Interdisciplinary research is a rewarding enterprise, but there are inherent challenges, especially in current anthropological study. Anthropologists investigate questions concerning health, disease, and the life course in past and contemporary societies, necessitating interdisciplinary collaboration. Tackling these 'big picture' questions related to human health-states requires understanding and integrating social, historical, environmental, and biological contexts and uniting qualitative and quantitative data from divergent sources and technologies. The crucial interplay between new technologies and traditional approaches to anthropology necessitates innovative approaches that promote the emergence of new and alternate views.

Foreword by Dr. Charlotte RobertsChapter 1. Introduction: Beyond the bones in physical anthropologyChapter 2. Missing, presumed dead: Deconstructing 'high' infant mortality with new data sets in historic cemetery populationsChapter 3. Direct digital radiographic imaging of archaeological skeletal assemblages: An advantageous technique and the use of the images as a research resourceChapter 4. 'Readmitted under urgent circumstance': Uniting archives and bioarchaeology at the Royal London HospitalChapter 5. Between the lines: Interpreting disparate data in castration studiesChapter 6. Hunting for pathogens: Ancient DNA and the historical recordChapter 7. The use of linguistic data in bioarchaeological research: An example from the American SouthwestChapter 8. The present informs the past: Incorporating modern clinical data into paleopathological analyses of metabolic bone diseaseChapter 9. Uniting perception and reality in human nutrition: Integration of qualitative and quantitative data to understand consumptionChapter 10. Conclusions and Future Directions