Physical anthropology through the eyes of the scientists

Abstract

Book Review In Bones and Bodies, Alan Morris brings to life the historic narrative of how “the skeletons I study were once the frames of living people” (p. 2) and how “biological information can have no value without understanding the social and cultural context of the people” (p. 2). Morris ploughed through collections of correspondence between early researchers in the field and volumes of literature, and conducted interviews with seminal figures in the fields of physical anthropology, archaeology and palaeontology, among others, to eloquently narrate the contribution of scholars who shaped the physical anthropology landscape in South Africa.