University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Faculty Member, Department of Anthropology

Chair, Dept. of Anthropology

About

Research:  On the home page of my website this quote has been at the bottom (at least since 2000).  This is my raison d’etra and I really believe in this statement:
"Anthropology is the only discipline that can access evidence
about the entire human experience on this planet."
Mike Schiffer wrote this back in 1999, and whenever I give talks, particularly to groups who may not understand the value and benefits to society of the study of ancient human remains, I start with this quote and demonstrate the many ways that this is true.  In my own research on health and diet in ancient populations living in arid environments such as the American Southwest, northern Mexico, Egypt and Arabia, I am driven by the following questions:  What are the strategies for survival in marginal and challenging environments?  Who is at risk for early death or high rates of sickness?  How do resources like water and food factor into community survival?  Is there differential access to resources by some members of the community?  How is this manifested and what is the impact? 
My research focus is on the reconstruction of health with an emphasis on patterns of mortality and morbidity, with special focus (these days) on violence and social inequality. Work in this area resulted in an co-edited volume (Troubled Times: Evidence for Violence and Warfare in the Past, with D. Frayer, Gordon and Breach, 1997) and a co-authored book (Harmony and Discord: Bioarchaeology of the La Plata Valley, with N. Akins, A. Goodman and A. Swedlund, Museum of New Mexico Press, 2002).

Both the causes and consequences of disease and early death need to be examined from a number of perspectives to capture the variable and nuanced ways that it intersects with other behaviors and cultural patterns. What makes anthropology so important in the world today is that we know poor health and disease are, in almost every manifestation, related to ideology, inequality, and power.  Poor health is often shorthand for dominance, a proxy for social status, or related to differential access to resources. By its very nature, it is embedded with meaning at the level of biology (damage to corporeal bodies and neurological processes) and culture (producing individual, household, community, and inter-community reactions). It is a flashpoint for pain and disability that can be physical, mental, and collective.

With the support of a Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant and Heinz Foundation Award, I am conducting field and lab work in Mexico and the Southwest to examine the cultural and behavioral implications of non-lethal head trauma in pre-Columbian populations. I am becoming convinced that non-lethal violence plays an important role in local and regional politics.  Using forensic and medical techniques, violence against women (children and men as well) in the form of blunt force trauma of the cranium is being analyzed to understand the possible effects of neurological damage. I recently co-authored a chapter for a book on alternatives to violence in the ancient Southwest with Bradley Crenshaw (a neuropathologist) on the long lasting negative neurological implications of non-lethal head wounds in ancient populations.

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