AnthroBiology Podcast
The AnthroBiology Podcast sits down with biological anthropologists once or twice a month to learn about what they do and why it's rad. Want to know more about our evolutionary past? Or what your bones say about you? Maybe chimps are more your speed? If it's anthropology and it's about humans, we'll cover it. Learn more at anthrobiology.com
Episodes
Dr. Christiane Baigent of Colorado Mesa University runs the Forensic Investigation Resource Station (FIRS), which is the highest body farm in the world. We talk about how bodies decompose at high altitude and how it can differ from decomp at lower altitude. Dr. Baigent also shares some of the behind-the-scenes of running a body farm.
Recomm...
Dr. Raquel Fleskes of Dartmouth joins the show to talk about her work using ancient DNA to uncover the past in the Tidewater and South Carolina. Most people think about ancient DNA being used for, well, ancient skeletons, but ancient DNA can also be used in more recent contexts to illuminate the near past. We also chatted about ways to make ancient DNA work more accessible to descendent communities.
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Dr. Andrew Best of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts joined the show to talk about sweat -- what it is, when we do it, how we vary, and why it makes humans different from most other animals.
Recommendations
Ron Romano of Spirits Alive (a non-profit dedicated to preserving Eastern Cemetery and its history) joins the show to talk about gravestone symbolism, mortuary practices, cemetery organization and social status, and the evolution of gravestone creation in Eastern Cemetery of Portland, ME.
Cemeteries reveal a lot about the people who made them -- how they think about ...
Dr. Wakefield (Northeast College) and Dr. Neidich (University of Missouri) joined the show to discuss their research on death in early New York mental health institutions and how it differed from the populations around them. Along the way, we talk about the history of mental health institutions in the United States and how differences in the amount and causes of death ca...
Dr. Brian Villmoare of the University of Nevada - Las Vegas shares how his team found teeth in Ethiopia and what those teeth might mean in terms of who was around when in the evolutionary record.
Recommendations
Keri Porter, a PhD candidate at Notre Dame University, joins the show to discuss their research on patterns of violence in a Bronze Age urban center in the Southern Levant. They focus on cranial trauma and what it can reveal about humans attempting to live together along with what it might reveal about who suffers violence. They also share some excellent recommendations for how to think about grad school, whet...
Dr. Maria Nieves-Cólon and Jamie Zolik join the show to discuss their ancient DNA research in San Luis de Cañete and what it can reveal about the historical population of the town specifically and the African diaspora in South America generally. They share some of the exciting ways they've forged a partnership with the community in order to carry out the work as ethically as possible.
Dr. Eric Shattuck of Florida State University joins the show to discuss his research on sickness behavior. He wants to know how humans tend to act when they get sick and why they act that way.
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Summary
Dr. Erin Blankenship-Sefczek of Creighton University joins the show to discuss her research examining the connection between developmental stress and accessory cusps in teeth. Her work focuses on the placement and appearance of extra cusps that occur with greater frequency among individuals who have suffered stress during key dev...
Dr. Samantha Yaussy of James Madison University joins the show to discuss her research on the how sex, socioeconomic status, and developmental stress and the intersectionality therein might interact to affect health outcomes in the past via the lens of frailty in skeletal remains primarily from medieval London.
In this episode, we talked about the skeletal markers o...
Dr. Habiba Chirchir of the Ohio State University joins the show to discuss her research into the skeletal gracilization of modern humans. She's trying to understand when and why our skeletons became less robust, and whether self-domestication may have played a role.
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Note: Apparently I got Dmitry Belyaye...
Dr. David Orton of the University of York joins the show to discuss how he uses zooarchaeology (the study of animal remains in archaeological contexts) to understand the how rat and human populations interacted and affected each other over time in Europe. He gets into the spread of rats, the plague, using ancient DNA and isotopic analysis to analyze rats, and what rats can tell us about historic events.
Dr. Henry Erlich, Researcher Emeritus at Benioff UCSF Children's Hospital, joins the show to discuss his book, Genetic Reconstruction of the Past: DNA Analysis in Forensics and Human Evolution. We chatted about what it was like to pioneer PCR tests along with how PCR testing works, its applications (including medicine, understanding human evolution, and forensics), and some of the ethical dilemmas around DNA testing more generally.
...Dr. Christopher Schmitt of Boston University joins the show to talk about how he uses life history theory and epigenetics as a lens for his work with vervets and woolly monkeys. We also chatted about the highs of fieldwork, along with understanding how identity can affect an individual's experience of the field.
Books, articles, and media mentioned in t...
Dr. Kate Clancy of Illinois State University Urbana-Champaign joins the show to talk about her book, Period: The Real Story of Menstruation. We touch on what periods are, why humans might menstruate, factors that affect menstruation, the study of women's health in general, and a few things to keep in when doing research.
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Dr. Rebecca Gilmour of Mount Royal University talks about bones, their mechanics, and how we can use both to understand humans' lives in the past -- especially around her main focus of disability and care in ancient Rome.
Books, articles, and media mentioned in this episode + helpful sites and articles:
Dr. Jesse Goliath of Mississippi State University joins the show to talk about forensic anthropology, including how he ended up in forensic anthropology and how he developed the Mississippi Repository for Missing and Unidentified Persons. We also talk about the complicated relationship between race and forensic anthropology, along with the importance of bringing diverse perspectives to the field.
Books,...
Dr. Christine Drea of Duke University joined the show to talk about mechanisms of female dominance, which is when females of a species are more dominant in groups than males. Dr. Drea looks at how genetics, hormones, and social dynamics interact with each other to result in female dominance in hyenas, meerkats, and lemurs.
Content warning: We talk about animal genit...
Dr. Lauren Butaric of University of Florida joined the show to talk about sinuses - what they are, why we have them, how they can be used in forensic contexts, and what they can tell us about people.
I personally love these anatomy-based discussions. It's just so exciting to do a deep dive into these dark cavities.
Here are some of the articles I found helpful while...
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