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If we can define archaeology as a science which is trying to reconstruct past peoples lives based on their material remains, than we could say that bioarchaeology is the science which is trying to reconstruct past conditions and life quality based on human remains analyses.

Bio-archaeology can teach us a lot about human persistence and endurance in hostile and food less environments. We can learn about survival of human communities in difficult political, economic or climate times trough history. That is valuable knowledge worth keeping.

 Until a few decades ago, archaeologists used to ignore human remains founded on archaeological sites. They thought that such remains don’t offer any relevant information.

On prehistoric site in Colorado (1989) one of the American archaeologists said to the reporters: “What do we need human bones for? We already know they are Indians.” 

In 1975 Noël Hume wrote: “Burials on historical sites mostly are a big hassle…If circumstances aren’t extreme, I suggest covering them with dirt as soon as possible so we can forget that we ever seen them.”  

On burial sites with urns containing burned human remains often situation was that the burned bones would be coldly disposed and urns carefully stored. This bones contained unique information about burned individuals buried on this site. Irreplaceable knowledge was lost because of ignorance. Archaeological main objective was to determine the age of some material remain rather than the age of some disease.

First documents of human body functions have been found on ancient Egyptian papyruses. Fascination with human body was always focused on recognition and treatment of various diseases. Considering that, the first anthropological analyses which began in 19th century came out from osteology and anatomic researches. Those researches went mostly in two directions:

The first one was the recognition of changes on human bones caused by diseases like tuberculosis, leprosy or syphilis. Accurate identification of these diseases on precise dated archaeological sites gives us useful data about the age of certain disease and its way of spreading. The second direction came out of forensic and anthropological analyses.

The development of modern bioarchaeology we know today began in seventies when four important factors started to act together:

1. Development and general acceptance of reliable and standard methods for sex and age determination based on bones.
2. Increased availability of large and precise dated archaeological collections of bones.
3. Development of multi-variant statistical methods and its application in bioarchaeological analyses.
4. Shift of anthropological analyses from one individual to all population.

The result of this factors synergy was start of studying human remains in archaeological and ecological context in which they have been discovered. Thanks to these changes, bone materials from archaeological sites became part of archaeological materials and history resources which are necessary to study if we want to understand our past better.