D. Ann Herring is Associate Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario. Alan C. Swedlund is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

• Foreword S. Silverman and M. A. Little; 1. Human biology in the archives A. Swedlund and D. A. Herring; 2. The use of archives in the study of microevolution: changing demography and epidemiology of Esxazú, Costa Rica L. Madrigal; 3. Anthropometric data and population history J. H. Relethford; 4. For everything there is a season: Chumash Indian births, marriages and deaths at the Alta California missions P. L. Walker and J. R. Johnson; 5. Children of the poor: infant mortality in the Erie County Almshouse during the mid-nineteenth century R. L. Higgins; 6. Worked to the bone: the biomechanical consequences of 'labour therapy' at a nineteenth century asylum S. Phillips; 7. Monitored growth: anthropometrics and health history records at a private New England middle school, 1935–60 L. Leidy Sievert; 8. Scarlet Fever epidemics of the nineteenth century; a case of evolved pathogenic virulence? A. Swedlund and A. Donta; 9. The ecology of a health crisis: Gibraltar and the 1965 cholera epidemic L. A. Sawchuck and S. D. A. Burke; 10. War and population composition in Åland, Finland J. H. Mielke; 11. Infectious diseases in the historical archives: a modelling approach L. Sattenspiel; 12. Where were the women? A. Grauer; 13. Malnutrition among northern peoples of Canada in the 1940s: an ecological and economic disaster D. A. Herring, S. Abonyi and R. D. Hoppa; 14. Archival research in physical anthropology M. T. Smith; Index.

'I liked this book very much. In each chapter, I not only learned something new about a specific people, time, or disease, but also new ways of interpreting and using data that will prove helpful to me in future research situations.' Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies