The lives of kings, poets, authors, criminals and celebrities are a perpetual fascination in the media and popular culture, and for decades anthropologists and other scientists have participated in 'post-mortem dissections' of the lives of historical figures. In this field of biohistory, researchers have identified and analyzed these figures' bodies using technologies such as DNA fingerprinting, biochemical assays, and skeletal biology. This book brings together biohistorical case studies for the first time, and considers the role of the anthropologist in the writing of historical narratives surrounding the deceased. Contributors theorize biohistory with respect to the sociology of the body, examining the ethical implications of biohistorical work and the diversity of social theoretical perspectives that researchers' work may relate to. The volume defines scales of biohistorical engagement, providing readers with a critical sense of scale and the different paths to 'historical notoriety' that can emerge with respect to human remains.

Presented in the session “Boundary Bodies: Critically Thinking the Body in Contemporary Osteoarchaeology.” The last 10 years have seen an increase in high-profile historical forensic cases in the popular press, an area of investigation called forensic biohistory. This area typically involves effort to positively identify the famous dead (such as the case Richard III), of to characterize matters of facts surrounding famous historical remains (Mozart’s cause of death) or historical events (such as the Donner party and the Mountain Meadows Massacre in the Western United States), forensic biohistory remains undertheorized and under-considered as a locus of investigation in its own right. Such consideration is worthwhile however because forensic biohistory offers a unique opportunity for anthropologists to engage the public. Bodies of the famous dead serve as boundary objects through which various interested parties (including scientists) intersect. This potential is, however, coupled with a unique set of ethical challenges that researches must face because frequently we are asked to serve as arbiters and judges of the validity of narratives surrounding the bodies in question. In the presentation we discuss forensic biohistory as a district area of research and highlight some of the potential opportunities and challenges that define it as a whole.