A review by ergative
Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone by Brian Switek

informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

 I enjoyed this, but I would have liked more focus on the science, and less focus on the cultural practices surrounding bones. That's not so much a criticism of the execution of this book--indeed, in their acknowledgements, the author explicitly thanks their editor for telling them to look beyond the bones themselves and explore their relation with society. So it was a considered decision. I just wasn't looking for a book about the sociological practices of bone storage. The bits about the evolution of skeletons, skeletons of early humans, and bone pathologies were much more what I was looking for when I picked up the book. The bits about repatriation of remains to indigenous groups were great, if you're interested in that, but they weren't why I was reading the book.

I should mention that the author takes a firm social justice angle in their narrative. For example, they're careful to distinguish between biological sex, societal gender, and what they call osteological sex; and when they discusses repatriation they use the indigenous labels for particular sets of remains rather than western scientist labels---e.g., 'The Ancient One' instead of 'Kennewick Man'. I appreciate this very much. They seems like a good person. But I also think that their care in expressing these values in paleontology was a little too careful for the flow of the book. They could have made their point about osteological sex in two paragraphs, rather than two pages, for example. In general, there's a slightly self-conscious sense of the narration, in which it seems like they're trying to justify their whole approach to science writing explicitly to the reader.

That sort of transparency has its place--and indeed, I see from other reviews that some readers really, really valued it. But for me it slowed things down. I wanted to learn more about how the evolution of fins was responsible for vertebrates having two arms and two legs.