Welcome to the first video of the final module for this course. This module is about osteoarchaeological methods used to reconstruct patterns of mobility and episodes of migration in past peoples. We begin by putting these concepts into a broader context, and discuss why they are important to know. Human migration and mobility have been major topics in archaeology for over a century, often used to explain the spread of new technologies like pottery or agriculture. Yet, until the advent of osteoarchaeological techniques that permit the determination of a person's actual experience of mobility and migration we lacked reliable data about how such changes were spread, that is was it the idea that was passed along through neighbouring groups? Or was it the people who moved and brought with them new ways, or a combination of both. Also, sometimes termed population dynamics, the definitions of mobility and migration have seen quite some debate in archaeology. We will use simple definitions in this module, whereby mobility refers to the transitory movements of people in the course of their everyday lives. And migration refers to the permanent change of residence from one location to another by an individual or a group. People can have many migratory episodes in their lifetime. All individuals and populations have a certain degree of mobility. But the scope and the type can vary quite a bit. So many hunter-gatherer populations have high mobility as they do not have a single permanent settlement in which they live year round rather they may traverse the land on a near daily basis, obtaining the resources they need to survive as they go. Perhaps following a roughly predetermined annual round dictated by the availability of different resources in different places at different times of the year. But other hunter-gatherer groups may have semi-regular, permanent bases that they'll occupy for several weeks or months in order to collect an abundant resource, such as spawning fish, before moving on to another such location. But even populations that are labeled as sedentary, because they live in the same place throughout the year, such as most agriculturists, still move about the geographic area regularly and thus still have mobility. At a more permanent level of movement we have migrations. So there are many reasons why a person or group may migrate and these are as true today as they were in the past. One can migrate in association with certain life history events such as reaching adulthood and moving away from your parents' house. Or getting married and moving away from your childhood home to live with your spouse. The term patrolocality refers to a cultural system whereby the wife moves to live with the husband's family. While the term matrilocality is the opposite, the husband moves to the wife's location. And an individual or family may also migrate in search of better opportunities for themselves or their family in terms of better access to resources, such as land or a better job. These examples concern individual or small groups of people moving. But larger groups of people moving, including the entire group or population, while rarer, no doubt also have occurred in the past and can be due to such factors as leaving an area that's become environmentally degraded for a place that's hoped to be better. Ideas of conquest and territory expansion, escape from such advances warfare and conquest and the forced migration of people in the form of slavery. So with osteoarchaeological methods of mobility and migration reconstruction including long bone morphology, strontium isotope analysis, and ancient DNA, we can first of all gather hard evidence of the type and occurrence of movement patterns. And second of all, based upon these data, consider the factors that motivated people to move, and the consequences For both the migrants and their new societies. Such research is revealing a lot of diversity and complexity of mobility and migration in past populations. On the online forum there are questions asking you about your personal experience of mobility and migration. In regards to mobility, you can think, for example, about how far you travel to school or work. Today, of course, we have all sorts of mechanized means of transportation. But in the past, getting from point A to point B involved walking or utilizing a domesticated animal, such as riding a horse, or being pulled by a dog sled. These behaviours can leave somewhat unique marks on your skeleton that osteoarchaeologists can observe. In regards to migration you can think about if and where you've moved to in your life. What were the reasons for that move? Economic? Social? Safety? In thinking about how fundamental mobility and migration are in our own lives, and the great debates that can arise, for example over issues like immigration, one can understand why osteoarchaeologists are interested in these phenomena in past populations. In this video, we've define the concepts of mobility and migration and discuss some common reasons for their occurrence. We've asked you to think about the importance of such behaviours in modern day populations to help understand why they may have been just as important in the past. And hence why archaeological research into mobility and migration has developed into a major sub field of inquiry. In the next video, we jump right into our first case study, which is about how the size and shape of our long bones, particularly the ones from our leg can be used to reconstruct the mobility of past peoples. See you soon.
