A Concise Guide to Differential Diagnosis in Palaeopathology is a practical guide to the identification of pathological conditions in human skeletal remains.
This guide serves as an essential first step in differential diagnosis, helping readers identify potential conditions that may have caused observed lesions, enabling them to conduct more targeted and effective research in palaeopathological and clinical literature. The book features an intuitive organisation with chapters arranged by disease aetiology, complemented by clear graphs, detailed figures, and concise bulleted lists highlighting key manifestations for each anatomical area. This format enables readers to access information easily and efficiently, facilitating an initial narrowing down of potential diseases, which can be overwhelming for newcomers to the field of palaeopathology, especially when working with limited resources and under pressing deadlines. By boiling the information down to the key elements, this guide acts as a quick reference and forms a helpful, practical, concise resource for students, teachers, and professionals, for teaching and data collection in the field and in the lab.
A Concise Guide to Differential Diagnosis in Palaeopathology is going to be essential for students in palaeopathology, bioarchaeology, and biological anthropology courses, and for practising anthropologists with varying experience levels seeking to identify unfamiliar pathological conditions in human skeletal remains.
Efthymia Nikita is Associate Professor of Bioarchaeology at the Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center (STARC) of the Cyprus Institute. She studies human skeletal remains in the Mediterranean from prehistoric to medieval contexts, examining health, diet, demography, and other important aspects of life in the past. She has published over 120 scientific articles and book chapters, including the textbook Osteoarchaeology (Elsevier 2017), which received an honorable mention at the Association of American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence. She is co-editor-in-chief of the second edition of Elsevier's Encyclopedia of Archaeology and of the Journal of Archaeological Science. In 2022, she was awarded the Dan David Prize for her contribution to the study of the past.
Mahmoud Mardini is Project Manager for Cultural Heritage at the Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence, Cyprus University of Technology. He completed an MSc in Osteoarchaeology at the University of Sheffield and a PhD in Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture at the Cyprus Institute. He has participated in several excavations in the Eastern Mediterranean and has published 14 research papers on osteoarchaeology and Lebanese archaeology. Moreover, he was Associate Editor for Bioarchaeology at the Society for Archaeological Sciences Bulletin, and contributed to the development of several open-access resources for the promotion of the archaeological sciences in the Eastern Mediterranean.
