From the earliest hunters, through the advent of domestication to the most recent outbreak of swine flu, animals and humans have had a long and complex relationship. Anthropology and archaeology (more specifically the disciplines of zooarchaeology and paleopathology) provide a key temporal framework for the exploration and understanding of this relationship and the wide range of questions that are encompassed by it. Paleopathological studies in ancient human and nonhuman species can be broadly defined as the study of past health, disease and injury, through the analysis of calcified tissue, primarily bones and teeth. However, compared to human paleopathology, animal paleopathology has received little or no serious attention within the wider fields of archaeology and even zooarchaeology. The reasons for this are varied (and discussed in more detail below), but are principally related to the more complex, intensive taphonomic processes that animal bone assemblages often undergo compared to human remains. As we hope this brief chapter will highlight, the study of animal paleopathology has the potential to add a great deal of information to our understanding of the past. Whilst perhaps the most obvious area of study relates to the spread and management of human diseases, this is just the "tip of the iceberg".
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