00:00 Dr. Jess Beck, a bioarchaeologist and human osteologist, discusses the field of bioarchaeology and how the study of human skeletal remains can provide insights into aspects of identity, lived experience, and cultural practices in the past.

05:19 Working with human remains is weighty and invokes a sense of respect and responsibility, particularly when dealing with the remains of children and adolescents, prompting consideration of the relationships and experiences of these individuals in the past; through approaches like osteobiography, bioarchaeologists can gain insights into the lived experiences and aspects of the lives of individuals from thousands of years ago, such as the effects of disease or injury, community integration, and societal norms that may not be evident in written texts or other archaeological evidence.

09:57 Ethical responsibilities of scholars who work on human remains include combining respect for the dead with respect for living communities, engaging in collaborative research with descendant communities, and considering the meaningfulness of the research.

14:50 Marochíes is a large-scale enclosure site in southern Spain that was occupied by as many as 3,300 people at once during the Iberian Copper Age, and it is characterized by its massive ditches and unique forms of organization.

19:55 During the Iberian Copper Age, the large-scale enclosure sites in southern Spain, such as Marochíes and Valensina, do not exhibit the level of internal differentiation or hierarchical social structure typically associated with cities, making them unique and interesting examples of experimental community organization during this period.

25:17 During the Iberian Copper Age, there is an increase in population density, movement of settlements, and long-distance exchange, but there is no clear evidence of institutionalized inequality or hierarchical social structure.

30:22 The lack of evidence for elites or hierarchical social structures in the Iberian Copper Age challenges our expectations of how human societies organize themselves, as seen in sites like Maddo Kias and the Indus Valley civilization, where large aggregations of people and new developments occur without straightforward evidence of an elite class, and even though collective burials during this time may not necessarily indicate similar lives or tamp down emerging inequalities, there is not much variation in dietary inequalities among individuals buried collectively, suggesting a lack of pronounced dietary inequalities and highlighting the variability in how humans organize themselves in their societies.

35:14 The presence of non-local individuals, including children, in the mortuary features at Mato Kias suggests that the community had mechanisms for incorporating newcomers into their society, and the repeated revisiting and reburial of remains in mortuary spaces over generations indicates a close and ongoing relationship between the living and the dead.

40:29 The relationship between the living and the dead in certain societies involves a continued circulation of human remains and the incorporation of the dead into the living space, as seen in the deliberate depositions of human remains in places like Iberia.

45:53 The reuse of tombs and burial sites throughout history suggests that these places held significant meaning and were powerful spaces that resonated for long periods of time, even as societal and political organization shifted.

50:42 The persistence of smaller sites and the ability for people to disperse suggests that the lack of emerging elites or hierarchy in Marokies may be due to people having the option to leave, and the end of Marokies should not be seen as a catastrophic fall but rather as people leaving and going elsewhere.

55:18 Around five to ten percent of the population at copper age sites in Spain were non-local, indicating that people were moving and there is evidence of short-term movements that are difficult to capture archaeologically, and Dr. Beck's current work is focused on studying sites in Spain and Transylvania to explore questions of mobility, mining communities, and biocultural implications during the Copper and Bronze Ages.