p. 2). This evidence is inevitably skewed, presenting the perspectives and attitudes of an elite writer/patron directed at an elite audience. How these ideas reflect the experiences of the people represented as marginalised remains to be seen. S.W. addresses this gap in knowledge through an investigation of the skeletal remains of the people and their burial contexts.
Almost the entire first half of the book (pp. 1–101) serves to establish the background and context of the study. The opening chapter provides information concerning: the evidence, methods used, theoretical underpinning and a brief overview of the fields of bioarchaeology, funerary archaeology and ancestry. S.W. presents a compelling approach. Using art and literary evidence, S.W. selects three socially marginalising identity traits that are discernible from mortuary and skeletal material – disability, low socioeconomic status and non-Greek ethnicity – to be the focus of the volume. The theoretical frameworks of non-normative burial and materiality are reported to underpin the analysis. Non-normative burials are defined as burials that deviate from the established cemetery practices of the specific context. The study understands that the main motivator behind atypical burial practices is social marginalisation. Therefore, the identification of non-normative burials in ancient Greek cemeteries allows for the creation of a pool of likely candidates for social marginalisation (p. 24), although S.W. notes caveats to this rule, including the possibility that the socially marginalised in life were afforded normative burial rites in death. S.W. argues that the materiality theory will enable identification of social marginality within a normative burial setting (p. 24). Materiality theory concerns the way in which past people created meanings and identities through the use of material culture (p. 25). In practice, S.W. does not make the case for a socially marginalised individual in a normative burial.
Chapter 1 offers definitions of the volume's key concepts of disability, class, poverty, ethnicity, ancestry and race. The chapter also surveys ancient attitudes towards people with physical disabilities, low socioeconomic status and non-Greek ancestry as evident in ancient Greek art and literature. The survey provides the context for the interpretation of the burial assemblages under study.
Chapter 2 explores the trait of disability, beginning with a discussion of the models of disability and the theme of exposure. The chapter then focuses on physical differences evident in the bioarchaeological record, specifically looking at the evidence for limb differences, stature differences (which includes curved spine impairments like scoliosis alongside dwarfism), cranial differences and finally non-binary gender. The sample size of disabled people in the skeletal record in ancient Greece and more broadly is scant; however, none of the burials were atypical, which has been interpreted as evidence of the integration of the physically impaired into society (p. 150).
Chapter 3 explores low socioeconomic status. S.W. demonstrates that detecting non-elite status in classical period cemeteries is challenging as the period generally saw little social distinctions in burials, especially in Athens (p. 174). Instead, the skeletal material provides evidence of the non-elite through the palaeopathological identification of health disparities and dietary differences interpreted as relating to socioeconomic status (p. 179). One case study describes the classical Athenian skeletal assemblages from Kerameikos and Plateia Kotzia, which are believed to represent populations of high and low social strata respectively. Higher incidents of physiological stress in the males of Plateia Kotzia compared to Kerameikos was linked to likely increased physical and environmental stress associated with their lower socioeconomic class (p. 179). No cases of social marginalisation were interpreted from Kerameikos or Plateia Kotzia, with all burials being described as normative.
Chapter 4 explores the traits of ancestry and ethnicity, more specifically the relationship of non-Greek identity and social marginality. S.W. demonstrates that estimating an ethnicity through grave good analysis is a flawed approach: for example, in Athens non-Greeks chose to commemorate themselves in an Athenian manner, whereas Greeks embraced foreign, exotic styles and motives (p. 199). The chapter goes into detail about the methods of stable isotope analysis, biodistance studies of ethnicity and aDNA, only to conclude that there are no published studies of this kind from the selected study period and region (pp. 207, 211, 217). This chapter therefore provides clear guidance on gaps in the knowledge, calling for future research.
The concluding chapter reiterates the key theme throughout the volume, which is intersectionality. This theme is revisited at the end of every chapter, and whilst each of the marginalising traits are discrete subjects of analysis, intersectionality helps place them within the context of the overall individual personhood. Intersectionality is also crucial to S.W.'s main finding, which is that, while the presence of one marginalising factor was insufficient to motivate non-normative burial, the intersection of two or more marginalising factors warranted non-normative burial, an indicator of social marginalisation (p. 223). Slavery, first discussed in Chapter 3, provides the most compelling example of the study. In the few clear-cut cases of slave burial, in the form of restraint evidence as at Pydna or the close association of a Silver mining site at Laurion, non-normative burial was evident (p. 222). The vast majority of the enslaved were non-Greek; they were considered to occupy the lowest social strata, and their occupations often resulted in permanent injury; thus, the enslaved are ‘uniquely intersectional individuals’ (p. 184). S.W. concludes that it is their intersectionality that precipitates their social marginalisation (p. 184).
S.W. identifies that the study is impeded by the paucity in skeletal assemblages from the time frame and geographical region selected, and the likelihood that the marginalised were absent from Greek cemeteries (p. 221). S.W. elected to focus on datasets from mainland Greece dating from the sixth to fifth/fourth centuries bce, eliciting a study sample comprising 22 sites, most of which were cemeteries (p. 4). The rationale for this selection is sound, S.W. arguing that the inclusion of bioarchaeological data from the further reaches of the Greek world presents challenges for comparison (p. 4). S.W.'s data was obtained through the datamining of published skeletal reports, which means the study is at the mercy of the publication quality and inter-observer differences. S.W. decided not to include age and gender as discrete categories of analysis, despite their visibility within the skeletal record, because they are subordinating rather than marginalising attributes (p. 8). S.W. argued that, although women, elderly and child populations experienced discrimination, they still served as active agents in vital societal roles and so were not marginalised (p. 9). Yet, the consequences of subordination, as S.W. describes it, have striking overlap with those of social marginalisation, impacting diets and dental health for example (p. 8). Perhaps subordination and marginalisation fall on a spectrum of similar processes. Some flexibility on either the geographical range, chronological scopes or the definition of marginalisation may have helped address a frustratingly small sample size.
S.W.'s interdisciplinary study is innovative, the first bioarchaeological study of social marginalisation in the ancient Greek world. S.W. demonstrates an expert knowledge of bioarchaeology and conveys this well to a non-osteology specialist audience, presenting a useful synthesis for the state of play more broadly of the bioarchaeology of ancient Greece. This volume is a sound starting point for researchers to build from, as S.W. highlights areas for future research.
