Twenty years ago Mark Nathan Cohen coedited a collection of essays that set a new standard in using paleopathology to identify trends in health associated with changes in prehistoric technology, economy, demography, and political centralisation. Ancient Health expands and celebrates that work.

Confirming earlier conclusions that human health declined after the adoption of farming and the rise of civilisation, this book greatly enlarges the geographical range of paleopathological studies by including new work from both established and up-and-coming scholars. Moving beyond the western hemisphere and western Eurasia, this collection involves studies from Chile, Peru, Mexico, the United States, Denmark, Britain, Portugal, South Africa, Israel, India, Vietnam, Thailand, China, and Mongolia.

Adding great significance to this volume, the author discusses and successfully rebuts the arguments of the ''osteological paradox'' that long have challenged work in the area of quantitative paleopathology, demonstrating that the ''paradox'' has far less meaning than its proponents argue.