Graduate Student, Archaeology
Saint Mary's University (Canada), Anthropology
Thesis Title: (Working) Profiling the dead: demographic characterisation of mass fatality incidents in the past and the present
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Prof Andrew Chamberlain
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About
In 2008 I graduated summa cum laude with a BA (Hons) in Biological Anthropology and Archaeology fom Saint Mary's University, Canada.
Following my BA, I graduated with Distinction with an MSc in Human Osteology and Funerary Archaeology from the University of Sheffield, England in 2009.
I was most recently been employed at the University of Sheffield, until I began my PhD studies in Autumn 2011.
I am currently a member of the British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, British Association for Human Identification, and the Centre for Criminological Research (University of Sheffield).
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The aim of my PhD project is to apply new theory and methods recently developed in palaeodemography to gain a deeper understanding of mass fatality incidents. Most of our evidence concerning past population structure is obtained from cemeteries representing the time-averaged attritional deaths in local populations, in which deaths occur incrementally and result in normative, individual funerary rites.
However, deaths resulting from catastrophic mortality may also have contributed substantially to mortality in past populations, although the social disruption caused by such events may militate against structured burial of the dead, and as a consequence, deaths from catastrophic mortality are likely to be much less salient in the archaeological record.
Studies using historical demographic data have identified the distinctive demographic signatures of episodes of pandemic disease, natural disasters, and civilian and combatant victims of armed conflict. This research project will build on these findings by recording and analysing demographic data from archaeological examples in order to distinguish the natural and social factors determining mortality profiles in mass fatality events.
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