Chapter 1: Introduction: Towards Refining the Concept of Mobility -- Chapter 2: Long Bone Structural Analyses and the Reconstruction of Past Mobility: A Historical Review -- Chapter 3: Bipedalism and Musculoskeletal Stress Markers: Variation and What it reveals About Adaptation, Environmental Stress, and Reconstructing Activity Patterns -- Chapter 4: Does the Distribution and Variation in Cortical Bone along Lower Limb Diaphyses Reflect Selection for Locomotor Economy? -- Chapter 5: Human Variation in the Periosteal Geometry of the Lower Limb: Signatures of Behaviour among Human Holocene Populations -- Chapter 6: The Importance of Considering Fibular Robusticity when Inferring the Mobility Patterns of Past Populations -- Chapter 7: The Relationship between Femur Shape and Terrestrial Mobility Patterns -- Chapter 8: Activity, Body Shape, and Cross-sectional Geometry of the Femur and Tibia -- Chapter 9: Variation in Mobility and Anatomical Responses in the Late Pleistocene -- Chapter 10: Femoral Diaphyseal Shape and Mobility: An Ontogenetic Perspective -- Chapter 11: The Balance between Burden Carrying, Variable Terrain and Thermoregulatory Pressures in Assessing Morphological Variation -- Chapter 12: Territory Size in Canis lupus: Implications for Neandertal Mobility -- Chapter 13: The Effects of Terrain on Long Bone Robusticity and Cross-sectional Shape in Lower Limb Bones of Bovids, Neandertals, and Upper Paleolithic Modern Humans -- Chapter 14: Linearity in the Real World – An Experimental Assessment of Non-linearity in Terrestrial Locomotion -- Chapter 15 Femoral Mechanics, Mobility, and Finite Element Analysis -- 15 Femoral Mechanics, Mobility, and Finite Element Analysis.-.

For decades, scientists have relied on the concept of mobility in describing lifeways of past and present human populations. However, studies of mobility tend to focus on one aspect of the many factors that define and contribute to it. It is the position of the scientists contributing to this book that mobility needs not be a narrowly defined concept (e.g., distance travelled), but rather should embrace a variety of factors.   Reconstructing Mobility assembles a collection of experts to provide a current account of different approaches in the study of mobility, including traditional, comparative and experimental approaches. The work presented here strives to tease apart environmental effects that transcend traditional categories (e.g., coastal versus inland, mountainous versus level, arboreal versus terrestrial). Since the environment undoubtedly impacts mobility of a wide variety of animals, insights into human mobility can be improved by extending investigations to comparable environmental influences on mobility in other animals in general. Moreover, the book aims to stimulate new theoretical perspectives that adopt a holistic view of the interaction between intrinsic (i.e. skeletal) and extrinsic (i.e. environmental) factors influencing differential expression of mobility. Such an integrative approach, when coupled with a new emphasis on mobility as types of activities rather than activity levels, offers fresh, insightful perspectives on mobility and how it might affect the musculoskeletal system.   In pursuing these aims, the editors have assembled contributions from a diverse collection of researchers. In each chapter, contributors explicitly define the concept of mobility as it relates to their particular research questions. Exciting results from non-primate animal models and experimental studies, as well as more traditional approaches to studies of human mobility, are featured. We believe the breadth of this volume will foster a synergy between several different approaches that ultimately will help advance knowledge about the role of mobility in human evolution.