Reading List/ Bibliography on Commingled and Fragmentary Human Skeletal Remains

There are also three key books you need to pick up:

For my Masters research I worked extensively with commingled and fragmentary human and faunal skeletal remains. From this experience, and my subsequent work on publishing that data, I have come up with these key sources that I am providing here as a recommendation for all interested in reading up more on this subject, the analysis of such remains, and the affects taphonomy has on them. This is not an exhaustive list, but if you start with this list and follow the bibliographies, you'll easily find the rest.


Byrd JE, Adams BJ. 2003. Osteometric sorting of commingled human remains. Journal of forensic sciences 48: 717–724.

Dobney K, Rielly K. 1988. A method for recording archaeological animal bones: the use of diagnostic zones. Circaea 5: 79–96.

Golda SD. 2015. Intrinsic properties of bone as predictors of differential survivorship, PhD Thesis, University of Missouri–Columbia

Kendell A, Willey P. 2014. Crow Creek bone bed commingling: relationship between bone mineral density and minimum number of individuals and its effect on paleodemographic analyses. In Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains. Springer; 85–104.

Knüsel CJ, Outram AK. 2004. Fragmentation: the zonation method applied to fragmented human remains from archaeological and forensic contexts. Environmental Archaeology 9: 85–98.

Konigsberg LW, Adams BJ. 2014. Estimating the number of individuals represented by commingled human remains: A critical evaluation of methods. In Commingled Human Remains. Elsevier; 193–220.

Lambacher N, Gerdau-Radonic K, Bonthorne E, Valle de Tarazaga Montero FJ. 2016. Evaluating three methods to estimate the number of individuals from a commingled context. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.008

Mack JE, Waterman AJ, Racila AM, Artz JA, Lillios KT. 2015. Applying Zooarchaeological Methods to Interpret Mortuary Behaviour and Taphonomy in Commingled Burials: The Case Study of the Late Neolithic Site of Bolores, Portugal. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology

Nikita E, Karligkioti A, Lee H, Marklein K, Moutafi I. 2019. Excavation and study of commingled human skeletal remains. Guide no 2

Osterholtz AJ. 2016. Bodies in Motion: Identity and Migration in Cyprus During the Bronze Age. In Theoretical Approaches to Analysis and Interpretation of Commingled Human Remains, Osterholtz AJ (ed). Springer International Publishing: Cham; 31–46. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-22554-8_3

Osterholtz AJ. 2019. Advances in Documentation of Commingled and Fragmentary Remains. Advances in Archaeological Practice 7: 77–86.

Osterholtz AJ, Baustian KM, Martin DL, Potts DT. 2014. Commingled human skeletal assemblages: Integrative techniques in determination of the MNI/MNE. In Commingled and Disarticulated Human Remains. Springer; 35–50.

Roksandic M, Haglund WD, Sorg MH. 2002. Position of skeletal remains as a key to understanding mortuary behavior. Advances in forensic taphonomy: method, theory, and archaeological perspectives : 99–117.

Schaefer M. 2014. A practical method for detecting commingled remains using epiphyseal union. In Commingled Human Remains. Elsevier; 123–144.

Sussman E. 2017. Comparing Methodologies for Documenting Commingled and Fragmentary Human Remains, PhD Thesis, East Carolina University