University of South Carolina

Faculty Member, Anthropology

About

I am a biological anthropologist with interests in human osteology, paleodemography, paleoepidemiology, and infectious and epidemic diseases. My research examines the factors that affected risks of death in past populations.  Currently, I am studying the mortality patterns and consequences of medieval plague, including the Black Death of 1347-1351, using large skeletal samples from Europe.  I am particularly interested in how age, sex, and health status affect an individual’s risk of death during epidemics as devastating as the Black Death, how and why those risks change over time, and how disease epidemics affected demographic characteristics in past human populations.  I am also interested in the identity and molecular evolution of the causative agent of medieval plague, and, more generally, the coevolution between humans and pathogens.