What does palaeopathology tell us about health and disease in ancient East and Southeast Asian bioarchaeology?

For this episode, Melandri Vlok was interviewed about her work in East and Southeast Asian bioarchaeology. After various projects in the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam and now Mongolia, Melandri has extensive experiences excavating and analyzing human skeletons in a wide variety of contexts. She speaks to us about her PhD project in palaeopathology, the study of ancient disease. What methods are involved in studying health in the past? How can we tell a human skeleton from the past belonged to an individual experiencing disease? What disease patterns differ between different groups in time and space, and what role does climate play in influencing such differences?