Table Of ContentBioarchaeology and Social Theory
Series Editor: Debra L. Martin
Susan Guise Sheridan
Lesley A. Gregoricka Editors
Purposeful
Pain
The Bioarchaeology of Intentional
Suffering
Bioarchaeology and Social Theory
Series editor
Debra L. Martin
Professor of Anthropology
University of Nevada
Las Vegas, NV, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11976
Susan Guise Sheridan • Lesley A. Gregoricka
Editors
Purposeful Pain
The Bioarchaeology of Intentional Suffering
Editors
Susan Guise Sheridan Lesley A. Gregoricka
Department of Anthropology Department of Sociology, Anthropology,
University of Notre Dame and Social Work
Notre Dame, IN, USA University of South Alabama
Mobile, AL, USA
ISSN 2567-6776 ISSN 2567-6814 (electronic)
Bioarchaeology and Social Theory
ISBN 978-3-030-32180-2 ISBN 978-3-030-32181-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32181-9
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Foreword
This volume will be of great interest to scholars from a number of different disci-
plines. The focus is on purposeful pain, which is a completely unique approach to
thinking about the embodiment of pain that is both self-induced and often culturally
sanctioned. While historians have explored this topic, finding case studies in the
bioarchaeological record has opened wide and expanded the repertoire of questions
that can be asked and answered with richly contextualized bioarchaeological data.
Each chapter in this volume takes on a nuanced and heavily theorized approach to
interpret empirical data derived from human skeletal remains as well as archaeo-
logical, archival, and ethnohistoric sources.
What makes this body of work so unique is that the interpretations and under-
standings are gained through the lens of innovative bioarchaeological data derived
from the analysis of skeletonized remains from diverse cultures and time periods.
The analyses in this volume are biocultural in that culture is not examined at the
expense of biology; both are balanced and thoughtfully addressed. The authors in
the volume, guided by the vision of the coeditors, demonstrate the broader applica-
tions of thinking about self-induced pain for important issues in today’s world.
The case studies are so richly detailed, so carefully laid out, and so engagingly
presented. It is doubtful that any reader will stop with the short but perfectly scored
introduction to the volume. These chapters show in great detail the various ways
that purposeful pain can be utilized by individuals for personal gain or manipulated
by those with political power. Each section of the book and the chapters within sec-
tions all shine a different kind of light on these practices. The first starts with pain
that is endured to meet cultural aesthetics around beauty as well as pain that is
endured in certain sports. Another section focuses on various kinds of rituals per-
formed in order to create certain kinds of identities, to assuage specific perceived
needs, as well as to forward particular kinds of beliefs and ideologies.
A final section of the volume illuminates pain endured as an outcome of social
control or the desire for a higher status. Purposeful pain provides a framework for
making meaning out of a very diverse, tantalizing, and disturbing set of topics such
as Botox injections, corsets, boxing, genuflection, tattoos, incised teeth, natural
birth, drug addiction, head binding, ritualized warfare, and torture. The authors
v
vi Foreword
expertly weave together theory, method, and data to produce compelling interpreta-
tions. And all of these topics from ancient, historic, and contemporary worlds have
broader significance to understanding the interface between the subjective body,
pain, and power and so have relevance to contemporary society as well.
This volume moves bioarchaeology into new methodological and theoretical
areas. The standard arsenal of techniques for reconstructing the lived experiences of
individuals is applied with scientific rigor. Methodologically, skeletal indicators of
trauma, stress, strain, and habitual or coercive postures, along with cultural modifi-
cations of size and shape, all could have resulted in simple descriptive interpreta-
tions of pathologies and anomalies. But the authors in these chapters so fully
integrate the findings within the cultural context provided by a variety of sources
that the true meaning of these changes becomes evident.
Bioarchaeology is having a moment right now as an exciting, innovative, and
relevant subdiscipline of anthropology, and it is experiencing popularity and rele-
vance. Bioarchaeologists featured in this volume are producing a body of scholar-
ship that demonstrates the relevance of this kind of work for not only the unknown
ancient past but also for, in this case, known historical practices. The biocultural
approach encourages the use of multiple lines of evidence, and this produces a more
compelling and nuanced way of understanding human behavior in all of its
complexities.
Debra L. Martin
Bioarchaeology and Social Theory
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA
Contents
1 A Bioarchaeology of Purposeful Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Susan Guise Sheridan and Lesley A. Gregoricka
Part I N o Pain, No Gain: Ideals of Beauty and Success
2 Fashionable But Debilitating Diseases: Tuberculosis Past
and Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Charlotte Roberts
3 Bound to Please: The Shaping of Female Beauty, Gender Theory,
Structural Violence, and Bioarchaeological Investigations . . . . . . . . . 39
Pamela K. Stone
4 Meaningful Play, Meaningful Pain: Learning the Purpose
of Injury in Sport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Gabriel A. Torres Colón and Sharia Smith
Part II R ituals of Pain and Practice
5 Pious Pain: Repetitive Motion Disorders from Excessive
Genuflection at a Byzantine Jerusalem Monastery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Susan Guise Sheridan
6 Therapeutic Tattoos and Ancient Mummies: The Case
of the Iceman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Dario Piombino-Mascali and Lars Krutak
7 Intentionally Modified Teeth Among the Vikings:
Was It Painful? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Caroline Arcini
vii
viii Contents
8 “I Thought I Was Going to Die”: Examining Experiences
of Childbirth Pain Through Bioarchaeological
and Ethnographic Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Vania Smith-Oka, Nicholas J. Nissen, Rebecca Wornhoff,
and Susan Guise Sheridan
9 The Purposeful Pain of Drug Addiction: A Biocultural Approach . . . 177
Daniel H. Lende
Part III The Politics of Pain: Power and Social Control
10 The Politics of Pain: Gaining Status and Maintaining
Order Through Ritual Combat and Warfare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Ryan P. Harrod and Meaghan A. Kincaid
11 Pain as Power: Torture as a Mechanism for Social Control . . . . . . . . 215
Anna Osterholtz
12 Binding, Wrapping, Constricting, and Constraining
the Head: A Consideration of Cranial Vault Modification
and the Pain of Infants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Christina Torres-Rouff
13 Performing Identity and Revealing Structures of Violence
Through Purposeful Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Tiffiny A. Tung
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Contributors
Caroline Arcini Arkeologerna, National Historical Museums, Lund, Sweden
Lesley A. Gregoricka Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work,
University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL, USA
Ryan P. Harrod Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska, Anchorage,
Anchorage, AK, USA
Meaghan A. Kincaid Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska,
Anchorage, Anchorage, AK, USA
Lars Krutak Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, NM, USA
Daniel H. Lende Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida,
Tampa, FL, USA
Nicholas J. Nissen The Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University,
Providence, RI, USA
Vania Smith-Oka Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Notre
Dame, IN, USA
Anna Osterholtz Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures,
Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, USA
Dario Piombino-Mascali Department of Cognitive, Psychological, Educational
and Cultural Studies, University of Messina, Messina, Italy
Charlotte Roberts Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Durham, UK
Susan Guise Sheridan Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame,
Notre Dame, IN, USA
Sharia Smith Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Notre
Dame, IN, USA
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