Talking bones

A Field Guide to Joint Disease in Archaeology (Wiley, £29.95, ISBN 0 471 95506 X) by Juliet Rogers and Tony Waldron is a working manual for archaeologists examining bones. Bone specialists often want to trace the cause of an effect seen in a bone – tracking osteoarthritis in a hip back to an occupation when alive of farmer, for example. Impossible, say the authors, in a cautious section on implications and epidemiology.