Dr. Ann Stodder Presents Bioarchaeology in New Mexico: State of the Science and the Art
-Event-
Start Date: Oct 15, 2019 - 07:30pm
Location: Albuquerque Museum, 2000 Mountain Road
Anthropologists have studied human remains from archaeological sites in New Mexico for nearly a century and a half, and there is substantial continuity between the earliest studies and those we do today. But the field of bioarchaeology has evolved as the field has become more clearly defined and professionalized. Examples of bioarchaeological studies will be presented to demonstrate the interdisciplinary and multi-scalar nature of current work, and the scope of questions we can explore through the careful accumulation of observations on bones, individuals, communities, and populations of past peoples in New Mexico. Examples of “big data” projects are described, including the NMBIOARCH project, an effort to centralize and systematize the bioarchaeological record of New Mexico. At the other extreme are the osteobiographies of individuals whose stories personalize the past. Some of the challenges facing bioarchaeologists today are considered in the contexts of federal and state legislation, consultation and repatriation, and the range of attitudes among agencies, archaeologists, and descendants towards the study of the dead.
Dr. Stodder is a bioarchaeologist with the Office of Archaeological Studies in the Museum of New Mexico, Adjunct Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department at UNM, and Research Associate in Pacific Archaeology at the Field Museum of Natural History. Her research concerns bioarchaeological data management, paleopathology, human taphonomy, and mortuary archaeology in the US Southwest, as well as Hawaii, Guam, and Papua New Guinea. She contributed chapters on SW bioarchaeology to The Handbook of North American Indians, and The Handbook of Southwest Archaeology, and is the editor of Reanalysis and Reinterpretation in Southwestern Bioarchaeology, and co-editor of The Bioarchaeology of Individuals. Dr. Stodder serves on the Advisory Board of The International Journal of Paleopathologyand is an Associate Editor of Bioarchaeology International.
