The Body as Material Culture

Joanna R. Sofaer is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Southampton. As an osteoarchaeologist and prehistorian, she has published widely on human bioarchaeology and European prehistory. Her previous publications include Children and Material Culture (editor) (2000).

• 1. Bodies and boundaries; 2. The body as an archaeological resource; 3. The body and convention in archaeological practice; 4. Material bodies; 5. Gender; 6. Age.

'… [Sofaer] thoughtfully appraises the theory of the body. She has tried to do something quite different from other texts on either osteoarchaeology or the theory of dead bodies, and she has succeeded. What is presented is a way of bridging the methodological divide by viewing the skeleton as both a material and a cultural object. … By shifting 'the body' into the realm of material culture, Sofaer proposes to combine the study of the diversity and biological fluidity of human skeletons with that of their intersubjectivity and materiality. … For those archaeologists who 'switch off' at the thought of theories of the body, sex, gender and age, this book is an essential read. It is a valuable excursion into how archaeology has conceived and is conceptualising the body as both a biological and a cultural resource. … manages to convey the theoretical association between bodies and objects in a direct, engaging and thought-provoking way.' Antiquity