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Gather among the living to learn how lessons are taught by the dead.
Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Stories in Our Bones,” an introduction to the field of bioarchaeology and what it tells us about life and death in the past, with Jordan Wilson, bioarchaeologist, skeletal biologist, and postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at Georgetown University.
Join Dr. Jordan Wilson of Georgetown University to dig into the field of bioarchaeology, a science that combines knowledge of human skeletal anatomy with that of past cultures and treatment of the body after death.
Covering bioarchaeology’s history, she’ll describe how researchers first realized that skeletons could be every bit as important to our understanding of the past as artifacts displayed in museums. She’ll also discuss how early research on human skeletal remains unfortunately became intertwined with research in eugenics.
She also will give you an understanding of bioarchaeologists’ methods, teaching you how they determine the age, biological sex, and ancestry of the deceased from their bones. You’ll learn how they identify various traumatic injuries, from broken arms to scimitar cuts, as well as evidence of repetitive actions to gain insight into daily activities. Past health problems are identifiable from the scars left on bones by illnesses such as rickets, scurvy, tuberculosis, and anemia.
We’ll examine some famous bioarchaeology cases and look at what movies get wrong about mummies and the field of archaeology in general. We’ll also look at how human remains research is used for good, by identifying the missing, solving cold cases, and supporting tribal sovereignty.
Among the questions she’ll tackle: What’s the oldest murder mystery ever solved? (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Part of a skeleton in a bioarchaeology lab. (Photo by Andreacise / Wikimedia Commons.)
