A nonfiction book about archaeology told in a funny, easily accessible style. Built on Bones focuses on two major turning points in prehistory: the Neolithic Revolution (the invention of farming, the shift from nomadic hunter-gathering to settled villages with domesticated plants and animals) and the Urban Revolution (the development of cities), and how these changes affected human lives and health. Hassett is a bioarchaeologist - one whose speciality is analyzing human bones – so much of her data is focused on that, but she pulls in all sorts of threads to recreate the complicated world of the past. 

Hassett's vision of prehistoric life is refreshingly balanced. She portrays the pre-Neolithic world as neither brutish and half-starved, from which we were only rescued by progress and technology, nor as an idyllic Eden that stress and pollution has forever destroyed. She's managed to write a book that can serve as an introduction to this historical period and archaeological techniques while also including some of the latest discoveries, which is just incredibly impressive. She also has a great sense of humor; you've got to love a science book that can throw in references to Monty Python, selfie duckface, and the sexual escapades of a typical archaeology dig. 

All around, I can't recommend Built on Bones enough. If you have any remote interest in early history, you should absolutely pick up this book. 

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2597803587

I absolutely adored this book. As a graduate student in archaeology I'm always looking for engaging reads about the discipline that are accessible enough I can share with a friend. This book definitely fits the bill. The prose had humor sprinkled throughout and the footnotes were on point.

I love reading about this stuff--what is underneath the ground buried from prior civilizations by time, floods and or erosion.  The news is full of stories of workmen uncovering a lost tunnel, room, or burial place when excavating a site or demolishing a building.  Hassett explains how all this happens and what under girds our buildings and society.  Highly recommended---I have come across no other book like it.

This is a book about how the decisions we made to live, such as domestication of animals, nutrition, violence, etc.,changed us physically and left their record in the BioArchaeological record.  It’s written with the one of the best inventions of human beings came up with: sarcasm.  Therefore, its awesome.

Brenna starts at the beginning and goes through just about all aspect of humans in their transitions from hunter-gatherer to sedentary civilization or urbanization.  She goes into the how’s and why’s of how we changed.  For example, our shrinking faces.  She delves into the the effects of our diet changing from heavily masticated eating habits such as nuts and seeds to easy “noodle slurping” that changed our need for extra muscle and therefore less bone mass, hence smaller faces.  

Much of this book analyzes nutrition and how it has affected us.  She particularly picks apart the fad of the Paleo diet.  For instance one of the main foundations of the diet is that humans started farming and then started eating cereals.  The fossil record shows signs of humans eating cereals for quite sometime before any agriculture sets in.  She goes into detail about the diet of early humans and how it impacted our bones.  

There is sarcasm and witty jokes all throughout this book.  Mind you, that does not mean she doesn’t cover everything seriously.  While this book covers a large expanse of knowledge about people moving through their journey to urbanize, it places serious issues such as starvation and various forms of violence that we still deal with today, in context.  It is important to understand these issues fully before making decisions that impact people’s lives.  If only leaders, politicians, or other decision makers had more knowledge of Anthropology, perhaps we would have at least a few less problems in the world.   

You don’t need to be a college graduate to read this book.  Its well written and the wit keeps you solidly entertained. We need books like this in the field of Anthropology! Please keep writing books like this! It’s amazing how many people don’t know what Anthropology is . I don’t know how many times I had to explain to college educated people what Anthropology is in the process of job hunting.  It’s a field that, on the most part, naturally lends itself to teaching empathy.  If more books are written by academia that can readily be consumed and enjoyed by the general public rather than for academia alone, we can have better informed conversations and decision making overall.

I'm giving this book 2 stars because there <i>was</i> some interesting information but I was unable to finish the book because I got so frustrated with the author's writing style.

The author provides a ton of information about past societies and what we can learn from them. The subject matter is similar to books by Jared Diamond but the writing style is on a whole other planet entirely. I was ready to throw this book down in disgust by 25% of the way through and actually stopped reading right after the halfway point. The author makes a lot of unnecessary comments throughout the book and includes a zillion footnotes that add nothing of value- are in fact just snarky little comments. I felt that the footnotes etc. where the authors way of rubbing it into her colleagues faces that she could in fact publish whatever the heck she wanted. Ugh, so annoying. 

For example, one footnote reads: "My colleague and former office mate Laura Buck spent several months delighting me with ethnographic evidence for the consumption of reindeer stomach, but inexplicably rejected my suggested article title of 'Reindeer tummies and the Neanderthals who loved them'." Another reads: "Should my old PhD supervisors ever come across this section, I fully expect reports of eminent physical anthropologists spontaneously combusting to rapidly follow." Someone please explain to me how this footnotes add any value to the book.

Overall, I was not pleased with this book. While it might be an interesting read if someone where to take the time to remove all of the snarky comments and footnotes, there are much better texts on this subject available that I would rather spend my time reading. Unless you love sassy comments in serious books, do yourself a favor and skip "Built on Bones".

I received this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Book received from NetGalley.

I ended up really enjoying this book, but after the first chapter, I had to not consider it as a history book but a sociology one.  While it does go into some history of our living in what eventually became cities, it focuses more on why people did it, how living in a city changed our life spans, what discovering agriculture meant to the early ancestors and how it made city living possible while occasionally poking fun at the "paleo" culture we have today.  I did learn a few things about how cities evolved and the people who lived in them and want a copy for my own research shelves.  I'm not sure this book is for everyone.

This was a fascinating look at how humans have evolved from our ancient ancestors to the future of our distant ancestors. All of human kinds history can be found in our bones. This book is simple and understand and should be a must read for those interested in science. I liked it so much I requested my library to purchase it and they did!

I loved this book. Brenna Hassett tells the reader about urbanization of the world using the evidence from bone remains to build the story. On its own, the story is fascinating, but when you add in her incredible sense of humor, this book is impossible to put down. It is not often that I recommend that the reader read the footnotes, but in this case it’s a must. I’m sure I annoyed my wife by reading the footnotes out loud to her. While this book is about science, it is written in plain language and no science background is necessary to enjoy the book. This is one of the best science books I’ve read recently.

This was a very interesting and informative read about trying to understand the present human condition by studying how society structures have changed over time. The author goes into great detail about each phase of evolution  and how scientist gathered the information that inferences were made from. I never realized there were so many areas of scientific study that would pertain to this topic. The author does a great job of providing all the information in a way that even a non scientist,like myself, could understand. Although this text could be used in a college level class, the author's footnotes help to lighten the read.

This is a great book to a general audience interested in archaeology and anthropology. It covers a lot of material in a way that is accessible and humorous.

Brenna Hassett is a bioarchaeologist. If you're like me, and have no idea what that is, it means she studies human bones and remains like teeth found in archaeological sites, looking for clues to understand more about human existence and how it's evolved through the ages.

The book focuses especially on cities, or our earliest iterations of urban developments. Hassett asks at the beginning:

If cities are so great, why are they full of things that kill us? Urban life serves up a terrifying cocktail of the most dangerous things known to our species - disease, inequality and, of course, other people. It's not unreasonable to ask: why have we made cities this way?

This should hook you in, because it's absolutely a valid question that I think has crossed the mind of anyone who's been crammed on an overfull subway car at rush hour, stopped in the tunnel without even a quiver of forward momentum, silently pleading with whatever god you believe in to get you home to an overpriced outer-borough apartment that eats up well over 50% of your income where you can eat an off-brand microwave dinner and fall asleep to the sound of your neighbor's TV through paper-thin walls while some breed of insect takes over your apartment in the night, regardless of your cleaning aptitude. Why do we do it? Why does anyone put themselves through an existence like this?

... If we look at the lives and deaths of people through all the different experimental stages of urban life, we can start to see some very interesting patterns in these urban pioneers...It's through the skeletal remains of the city dwellers of the past that the question this book asks can be answered, and it matters to everyone alive today: why have cities made us this way?

Factors she examines include our domestication and use of animals, treatment of women and children, diet and nutrition habits and patterns, and susceptibility to illnesses.

The absolute highlight of the book is Hassett's excellent sense of humor, which she weaves to great effect throughout her scientific observations and analyses. Introducing a chapter on the importance of major historical illnesses to her work and research: "Like many bioarchaeologists, I have a fondness for plagues."
So she's always able to catch your attention and draw it into whatever subject she's using to make her case. At the same time, she's so intelligently able to distill the bones of her work into helpful explanations for the lay reader. From the same example of why bioarchaeology needs a good plague every now and then:
"Calamities such as plague that knock everyone into the grave with one indiscriminate sweep are one of the few chances bioarchaeologists have to overcome something known as the Osteological Paradox, a term coined by researcher James Wood and colleagues to cover the very awkward point that, in studying past lives, the evidence bioarchaeologists actually have to go on are past deaths. Without access to modern medical care, the greatest potential for mortality comes in old age and in infancy and early childhood. Death is less of a risk for adolescents and reproductive-age adults, until something comes along to level those odds."

Interesting. That wouldn't ever really have occurred to me. She also has a witty way to condense some of the anthropological quirks of modern life: "Humans have manipulated thousands of years of animal evolution to make a tastier chicken, a milkier cow and a wolf you can let play with your children."
The subject matter did have the potential for dryness without her frequent tongue-in-cheek observations and hilarious footnotes. Her writing is very much geared to the layperson who just happens to be interested in those questions of why we gravitate to cities and what they do to us, so there's no prior insider knowledge of her scientific field necessary.

All the same, I did lose interest here and there. She's an unbelievably gifted writer and her subject is undeniably interesting, but I felt the cases explored sometimes strayed from the original questions I wanted answers to. Although I learned a lot, I think far more from this book than I did in a Physical Anthropology course in college, my attention wandered and I didn't think that the questions were ever satisfactorily answered. 

She admits to about as much herself. That doesn't mean the attempt to answer them isn't both educational and wildly entertaining. As she puts it: "I've suggested that history is a liar and bioarchaeology a more devoted servant of the truth, but the reality is that we can only investigate what we can find."

But what she has found, and especially coupled with her unique, self-deprecating, completely charming narrative voice makes for an overall fascinating read.

I just could not get into this book. It was not what I expected. I found my attention easily diverted while trying to read this book.

Hassett, an archaeologist, looks at the way our evolution from hunter gatherers to farmers to urban dwellers has changed us, physically. Using human bones,  from the some of the oldest civilizations on earth, to the industrial revolution, she shows how plagues, wars, diet and physical activity have changed us. This is a fascinating look at our evolution as human beings that will appeal to both professionals and laymen