The second emphasis in the lab is a lifecourse approach to understand skeletal morphology, that recognizes the cumulative nature of biosocial influences over the lifetime as crucial to unraveling the social lives of past people.

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Current research questions are centered on understanding the importance of the cumulative nature of key life history events (such as early growth, puberty, pregnancy and lactation, menopause and senescence) and their socio-cultural counterparts (childhood, adolescence, motherhood, and aging) on the human skeleton. Two of our current active projects Italy (from the archaeological sites Villamagna (with co-PIs Patrick Beauchesne, U Michigan, and Caroline Goodson, Cambridge U) and the Pieve di Pava (with collaborators from the University of Pisa), investigate the role of early growth and development on bone maintenance, mechanics and health. Both of these projects are collaborative with international/US colleagues, involving doctoral dissertation (Kinkopf) and undergraduate students. Another collaborative and dissertation project (Trombley) examines early developmental health outcomes in two medieval archaeological samples from the city of Santarém, Portugal in order to examine the intersection of early life experience with aspects of changing inequality, religious and and burial practice and health, and the collaborative project with the Pima County Corner and dissertation project (Diaz) on health, early life experience and violence in migrants along the US Border

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image: copyright Sabrina Agarwal, linear enamel hypoplasia (medieval, Italy).