Introduction

This volume was largely written during the pandemic which forced upon us the realization that disease affects age, gender, social, ethnic, and even religious groups in varying degrees. The papers explore the relationship between health and inequality in the ancient Greek world which holds an iconic, but increasingly also contested status. In this volume, we would like to argue that bioarchaeology enriches and diversifies the study of the ancient world, as it enables us to study the people outside the urban elites, and gives us insights into the life and death of women, infants, enslaved people or rural communities. The papers integrate the study of human remains with archaeological data and historical sources, combine different data sets and methods, explore different aspects of the (bio)archaeological evidence and different facets of personal identities, study variation across space and reconstruct change through time, are open to methodological advancements and theoretical reflection, integrate different disciplinary traditions that cross the sciences and the humanities. We hope that this approach demonstrates the potential of bioarchaeology to reveal and explain inequalities in the past, and to contribute to modern-day reflection and debate.