Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Anatomical Dissection at a Nineteenth-Century Army Hospital in San Francisco

An archaeological site that tells a story of structuralviolence in medical researchIn 2010, a pit containing over 4,000 human skeletalelements was discovered at the site of the former Army hospital at Point San Jose inSan Francisco. Local archaeologists determined that the bones, which were found alongside medical waste artifacts from the hospital, wereremains from anatomical dissections conducted in the 1870s. As no records ofthese dissections exist, this volume turns to historical, archaeological, andbioarchaeological analysis to understand the function of the pit and theidentities of the people represented in it. In these essays, contributors showhow the remains discovered are postmortem manifestations of social inequality, evidencethat nineteenth-century surgical and anatomical research benefited from andperpetuated structural violence against marginalized individuals. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen