Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoples

Book excerpt: Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoplesoffers clear, accessible explanations of complex methods for observing evolutionary effects in populations. Christopher Stojanowski's intimate knowledge of the historical, archaeological, and skeletal data illuminates the existing narrative of diet, disease, and demography in Spanish Florida and demonstrates how the intracemetery analyses he employs can provide likely explanations for issues where the historical information is either silent or ambiguous. Stojanowski forgoes the traditional broad analysis of Native American populations and instead looks at the physical person who lived in the historic Southeast. What did that person eat? Did he suffer from chronic diseases? With whom did she go to a Spanish church? Where was she buried in death? The answers to these questions allow us to infer much about the lives of mission peoples.