Whether it is the binding of shattered bones or the creation of herbal remedies, human agency is a central feature of the healing process. Both archaeological and anthropological research has contributed much to our understanding of the performative aspects of medicine. The papers contained in this volume, based on a session conducted at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Conference, take a multi-disciplinary approach to the topic, addressing such issues as the cultural conception of disease; the impact of gender roles on healing strategies; the possibilities afforded by syncretism; the relationship between material culture and the body; and the role played by the active agency of the sick.

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Early Neolithic Shamans? Performance, Healing and the Power of Skulls at Hambledon Hill, Dorset
• Chapter 2: Before Hippocrates: Healing Practices in Ancient Egypt
• Chapter 3: Who is Performing What and for Whom? The Dedication, Construction and Maintenance of a Healing Shrine in Roman Egypt
• Chapter 4: Disease, Sin and the Walking Dead in Medieval England, c. 1100–1350: A Note on the Documentary and Archaeological Evidence
• Chapter 5: Pilgrimage, Performance and Miracle Cures in the Twelfth-Century Miracula of St Æbbe
• Chapter 6: Gendered Attitudes Towards Physical Tending Amongst the Piously Religious of Late Medieval Sweden
• Chapter 7: The Rattlesnake and the Otter: Anthropology, Gender, and Contraception among the Niitsítapi (Blackfoot) in the 1930s
• Chapter 8: Re-Covering the Hiroshima Maidens
• Chapter 9: Writing Stones and Secret Shrines: An Exploration of the Materialisation of Indigenous and Islamic Belief within West African Spiritual Medicine
• Chapter 10: A Note on the Ethnomedical Universe of the Asante, an Indigenous People in Ghana
• Chapter 11: Spirituality in Knowledge Production and the Practice of Traditional Herbal Medicine among the Yoruba People in Southwest Nigeria