Studying data collected from archaeological human remains is of prime importance in archaeology (bioarchaeology); without humans there would be no other archaeological data because our ancestors created the past that we excavate now.

They made the pottery, domesticated the animals and plants, built the houses, created societies, developed trade and contacts, and changed the landscape.¹ Therefore, exploring the nature of our ancestors' lives before and after agricultural development, and how agriculture impacted on their existence, necessarily needs to consider relevant evidence seen in their remains.

Bioarchaeology is also relevant to understanding the evolution of the human population before urban/city living increasingly became the norm, a continuing and rapid trend we see today.^{[127] [128]} Studies of both past and present hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists show us the advantages and risks to adopting agriculture and leaving the hunter-gatherer way of life behind. Furthermore, there has been, and continues to be, a keen interest in exploring health and dietary changes at the transition to agricul­ture, along with its intensification, up to the present day. For example, a brief keyword search in May 2013 using ‘agriculture' and ‘health' revealed 42,858 citations of modern studies on Europe PubMed Central, and 1264 since 1960 in Social Science and Medicine; and for ancient studies, 707 since 1918 in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 148 since 1991 in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 192 since 1974 in the Journal of Archaeological Science, and 525 since 1960 in Current Anthropology. Research in this area, it is antici­pated, will remain a strong focus in bio-archaeology.

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