












































Bioarchaeology International
Volume 9, Number 2: 87–105
DOI: 10.5744/bi. 2024. 0010

© 2025 University of Florida Press

Using Content and Bibliometric Network Analysis 
to Understand the Development and Study of 
“Violence” in Bioarchaeology
Constanze Schattke,a,b,c Sabine Eggers,a,b and Harald Wilfingc,d

aDepartment of Anthropology, Natural History Museum Vienna, Vienna, Austria
bVienna Doctoral School of Ecology and Evolution (VDSEE), University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
cHuman Evolution and Archaeological Sciences (HEAS) Network, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
dHuman Ecology Research Group, Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna,  
Vienna, Austria

*Correspondence to: Constanze Schattke, Natural History Museum Vienna, Department of Anthropology, 
Burgring 1, 1010 Vienna, Austria

Email: constanze . schattke@nhm - wien . ac . at

ABSTRACT Violence is an interdisciplinary concept subjected to the fluctuations of social and personal perceptions of mo-
rality, ethics, and justice. While its definition therefore proves to be elusive, it may serve as a way to research and 
reconstruct human behavior. This also applies to bioarchaeology, which is dedicated to the study of past societ-
ies through the analysis of human remains. The aim of this article is to analyze the general development, meth-
odological key concepts, studied markers, and potential paradigm changes in the study of violence in 
bioarchaeology. This is done by applying bibliometric tools to selected scientific publications and building on 
previous research analyzing paleopathological literature. The results are then compared to qualitative reviews 
on violence in bioarchaeology to draw conclusions about significance and applicability of bibliometric network 
analysis in the light of the expanding scientific literature. Finally, a future trajectory of the concept of “violence” 
in bioarchaeology is presented.

Keywords: bibliometric analysis; field development; violence

 Gewalt ist ein interdisziplinär konzeptualisiertes Phänomen, das soziokulturellen Schwankungen bezüglich 
zur Auffassung von Moral, Ethik und Gerechtigkeit stark unterworfen ist. Auch wenn sich eine präzise Defini-
tion daher als herausfordernd erweist, ist Gewalt zentraler Untersuchungsgegenstand für die Rekonstruktion 
menschlicher Verhaltensweisen. Dies gilt auch für die Bioarchäologie, die sich der systematischen Erforschung 
vergangener Gesellschaften anhand menschlicher Skelettüberreste widmet. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, die allge-
meine Entwicklung, die methodologischen Schlüsselkonzepte sowie die potenziellen paradigmatischen Trans-
formationen bei der Untersuchung von Gewaltphänomenen in der bioarchäologischen Forschungspraxis zu 
analysieren. Hierzu werden bibliometrische Analysen auf Basis ausgewählter wissenschaftlicher Publikationen 
angewandt, auch aufbauend auf früheren Untersuchungen zur Analyse paläopathologischer Literatur. Die hier 
erzielten Ergebnisse werden mit denen qualitativer Arbeiten über Gewalt in der Bioarchäologie verglichen, um 
Schlussfolgerungen über die Bedeutung und Anwendbarkeit der bibliometrischen Netzwerkanalyse im Hin-
blick auf die wachsende wissenschaftliche Literatur zu ziehen. Abschließend wird ein Ausblick auf die Entwick-
lung des Gewaltbegriffs in der Bioarchäologie gegeben.

Keywords: Gewalt; Trauma; Bioarchäologie; Netzwerkanalyse; Bibliometrie

Received 29 May 2024
Revised 28 April 2025
Accepted 5 June 2025



Violence in Bioarchaeological Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis88

Bioarchaeology primarily focuses on human skeletal 
material and mortuary contexts, as well as other bio-
logical remains in archaeological contexts to address 
questions such as health, lifestyle, diet, and mortality 
of past populations (Buikstra 1977). Through classifi-
cations like age at death and sex estimation, conclu-
sions can be drawn about the demography of a 
population (Berryman et  al. 2013; Roberts 2019). 
Other information open for study and interpretation 
that can be derived from the skeletal record includes 
taphonomic influences, pathological conditions, and 
trauma. The term “trauma” may be considered too 
unspecific, and phrases like “traumatic injuries” are 
preferred in bioarchaeology or when referring to 
skeletal contexts. For the scope of this article, we de-
liberately use a broader term as we intend to cover a 
wider range of types of trauma. The study of trauma 
and violence is a major focus in bioarchaeology 
(Pérez- Flórez and Harrod 2021; Walker 2001). 
Through the nature of injury patterns observed on 
the bone, conclusions may be drawn about the causes 
of injuries related to weapons, and hypotheses re-
garding victimhood or perpetrator behavior may be 
tested. In contrast to the social sciences, violence in 
bioarchaeology is primarily understood as a physical 
force leaving traces on the human body itself (Red-
fern 2014), although it is accepted that interpersonal 
violence “does not occur in isolation from social and 
cultural forces” (Lee 2016:158). However, there are 
also understandings that focus on the body and its 
necropolitical agency. Bioarchaeology is able to ex-
plore the environment of the politically sensitive hu-
man body through time, interpreting changes and 
responses to it through cultural and political shifts 
(Geller and Suri 2014). Skeletal evidence, including 
burial contexts, provides clues for interpretation in 
terms of reconstructing behavior and possible moti-
vations behind it. Particularly in violent contexts, 
this shows how the human body can be affected on a 
deeply personal and individual level (Harrod, Mar-
tin, et al. 2012). Many humanities and other scientific 
disciplines seek to understand and categorize vio-
lence, mainly due to its frequency in the human ex-
perience. Examples are the behavioral sciences, 
sociology, politics, psychology, philosophy, and ar-
chaeology, to name a few (Silverberg and Gray 1992; 
Wahl 2013; Whitehead 2007). Therefore, different and 
field- dependent definitions exist in varying detail 
(Mbembe and Corcoran 2019; Reemtsma 2010; 
Whitehead 2007). Philosophy is particularly well 
suited to the analysis of this topic, as it offers an ob-
jective approach to understanding and examining 
the overarching structures of society and objectively 
deals with analyzing and understanding societal en-
compassing structures. Thomas Hobbes (1588– 1679), 

for example, approached violent behavior such as 
warfare as an integral part of human nature, present 
since prehistory, positioning him contrary to Jean- 
Jacques Rousseau (1712– 1778), who attributed it to the 
emergence of sovereign states (Bachofen 2015). In the 
1960s, the why and how behind what is perceived as 
violence and violent behavior gained new traction in 
the political postwar contexts, with scholars like 
Hannah Arendt (1906– 1975) (Arendt 1970), and on 
postcoloniality by Frantz Fanon (1925– 1961) (Fanon 
2013). Today, philosophers like Jan Philipp Reemtsma 
(1952) even argue that violence is being overanalyzed 
and has become something that has to be under-
stood, prevented, and fought rather than just being 
accepted by society as a part of human nature (Re-
emtsma 2010). While there seems to be no universal 
agreement on how or even if violence can be defined 
and analyzed, it is therefore a concept that is best 
studied using an interdisciplinary approach. The 
study of violence not only encompasses its physical 
aspects but also includes less tangible effects that may 
impact the human body, such as structural and epis-
temic violence (Galtung 1969). The disparities result-
ing in structural violence stem from medical, 
cultural, and economic factors, with capitalist struc-
tures often exacerbating social and political instabili-
ties, leading to disadvantages for out- groups (Farmer 
2004; Springer 2011; Whitehead 2007). This has led to 
“social bioarchaeology” considering archival and his-
torical sources to explain and contextualize human 
remains, focusing on health markers (Agarwal and 
Glencross 2011; Klaus 2012). This does not imply the 
absence of structural violence in the bio archae ol o gi-
cal record; rather, it requires the consideration of 
multiple lines of evidence, introducing greater com-
plexity into the analysis. As scholars creating knowl-
edge, it is important to consider the epistemic 
implications of our research. When generally dealing 
with theoretical concepts of violence, we would 
therefore also like to briefly consider epistemic vio-
lence. It arises from the creation and interpretation of 
knowledge, granting power to those who assert the 
primacy and universality of their knowledge over the 
knowledge systems of marginalized Others. Preva-
lent in scientific culture, epistemic violence dismisses 
but also silences alternative perspectives through as-
sumptions and exclusions (Spivak 1988; Teo 2010). It 
ultimately culminates in the control and interpreta-
tion of knowledge, reflecting a nontangible power dy-
namic in the realm of information. Teo (2010) 
illustrates this by showing how a randomly chosen 
anatomical characteristic, such as ear size, can lead to 
a claim of population superiority.

The scientific literature is growing exponentially, 
with a doubling of literature currently set at every 



Schattke et al. 89

15 years (Fortunato et al. 2018). This development has 
created a new field of study that analyzes the infor-
mation of this output. Bibliometrics refers to the data 
scientific publications create through their metadata, 
such as citation scores, (co)authorships, affiliation 
data, and abstract keywords (Donthu et  al. 2021). 
These huge data sets can then be analyzed using net-
work analysis to relate these metrics to each other 
and to get a deeper understanding of the past, cur-
rent, and potential future developments of the re-
spective field. This can include the detection of the 
currently most cited documents, coauthorship net-
works, as well as research subfields. Bibliometric net-
work analysis can therefore help not only to identify 
key concepts and research trends in science in gen-
eral, but has especially shown what research incen-
tives influence interdisciplinary fields in detail 
(Donthu et  al. 2021; González- Alcaide et  al. 2015; 
Leng and Leng 2021). This offers the chance to quan-
titatively and qualitatively explore the development 
of the study of violence in bioarchaeology using large 
amounts of selected publications.

This article analyzes how violence is studied with 
and through human remains from archaeological 
contexts to understand the current and past research 
approaches to violence in the bio archae ol o gi cal field 
using content and quantitative bibliographical analy-
sis of relevant scientific publications. The documents 
are analyzed using their bibliographical data to map 
the development of study regarding methods, quanti-
tative output, and key concepts. This is followed by a 
focus on their content and a manual analysis of pre-
viously identified key concepts.

Based on previous research and review, it is hy-
pothesized that the bio archae ol o gi cal interest in vio-
lence will continue to grow, sparking research around 
terms such as interpersonal, systemic, and epistemic 
violence (Agarwal and Glencross 2011; Walker 2001). 
It is also hypothesized that there has been a shift to-
ward a more interdisciplinary approach of contextu-
alizing human remains within the framework of 
“violence,” resulting from a general increased influx 
of theoretical concepts and approaches from the so-
cial sciences and humanities into biological anthro-
pology (Accomazzo 2012). Previous bibliometric 
analysis on paleopathological literature has found a 
quantitative dominance of the publication of case 
studies as publication type (Boutin et al. 2022). This 
study picks up from there to apply a similar method-
ology to a body of literature concerned with the study 
of violence in the osteological record. Because there 
is no previous research and data on this type of study, 
it is for now hypothesized that case studies are also 
the focus of research regarding violence, in contrast 
to population analyses. In the end, the results from 

the quantitative review were compared to those of 
qualitative reviews that have been conducted in the 
past, to draw conclusions on their results and simi-
larity. This is done to gain a better understanding of 
the possibilities offered by bibliometric approaches to 
reviews in bioarchaeology, especially for junior schol-
ars and outsiders who are new to the field. This novel 
approach is also necessary in light of the exponential 
growth of scientific literature (Donthu et  al. 2021; 
Fortunato et al. 2018).

Material and Methods

This study did not involve the analysis of human re-
mains; instead, it focused on examining publications 
containing bio archae ol o gi cal content related to vio-
lence. The initial research phase involved acquiring 
scientific articles (Fig. 1). The aim was to use citation 
analysis to identify key documents in the field of bio-
archaeology and the skeletal markers studied here. In 
addition, bibliographic coupling and co- occurrence 
analysis of keywords were applied to identify poten-
tial subfields of research. This will help reconstruct 
the development of the field on a quantitative and 
qualitative basis.

Data collection and search strategies

The data used in this study were extracted from Sco-
pus (https:// www . elsevier . com / solutions / scopus) on 
March  11, 2024. Scopus is a large citation database 
containing 93 million records from more than 25,000 
scientific outlets and publishers.1 The first step of data 
retrieval was to identify relevant scientific outlets 
that would cover the study of human bones in an ar-
chaeological context. These were identified based on 
keywords in their source title (Table  1). This means 
that no bias was created in the selection of publica-
tion outlets, but also that popular scientific outlets 
not specializing in archaeological sciences and with 
broader scopes, such as journals like Nature, Science, 
and PLoS ONE, were not included in the search. 
Then, documents were selected based on the occur-
rence of “violence” in the document’s title, abstract, 
and keywords and the concluding search results 
saved as lists in Scopus. Lastly, the document lists 
were manually cleaned by scanning their content to 
exclude research on other Homo species, exclusively 
recent medicolegal contexts and material culture in-
cluding weapons and fortifications. An exception for 
this was the “forensic” list containing information 

1 https:// www . elsevier . com / products / scopus / content, accessed 
November 27, 2023.

https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus
https://www.elsevier.com/products/scopus/content


Violence in Bioarchaeological Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis90

from publication outlets with “forensic” in their title. 
Here, the number of selected documents was not only 
higher compared to the other outlets but was also 
mostly focusing on present crime or accident cases. 
Therefore, only documents also containing “archae-
ology” and “archaeological” were automatically se-
lected from this list and then manually cleaned using 
the same procedure as explained above.

Retrieved bibliographic information per publica-
tion for this study included author(s), title, abstract, 

keywords, and additional geographic and affiliatory 
data. This way, a total of 434 documents relevant for 
the analysis could be exported as a .csv file from Sco-
pus for further data analysis after merging all lists 
from manual content cleaning.

Classification of publications

All publications included in this database were also 
classified according to their publication type. Here, 

Figure 1. Workflow for the data selection process and network analysis conducted in this research.

Table 1. Steps in retrieving relevant literature for this study using the Scopus Database. The data query consisted of requesting source titles through 
relevant bio archae ol o gi cal keywords and then identifying relevant documents by searching for “violence” in document title, abstract, and keywords.

Source title: Word

Document Title, 
Abstract, Keywords: 
Word

Amount of 
Retrieved 
Publications

Amount of Retrieved 
Publications after Manual 
Content Cleaning

Total Amount of 
Retrieved Publications, 
with Duplicates

Total Amount of 
Retrieved Publications, 
without Duplicates

“Anthropology”

AND “violence”

1,149 84 n = 473 n = 434
“Anthropological” 342 37

“Archaeology” 280 92

“Archaeological” 90 52

“Bioarchaeology” 75 70

“Bio archae ol o gi cal” 5 4

“Forensic” 2,760 14

“Osteoarchaeology” 84 82

“Osteoarchaeological” 0 0

“Paleopathology” 36 33

“Paleopathological” 3 0

“Pathology” 232 3

“Pathological” 3 2



Schattke et al. 91

the categorization approach presented by Boutin 
et al. (2022) in their quantitative analysis of paleop-
athological literature was followed. They examined 
the relevancy of case studies in the paleopathological 
literature by coding publications into types and con-
sequently analyzing their citation frequency. Because 
Scopus does return numerous scientific types of pub-
lications, including whole books, errata, and confer-
ence posters, categories for “Book” and “Other” were 
added to the analysis. The categories were as follows:

 -   Case Studies: The analysis was conducted, 
and results and discussion were presented on 
an individual level, with multiple case stud-
ies being possible within one publication.

 -   Population Analysis: The focus of this anal-
ysis was the quantitative analysis of a  
whole population, including sex or ethnic 
affiliation.

 -   Methods: The development of diagnostic and 
innovative approaches was in focus.

 -   Review/Comments: The general development 
of the field and/or its parts was reviewed, dis-
cussed, and put in context to other concepts.

 -   Book: The entry was referring to a whole 
book or volume with multiple chapters.

 -   Other: No other category applied.

Conclusions will be drawn based on the proposed 
hypothesis that different types of violence are studied 
either on a population level or through an individual 
case report. All publications were classified inde-
pendently by two bio archae ol o gi cal scholars to 
achieve greater consistency in data collection.

Network analysis

All network analyses herein have been conducted us-
ing VOSViewer (Version 1.6.19) with standard algo-
rithm settings for analysis, if not stated otherwise. 
VOSViewer is a software application used to study 
bibliometric data sets, providing visual representa-
tions of bibliometric data as networks (Van Eck and 
Waltman 2010). Generally speaking, network analy-
sis connects items in a data set through links created 
by different types of analyses. These links can repre-
sent bibliographic coupling links between publica-
tions, coauthorship links between researchers, and 
co- occurrence links between keywords. Each link is 
characterized by a strength, denoted by a positive nu-
merical value, indicating the intensity of its connec-
tion. This can signify, for example, the number of 
shared references between two publications, the 
number of coauthored publications by two resear-
chers, or the frequency of co- occurrence of two 

keywords. These networks can then be visualized as a 
map, where items are organized within clusters. 
Items can only appear in one cluster but can also be 
unclustered or excluded in the visualization process 
for an improved visualization. Items can also have 
two numerical attributes: weight and score. Weight is 
a nonnegative value and indicates the “importance” 
of an item; higher weight implies greater importance, 
resulting in a more prominent visualization within 
the map. Scores can represent various numerical 
properties of an item, for example, publication year. 
In VOS Viewer, clusters are sequentially visualized 
through a distinctive color (red, green, blue, yellow, 
purple, light blue, orange, brown). Relevant types of 
analysis for this study are as follows (Van Eck and 
Waltman 2018):

 -   Citation analysis: Citation analysis is a way to 
understand if and how often documents in a 
data set cite each other. A relationship analy-
sis like this can also be done based not only 
on citation but also on the number of occur-
rences of a selected item within a document, 
for example, a keyword.

 -   Coauthorship analysis: Here, we analyzed 
which authors tend to publish together by 
clustering previous publications together by 
authorship. It can help identify collaboration 
dynamics in the field.

 -   Co- occurrence analysis: This analysis counts 
how often items like keywords appear to-
gether in one document. It can help identify 
important “mini- concepts” and research in-
terests within the documents analyzed.

 -   Bibliographic coupling analysis: Here we ana-
lyzed how similar documents are based on 
the references cited in their bibliographic 
body, placing similar research topics and ap-
proaches together.

At first, a general citation analysis of the documents 
of this data set was created to identify current key 
concepts and the general consensus among bioarche-
ologists who research violence in the past, as well as 
to see which documents are cited the most. Based on 
the similarity of the cited literature in the bibliogra-
phy of the publications, the publications were visual-
ized in a network. This means that publications 
presenting similar research approaches or themes are 
clustering together more closely. Ideally, these clus-
ters appear without a lot of overlapping of items to 
allow for the detection of distinct research fields. Re-
garding the potential paradigm shifts in the study of 
violence, the documents were evaluated using co- 
occurrence analysis of keywords. When a change 



Violence in Bioarchaeological Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis92

could be observed in the distribution of keywords 
over time, instead of a continuous occurrence, it was 
assumed that a shift in research trends had occurred 
in the study of violence within bioarchaeology. A 
quantitative analysis of author keywords also re-
vealed the current most prevalent research ap-
proaches. A demographic analysis of authors and 
institutions was performed to highlight the most 
productive scholars and their affiliations. For all net-
work analyses, including names and keywords, ap-
propriate thesauri were applied to account for name 
duplicates, and minimum thresholds for keyword oc-
currences were set for their later display in the net-
work maps. Finally, the results from the quantitative 
bibliometric analysis were also compared with those 
from the previously categorized qualitative, mostly 
cited reviews from within the analyzed data set. This 
is done to see where the strengths, weaknesses, and 
limitations of this quantitative analysis lie.

Results

The purpose of this article is to identify, analyze, and 
report the concepts and methodologies used to inves-
tigate the patterns of violence that have been and are 
being studied through human remains in archaeo-
logical contexts. As Table 1 shows, a total of n = 434 
documents containing the term “violence” in their 

document title, abstract, or keywords published in 
peer- reviewed, English- speaking journals from the 
fields of anthropology, archaeology, bioarchaeology, 
palaeopathology, and forensic journals were identi-
fied. The first publication was published in 1987; the 
last ones were published in 2024 (Fig. 2). The maxi-
mum number of publications occurred in 2012, with 
a publication of n = 42 documents. A total of n = 94 
publication outlets were identified; the one cited the 
most was the International Journal of Osteoarchaeol-
ogy (n = 82).

Before a demographic author and coauthor analy-
sis, a thesaurus— a text file grouping synonyms 
together— was applied to account for duplicates, ab-
breviations, and differences in spellings in country 
and author names, resulting in a total of n = 897 au-
thors with affiliations from n = 57 countries (Table 2). 
Coauthorship analysis was able to connect n = 235 of 
these authors together in 22 clusters, reflecting their 
collaboration dynamics (Fig. 3).

Between the first 10 authors, the most cited docu-
ment in the data set is from an author who did not 
publish the most documents. This deviation in the 
number of documents and citations is also the case 
for other authors. There is a clear dominance of sci-
entific output from U.S.- based affiliations, followed 
by affiliations from Canada and Europe and only a 
little from Australia or South America, where there is 
a dominance from Chile.

Figure 2. Distribution of publication years for documents relevant for this study. The maximum number of n = 42 retrieved documents 
occurred in 2012. The first publications for this data set occurred in 1987. Status: March 11, 2024.



Schattke et al. 93

Classification of publication

The documents were classified according to their 
publication type (Fig.  4). Because Scopus does also 
include references for nonclassical entries such as er-
rata and conference abstracts, some entries could not 

Figure 3. Coauthorship analysis clustering n = 235 out of n = 897 authors together in 22 clusters, visualizing who 
collaborated and published together on the topic of “violence” in the data set.

Table 2. Listing the 10 most prevalent authors in the data set studying 
violence in bioarchaeology through the number of documents and the 
total number of their citations within the data set. Listed are also the 
top 10 countries mentioned in the affiliations. Total number of authors 
n = 897, of countries n = 57.

Author Documents Citations Country
Affiliations  
Mentioned

Tung T. A. 13 596 United States 202

Harrod R. P. 12 348 United Kingdom 76

Martin D. L. 11 334 Spain 29

Redfern R. C. 9 127 Canada 26

Knüsel C. J. 8 103 Germany/ Italy 18

Schulting R. J. 7 127 France 15

Novak M. 6 116 Chile 13

Fibiger L. 6 107 Australia 10

Walker P. L. 5 792 Russia 10
Pérez V. R. 5 147 Portugal 9

be classified into classical means of publications 
(“Other”). 

The most prevalent type of publication was popu-
lation studies (n = 234). Second in frequency were re-
views and comments (n = 93), followed by case studies 
(n = 62). A focus of the discussion is on the reviews 
and their impact on the field (Table 3). The seven doc-
uments listed as “Other” were errata and introduc-
tory chapters to books and journal special issues, 
which did not contain any research information.

Citation analysis: Author interactions  
and studied subfields

To identify key documents in the data set, a citation 
analysis was conducted. The citation analysis con-
nected and clustered n = 347 of 434 documents to-
gether. This is because not all documents are linked 
to each other through citations. The threshold of a 
minimum number of citations of a document was set 
to 0 before the analysis to ensure the best coverage. 
The cluster presents which of the retrieved docu-
ments are currently most cited within the data set in 
2024 (Fig. 5). Proximity and clustering are influenced 
by citation frequencies within the data set. The color 



Violence in Bioarchaeological Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis94

gradient indicates the publication year of the docu-
ment, from oldest (purple) to latest (yellow).

Bibliographic analysis: Identifying research fields

Using bibliographic coupling analysis, the docu-
ments were then analyzed based on similarities in 
their cited references in their bibliographic body 

(Fig. 6). This refers to citing the same or similar doc-
uments. To account for the development of the field 
of violence research in bioarchaeology through time, 
the analysis was conducted in 10- year research 
brackets based on the year of publication, starting 
with the first publication in 1987 (Supplemental Figs. 
S1– S4). In the first two decades, because of the small 
amount of research present at the time, all 

Table 3. Ten most cited articles with review and comment characteristics identified and their number of citations within this data set. Note that 
multiple citations of one reference are possible within a document.

Author(s)/Editor(s) Year of Publication Title Number of Citations

Lovell, N. C. 1997 Trauma Analysis in Paleopathology 474
Walker, P. L. 2001 A Bio archae ol o gi cal Perspective on the History of Violence 415
Lambert, P. M. 2002 The Archaeology of War: A North American Perspective 155
Larsen, C. S. 2002 Bioarchaeology: The Lives and Lifestyles of Past People 132
Martin, D. L., Harrod, R. P. 2015 Bio archae ol o gi cal Contributions to the Study of Violence 121
Larsen, C. S. 1994 In the Wake of Columbus: Native Population Biology in the 

Postcontact Americas
70

Gat, A. 2015 Proving Communal Warfare among Hunter- Gatherers: The 
Quasi- Rousseauan Error

59

Rodríguez- Martín, C. 2006 Identification and Differential Diagnosis of Traumatic Lesions of the 
Skeleton

49

Kissel, M., Kim, N. C. 2019 The Emergence of Human Warfare: Current Perspectives 41
Muller, J. L., Pearlstein, K. E., 
de la Cova, C.

2017 Dissection and Documented Skeletal Collections: Embodiments of 
Legalized Inequality

30Stone, P. K. 2012 Binding Women: Ethnology, Skeletal Deformations, and Violence 
against Women

Figure 4. Distribution of publications included in this bibliometric study according to their classification into study type. A total of n = 434 
publications was manually classified, following a two- eye approach.



Schattke et al. 95

documents were included in cluster visualization, 
even if they did not cite each other and thus did not 
produce any links. For all decades, the threshold of a 
minimum number of citations of a document was set 
to zero before the analysis to ensure the best cover-
age. Mapping was visualized using a cluster- sensitive 
color gradient indicating the belonging to a cluster 
as well as representing the citation quantity of a doc-
ument by size. Note that the cluster color is always 
newly calculated based on the additional references 
and does not continuously represent the same clus-
ters throughout the temporal analysis.

Co- occurrence analysis: Framing and labeling 
through keywords

In addition to the keywords used to retrieve rele-
vant documents for this study, keywords within the 
data were also analyzed (Fig.  7). All author key-
words appearing at least three times in the data set 
were included in the co- occurrence analysis. Before 
the analysis, a thesaurus was applied to account for 
duplicates. Keywords referring to plurals were 
counted as singulars (e.g., “humans” as “human”), 
and other semantic peculiarities and spellings were 

standardized (e.g., “anthropology, physical” was 
counted as “physical anthropology,” “archeology” as 
“archaeology”). Additionally, countries were ex-
cluded because the region of study was not of inter-
est here but rather how violence is studied. For a 
summary of geographic author affiliations, see Ta-
ble 2 instead. Keywords hinting at different ethnici-
ties and regions were, however, kept in the analysis 
(e.g., “Kerma,” “Black”). This resulted in clustering 
n = 85 of 980 author keywords together when a key-
word appeared at least three times in the data set 
(Table 4). The map is presented using an overlay net-
work with a time- sensitive color gradient indicating 
the average publication year. In addition, a network 
density visualization was conducted to account for 
quantity and thus the topical density of these key-
words in the field on a scale from blue to yellow.

Discussion

The bibliometric analysis of the topic of violence in 
bioarcheology on the basis of author and keyword 
analyses yields noteworthy results, which will be dis-
cussed below.

Figure 5. Visualizing an almost four- decade- long network of publications associated with bioarchaeology and violence and 
their authors citing each other in the data set (n = 347), spanning from the first publication in 1987 to the latest in 2024. 
Proximity of and clustering of nodes are influenced by citation frequencies within the data set, while the color gradient denotes 
the publication year of each document from oldest (purple) to latest (yellow).



Violence in Bioarchaeological Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis96

Structuring the field– key concepts  
and subfields

There is a clear dominance of documents affiliated 
with institutions in the United States, with nearly 
three times as many affiliations as in the second- 
highest, the United Kingdom. Author analysis has 
shown that the quantity of published documents in the 
data set studied does not necessarily correspond to the 
authors of the relevant key concepts identified in the 
field (see discussion below). The most cited authors did 
not write the most documents in this data set.

Citation analysis: Highly relevant documents. Today’s 
representation of violence in bioarchaeology has re-
vealed several important key documents (Fig. 5) that 
continue to be relevant since their publication. Central 
to this map are the works of Lovell, Walker, and Di-
etler (Dietler 2010; Lovell 1997; Walker 2001). Lovell 
and Walker represent standards in the development of 
methods and are also reviewing the interpretation of 
violence in the bio archae ol o gi cal record. No less quan-
titatively relevant, however, are also other publications 
generating clusters around them (Lambert 2002; 

Larsen 2002; Martin and Harrod 2015; Müldner and 
Richards 2007; Torres- Rouff 2008; Tung 2012).

Bibliographic coupling: Subfields of research. When 
the documents were clustered based on the similari-
ties in their references, documents similar to the cita-
tion analysis were centralized. A total of eight 
clusters, connecting n = 411 of 434 items to each 
other, suggest the development of eight large and 
small subfields that are partly overlapping and inter-
acting with each other (Fig. 6). In the beginning de-
cade of the selected documents between 1987 and 
1996, very little exchange between research docu-
mented in these publications happened (Supplemen-
tal Fig. S1).

Only between 1997 and 2006 did the first real clus-
ter emerge (Supplemental Fig. S2), showcasing once 
again in its biggest accumulation mainly case studies 
but also reference works that have impacted the field 
until today (e.g., Lambert 2002; Larsen 2002; Lovell 
1997; Walker 2001). The other documents are mostly 
grouped together based on type of trauma and cir-
cumstances (e.g., head trauma in the Pacific region 

Figure 6. Cumulative visualization of documents in the bibliographic coupling analysis. Here, the documents are placed 
based on the similarity of references cited in their bibliography bodies. Clusters are indicated by color.



Schattke et al. 97

possibly associated with cannibalism, trauma in 
Neolithic Europe; Degusta 1999; Orschiedt et  al. 
2003), but also already slowly hinting at studying 
structural violence associated with shifts in societal 
structures and climate change in the next decades 
(Gronenborn 2006c; Hutchinson 1996; Lessa and 
Mendonça De Souza 2004). Additionally, collabora-
tive projects and student– mentor relationships might 
have influenced how papers were cited.

This development of slowly establishing numerous 
bio archae ol o gi cal subfields studying violence contin-
ued between 2007 and 2016, where the field differen-
tiated into seven clusters (depicted as seven different 
colors in Supplemental Fig. S3) that are content- wise 
already closely related to the clusters presented in the 
last evaluated decade. Several centered key concepts 

identified in the citation analysis, such as Tung and 
Dietler, are also emerging as relevant for the field for 
the first time (Dietler 2010; Tung 2012), while others 
are cementing their status as key concepts in this 
continuous representation through time, as already 
indicated by the citation analysis (Lambert 2002; 
Lovell 1997; Tung 2012; Walker 2001). However, this is 
not always the case, as one of the first documents 
studying structural violence in general, and the first 
one in this data set, was not clustered and thus repre-
sented in both the third and fourth final cluster visu-
alization at all (Angel et  al. 1987). Instead, it 
disappears during the development of the field, sug-
gesting a differentiating establishment of new, differ-
ent methods studying structural violence from the 
late eighties until today.

Figure 7. Keyword analysis results of n = 85 author keywords used in publications between 1987 and 2024, showcasing the average publication 
year of the respective keyword on a scale from oldest (purple) to latest (yellow). To see how frequently the most common 30 keywords occur, 
please refer to Table 4.



Violence in Bioarchaeological Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis98

In the most recent decade (Fig.  6), the first ap-
pearing and three largest clusters evolve around 
topics on how to study violence. Within the first red 
cluster, the document with the highest link strength 
is Larsen (2002). Generally, the documents in this 
cluster focus on context- specific studies of violence, 
meaning the “classical” research on how and where 
violence is observed (e.g., Jordana et al. 2009; Kanz 
and Grossschmidt 2006; Müldner and Richards 
2007). This is followed by the green cluster group-
ing around Walker (2001), which also incorporates 
social theory (e.g., Dietler 2010; Gat 2015) and stud-
ies within these theoretical frameworks (e.g., An-
drushko and Verano 2008; Hurlbut 2000). A 
seemingly exclusive focus on structural violence is 
the third blue cluster grouping around Klaus (2012), 
surrounded by research about social inequality and 
gender differences (e.g., Cheung et al. 2017; Harrod, 
Thompson, et  al. 2012; Muñoz- Encinar 2019). The 
fourth and yellow cluster around Lovell (1997) 
shows similar documents grouped together as in 
the red cluster, but an influx of paleopathological 
analysis is visible (e.g., Judd 2002; Jurmain 2001; 
Van der Merwe et al. 2010). Looking at the content 
of the following clusters, they are then grouped to-
gether based on their geographical research focus 
and are located throughout the other clusters, sug-
gesting a high topical overlap with them. This is not 
surprising, as a local research focus requires a con-
textualization within the local archaeological  
record, which would also be reflected in the refer-
ence body.

Keyword co- occurrence: Markers and fields. The con-
tent analysis through author keywords revealed four 
methodological subfields that support the study of 
violence in the archaeological record. These are “bio-
archaeology,” “palaeopathology,” “forensic anthro-
pology,” and analysis through “taphonomy” (Fig. 7). 
There are no time period constrictions, although 
most research was linked to the “Neolithic” and “me-
dieval” times (Table 4). The average publication years 
are more oriented toward the 2010s, hinting at a con-
tinuous use of these keywords since they are calcu-
lated as an average. An exception is the pre- 2000 
keywords “fracture,” “urban,” and the oldest clus-
tered keyword “pathology,” which not only denotes 
its own research field but also represents one of the 
oldest subfields in bioarchaeology (Aufderheide and 
Rodriguez- Martin 1998). Most importantly, however, 
the analysis revealed that bioarchaeology, since its 
beginning, seems to focus on the study of two types 
of violence: interpersonal and structural violence. 
Closely associated with structural violence are 
“women,” “institutionalization,” “inequality,” and 
“osteobiography,” whereas interpersonal violence un-
surprisingly heavily associates with the field of foren-
sic anthropology, “interpersonal violence,” “trauma,” 
and “male”.

Bioarchaeology’s lens on traumatic  
and stressful contexts

Trauma. Physical violence leaving evidence on the 
skeleton may be the most obvious because of its 

Table 4. Keyword analysis results, listing the quantitative representation of n = 980 keywords in the documents that appeared at least three times.

Place Keyword Appearances Place Keyword Appearances

1 Violence 79 16 Medieval 9

2 Trauma 57 17 Sharp Force Trauma 9

3 Bioarchaeology 53 18 Cranial Trauma 9

4 Interpersonal Violence 45 19 Decapitation 8

5 Fracture 25 20 Gender 7

6 Paleopathology 24 21 Blunt Force Trauma 7

7 Warfare 22 22 Identity 7

8 Structural Violence 20 23 Health 6

9 Perimortem Trauma 15 24 Strontium Isotopes 6

10 Injury 14 25 Weapon 6

11 Conflict 12 26 Prehistory 6

12 Neolithic 11 27 Bronze Age 6

13 Taphonomy 10 28 Migration 5

14 Skeletal Trauma 10 29 Scalping 5
15 Forensic Anthropology 9 30 Embodiment 5



Schattke et al. 99

inherent bodily and visible nature. The keyword anal-
ysis showed that the most often researched marker was 
“trauma,” mostly studied through “fracture” and “in-
jury,” just a few ranks below them in terms of fre-
quency. Other words that may refer to this include 
(traumatic) lesions, wounds, and injuries. As explained 
before, however, trauma does not necessarily have to 
manifest itself physically. The more direct and detailed 
keywords studying interpersonal violence (e.g., “de-
capitating,” “scalping”) are becoming gradually more 
abstract when trying to cover the topics of structural 
violence. Here, the surroundings and circumstances of 
potential contexts of structural violence are the focus 
(e.g., “migration,” “health”) and studied through 
context- dependent proxies rather than fractures 
(“strontium isotopes,” “gender”). What markers ex-
actly are being used to study structural violence does 
not become ultimately clear through keyword analy-
sis. Rather, an idea is given of what concepts are being 
included in the study (e.g., “migration,” “health,” but 
also “gender” and “identity”), but no ultimate bio-
archae ol o gi cal markers stand out in the analysis. Past 
research on a seemingly clear bio archae ol o gi cal term 
like “bone remodeling” has already highlighted the 
subjective differences in the reception and meaning of 
scientific terms in bioarchaeology and paleopathology 
(Wei and Cooper 2023).

Stress. As indicated in the temporal and topical 
implications of the co- citation and co- occurrence 
analysis, bioarchaeology focuses on the study of in-
terpersonal and structural violence. Notably, within 
this data set, structural violence is even the study fo-
cus of the first two publications (Fig. 5; Angel et al. 
1987; Kelley and Angel 1987). Because of the clear fo-
cus on interpersonal violence in this data set and a 
lack of data on the markers of structural violence, it 
was zoomed in to the cluster from the citation analy-
sis, focusing on Angel et al. (1987) and subjected to 
further manual content analysis. In it, the health, 
lifestyle, and occupation of a nineteenth- century Free 
Black community in Philadelphia, United States, are 
analyzed. Black people, enslaved people, and contex-
tualization around hospitals continue to be the re-
search focus in this cluster (Atwell 2022; de la Cova 
2012; Halling and Seidemann 2017), but it is also 
studied how other marginalized groups like women 
(Stone 2012) and migrants (Harrod, Thompson, et al. 
2012) were affected by structural violence in the past. 
Documents in this cluster offering general back-
ground and methodology in what markers can be 
studied (Klaus 2012), as well as a more generalized 
conceptual approach (Zuckerman and Crandall 
2019), were published way later than the works by 
Angel et al. in 1987, suggesting a development with-
out referencing these works. Zuckerman and 

Crandall, in particular, offer a thorough background 
review of the influences social theory has had on bio-
archaeology and consequently stress the implemen-
tation of additional models and theories in what has 
previously been labeled “social bioarchaeology” 
(Agarwal and Glencross 2011; Zuckerman and Cran-
dall 2019). Their analysis greatly reflects which skele-
tal markers are associated with health, disease, and 
trauma, but also sex and gender can be studied, as 
well as the social impact(s) they themselves may have 
had on past populations.

The manual cluster content analysis could show 
that structural violence is mostly studied through 
what can best be described as stressors, acting as 
“proxies for resource inequity” (Blevins et al. 2023). 
These are inevitably more complicated than study-
ing the mere absence or presence of healed and un-
healed trauma, and have therefore been represented 
diversely, mainly by lesions associated with certain 
diseases. More common markers researched were 
inflammation, porotic hyperostosis, dental caries, 
and dental enamel defects (Klaus 2012; Zoëga and 
Murphy 2015). However, these markers are nonspe-
cific, appearing as osseous or dental manifestations 
in different conditions. This includes, for example, 
metabolic diseases like vitamin C deficiency and tu-
berculosis (Atwell 2022; Blevins et  al. 2023). The 
presence of syphilis— more diagnostic— was investi-
gated through a combination of bio archae ol o gi cal 
and historical analysis (Atwell 2022). The keyword 
analysis already suggested that the use of osteobiog-
raphies, a (detailed) life history reconstruction 
based on various individual aspects, as reflected 
mainly by bone morphology, but also molecular 
analyses, synthesizes these interdisciplinary data at 
least on an individual level.

Structural violence in bioarchaeology is, therefore, 
as the keyword occurrence had already indicated, 
also considering “social injustices” (Galtung 1969) in 
its approaches when studying human remains. These 
structural disadvantages can result from medical, 
cultural, and economic perspectives, where capitalist 
structures and practices are currently the most prev-
alent, promoting political as well as societal instabili-
ties (Farmer 2004; Springer 2011; Whitehead 2007). 
Stressors or markers of stress take time (months to 
years) to manifest in the skeleton. Physical trauma is 
an indicator of personally experienced violence, and 
stress markers are represented throughout the con-
tinuously present societal marginalization caused by 
structural violence. These markers do not have to be 
necessarily indicative of one specific disease but can 
be general symptoms, as is the case for inflammatory 
reactions. In the herein reviewed documents, some 
diseases and their markers stood out (e.g., syphilis in 



Violence in Bioarchaeological Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis100

women), in their implications on both health and so-
ciety. Additionally, compared to the study of inter-
personal violence, there was an even higher degree of 
interdisciplinarity visible through the implementa-
tion of ideas and concepts, especially from social the-
ory and intersectional feminist studies (Atwell 2022; 
Zuckerman and Crandall 2019). This reveals the 
prevalence of a three- sided approach to study struc-
tural violence affecting past populations, happening 
through bio archae ol o gi cal analysis, provenance re-
search approaches, and historical contextualization 
of the researched human remains.

Prevalent study type of violence in 
bioarchaeology

The most prevalent study type in violence is popula-
tion studies, meaning a focus on quantitative distri-
bution of fracture patterns— or other indicators of 
violence— in the osteological record. This is in strong 
contrast to paleopathology, a neighboring field of 
bioarchaeology that studies pathological changes in 
bones, teeth, and, in special cases, soft tissues and 
hair when dealing with mummies or bog bodies. 
Here, a review of publication types of documents 
published in one journal yielded the prevalent type as 
case studies, highlighting the diagnostic nature of 
paleopathology over its demographic analysis (Bou-
tin et  al. 2022). For this study, it was hypothesized 
that this must be the same case in the study of “vio-
lence” markers, such as fracture patterns or stressors, 
and that the diagnostic distinguishment of perimor-
tem versus postmortem fractures might have yielded 
similar scholarly discourse in the past. Instead, the 
results present an alternative perspective. This might 
be because fracture and injury patterns, the most 
studied markers concerning violence, as revealed in 
this study, can be interpreted with fewer contextual 
data than compared to paleopathological cases. Here, 
the observed pathological markers are mostly disease 
unspecific and gain their diagnostic meaning 
through contextualization with factors such as the 
presence of other pathological markers, malnutri-
tion, or sex. Therefore, especially data- driven case 
studies with a focus on paleopathological method de-
velopment and the identification of diagnostic mark-
ers have a significant impact on academic research 
(Boutin et al. 2022).

Comparison of aspects of qualitative versus 
quantitative literature reviews

The advantage of conducting a network analysis of sci-
entific literature lies in its quantitative approach, repli-
cability, and comparatively faster speed compared to 

qualitative literature. It is easily conducted after setting 
the search parameters, and the development of a field 
can be repeatedly studied through different periods of 
time, taking various formal aspects into account, in-
cluding relevant keywords, authorship, and demo-
graphic author information. This can be best described 
as research metadata, which give information about 
the anchors and geographical placements of the field 
itself. Quantitative research is, therefore, especially 
useful to track interdisciplinary fields that draw from 
different subfields, subsequently developing its meth-
odology. Research patterns and clusters can be de-
tected and analyzed quantitatively, without bias, and 
are thus reproducible. Although this is lacking in the 
qualitative approach, this can be bypassed by subject-
ing identified key concepts to a manual analysis to an-
swer more specific research questions, as done for this 
study. However, the bibliometric analysis does not in-
dicate whether a document was cited frequently due to 
agreement, disagreement or other controversies sur-
rounding its theme. This interpretation needs to be 
done by contextualizing it into the past and present 
scientific discussion.

Selecting keywords for document retrieval intro-
duces bias, especially toward scientific outlets. Non- 
subject- specific documents and potentially revealing 
innovative data patterns were thus potentially 
excluded— however, “violence,” studied across disci-
plines, yielded n = 250,247 entries in Scopus in 
March 2024 when globally searched for in the “doc-
ument title, abstract, keywords” field. Our criteria 
also excluded so- called high- impact journals such 
as Nature, Science, and PLoS ONE. However, previ-
ous research (Boutin et al., 2022) employed a com-
parable approach, focusing solely on one specialized 
paleopathological journal. We also wanted to target 
a range of archaeological journals to gain a deeper 
understanding of violence in bioarchaeology. Addi-
tionally, while the authors’ presumed awareness was 
based on the keyword’s presence, it cannot be ruled 
out that relevant documents were not included be-
cause the corresponding indexing is missing. This is 
also the case even if all search criteria apply, but it 
may still yield documents that ultimately are study-
ing violence “more” compared to other topics. Even 
though Michael Dietler’s (2010) volume, Consump-
tion, Entanglement, and Violence in Ancient Medi-
terranean France, hit all criteria for search and 
inclusion, it must be considered that its content 
mainly deviates from the scope of this study as it 
focuses on materialistic rather than osteological 
studies. And while it shows up with high citation 
scores in the analysis, its position in the clusters also 
indicates a small relatedness to the other documents 
within the data set.



Schattke et al. 101

Two major reviews identified in the bibliometric 
analysis were conducted by Nancy Lovell (1997) and 
Philip Walker (2001), cited a total of n = 474 and n = 
415 times, respectively, as multiple citations of one 
reference are counted within a document. These are 
qualitative reviews by skilled and senior scholars re-
visiting the study of violence on human remains. 
Lovell (1997) reviews the methodological concepts 
necessary to diagnose skeletal fractures for each 
bone in detail. The fracture types, as well as proxi-
mate and ultimate causes of injury, she argues, help 
in the paleopathological analysis and interpretation 
of trauma– connected paleopathology with violence. 
Lovell also focuses on bone development, mechani-
cal properties, and the cause and effect of forces that 
could potentially cause fractures. The presentation 
of this information for each skeletal element is what 
makes Lovell’s review so impactful, demonstrated 
through its central placement in all bibliometric 
analyses conducted herein. In total, she cited 108 
documents stemming from as early as 1910. Four 
years later, Walker (2001) provided an extensive re-
view of not only the history but also the develop-
ment of how human remains are studied in the 
context of violence. Directly asking what bioarchae-
ology has contributed to the understanding of vio-
lent behavior in the past, he illuminates the potential 
of bio archae ol o gi cal research, also drawing on the 
influences and methodologies from other fields like 
history and the social sciences. By proposing ways 
to connect bio archae ol o gi cal methodology and 
highlighting caveats for research, his review gains 
its main strength. In total, Walker references 110 
further documents in his bibliography, providing 
insights into scientific literature published between 
1906 and 2001, the year he published his review, al-
though his first reference for an osteological refer-
ence was Angel’s comparative work on fractures 
from the Neolithic to modern times from 1974 (An-
gel 1974). Patricia Lambert’s review, cited n = 155 
times, and Clark Spencer Larsen’s work (n = 132 
times) address similar opportunities and challenges 
in the study of violence compared to Walker’s, al-
though Lambert puts her scope on North America 
only (Lambert 2002; Larsen 2002).

One major point of critique for qualitative reviews is 
that they might be biased through the authors’ prefer-
ences for picking their own case references (e.g., 
Walker 2001). One advance, however, is their focus on 
the contents. Both Walker and Lovell provide sugges-
tions for markers to study violence, while the author 
keyword co- occurrence in this study only provided di-
rectional hints. Additionally, offering a huge citation 
database, the indexed contents on Scopus are not com-
plete, as the outlets need to fulfill certain criteria to be 

indexed.2 This can also lead to the presence of dupli-
cates. In the data set evaluated, three documents ap-
pear through eight entries. In the first case, two 
documents with the same digital object identifiers 
(DOIs) appear as a journal article as well as a book 
chapter (Frazer 2007a, 2007b). This is similar to the 
second case, where three entries of the same publica-
tion, indexed through different DOIs, appear in differ-
ent outlets (Gronenborn 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). In the 
third case, an introductory book chapter was indexed 
three times in Scopus because of similar reasons (Ar-
mit et al. 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). Because all entries ap-
peared independently and already showed different 
numbers of citations, it was decided to consider all of 
these publications as independent of each other. It is 
not likely to be a mistake by the authors but rather an 
indexing mistake by Scopus wrongly classifying the 
entries multiple times under different publication 
types. That Scopus is not a complete database also be-
comes apparent, for at least three documents could be 
identified that, while following the requirement for 
data selection, are not indexed in Scopus (e.g., Buckley 
2000; Smith 1996; Williamson et al. 2003). Addition-
ally, Martin and Frayer’s volume Troubled Times from 
1997 did not hit any search criteria and was therefore 
not included in the data set, although it is a common 
reference (Martin and Frayer 1997). These are all con-
sistent challenges in bibliometric network analysis, 
which are not exclusive to bioarchaeology. Otherwise, 
it could be shown that the quantitative literature re-
view approach through bibliometric analysis is at least 
equal to the qualitative approach in terms of speed, re-
producibility, and range of topics covered, and it even 
offers advantages. This includes providing visually ap-
pealing networks of quantitative data through a clear 
visualization of complex bibliometric data, including 
more documents than the qualitative reviews observed 
here. This allows for a clear understanding of the influ-
ences of different fields and neighboring disciplines in 
interdisciplinary fields such as violence in bioarchaeol-
ogy, especially through the analysis of cluster contents. 
By referencing databases like Scopus, future research-
ers can reproduce the analysis, thereby eliminating the 
possibility of reviewer bias, such as familiarity with 
the already known literature and specific approaches 
and methods. Last but not least, bibliometric analysis 
tools make scientific fields more accessible to outsiders 
and young scientists, helping them understand cur-
rent and past concepts and providing more experi-
enced scholars with an overview of their development, 
including potential input from previously unknown 
literature. To avoid the pitfalls mentioned above in the 

2 https:// www . elsevier . com / products / scopus / content # 3 
- selection - standards, accessed November 7, 2024.

https://www.elsevier.com/products/scopus/content#3-selection-standards
https://www.elsevier.com/products/scopus/content#3-selection-standards


Violence in Bioarchaeological Literature: A Bibliometric Analysis102

retrieval of literature, it is recommended to define the 
search criteria precisely but with a certain openness. 
Initially, a selection of publication outlets and types 
should be made. Subsequently, a search for keywords 
may be conducted, with a certain degree of flexibility 
in terms of precision advised to aim for potentially 
previously unknown topics. The results can then be re-
flected upon with the help of a qualitative addition of 
further publications, such as previous reviews, as done 
here. This is the optimal way to provide a multifaceted 
picture of the current state of debate in scientific fields.

Violence in Bioarchaeology— Changes and 
Challenges

The historical analysis of violence, briefly mentioned 
in the introduction, has shown that what is consid-
ered violence is constantly changing and evolving, 
depending on societal, cultural, and personal influ-
ences. Contemporary attitudes therefore also affect 
how violence is studied. In this data set, we found a 
high prevalence of author affiliations to the United 
States, suggesting not only a research focus from 
North American universities but also a dominance in 
the methodological development of the field. The 
number of publications studying violence has in-
creased in the past decade, with a focus on analysis at 
the population level (Fig. 2; Fig. 4). While the funda-
mental cornerstones for studying structural violence 
have been set since at least the 1980s, and the first two 
publications in this data set even directly refer to 
studying structural violence (Angel et al. 1987; Kelley 
and Angel 1987), the keyword analysis suggests an in-
crease in this subfield only in the 2010s. This is also 
supported by the bibliographic analysis, which indi-
cates that no cluster specific to the study of structural 
violence has been identified in the past decade. After 
a differentiation between interpersonal violence in 
bioarchaeology and structural violence in the social 
sciences (Accomazzo 2012), the question also remains 
if and how epistemic violence, a violence inherent in 
knowledge and power and proposed by postcolonial 
researchers such as Spivak (1988), will become a fu-
ture bio archae ol o gi cal research subfield. Even more 
abstract than structural violence, it acts through the 
creation and transport of violence through knowl-
edge (e.g., racial categorization promoted by science 
and followed by social discrimination). It is expected 
that in the future, with the rising self- awareness of 
bioarchaeology and especially its contribution to rac-
ist ideologies and the treatment of minorities (Buiks-
tra et  al. 2022; Roberts 2019), it will also look more 
closely at what bioarchaeology contributed to the cre-
ation and establishment of epistemic oppression. The 

collection practices and often colonial contexts in-
volved in the provenance of human remains collec-
tions (Pollock 2023), the centerpiece of many 
bio archae ol o gi cal works, can already be interpreted 
and labeled as epistemic violence. Analyzing how 
epistemic violence is investigated in the bio archae ol-
o gi cal context was only indirectly possible in this 
analysis. It can, however, be thematically situated 
closely to clusters and keywords that deal with or link 
to structural violence. For the future, a continuation 
of the increase in publications regarding the general 
study of violence in the skeletal record is predicted. 
The current global geopolitical tensions are perpetu-
ating, especially the less tangible types of structural 
and likely also epistemic violence.

Conclusion

This work has analyzed how violence has been stud-
ied in bioarchaeology using content and quantitative 
bibliometric network analysis. For one, it accounted 
for how the increasingly growing and fast- paced body 
of scientific literature can be used to quantitatively 
study an interdisciplinary field in a fast and easy way. 
It also showed how bibliometric metadata can be 
used to understand scholarly collaboration and pub-
lication dynamics. The analyses presented here also, 
not surprisingly, showed that studies of violence have 
become interdisciplinary in bioarchaeology. Only a 
broad treatment of this topic can lead to an account 
that is capable of depicting the highly contextualized 
physical, social, and cultural factors and conse-
quences of violence in the bio archae ol o gi cal record. 
In the past, this happened through consistent bio-
archae ol o gi cal methods and without many changes 
in its paradigms. Therefore, the most unforeseen as-
pect to be considered when studying violence in the 
future is the necessity to take the present societal and 
scientific challenges and changes into account while 
adapting them into the bio archae ol o gi cal research 
repertoire. A change of perspective on how and what 
we perceive as violence in our everyday lives could 
thus lead to research on how epistemic violence has 
affected human remains. This is particularly neces-
sary when considering the origins of many osteologi-
cal collections of human remains.

Acknowledgments

C. S. thanks Leo Capari for his support and intro-
duction to the topic of bibliographic network analy-
sis, as well as Paul Klostermann and Sheridan 
Strang for assisting in the manual classification of 



Schattke et al. 103

documents. This article was published Open Access 
with the financial support of the Natural History 
Museum Vienna.

Supplemental Information

Supplemental Figures S1–S4 can be found online.

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