Written in Bone

Dr. Doug Owsley, Division Head for Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, will speak about his interdisciplinary work as a forensic anthropologist, assisting state and federal law enforcement agencies, in this free Social Sciences Form lecture (open to the public).

His cases have included Jeffrey Dahmer’s first victim, recovery and identification of Waco Branch Davidian compound members, the 9-11 Pentagon Plane crash, and exhumation and identification of war dead from the former Yugoslavia. His bioarchaeological and osteological research concerns include: ancient American skeletons like Kennewick Man and the peopling of the New World; demography and health of 17th-century colonists; Civil War military remains including the crew of the H.L. Hunley submarine; iron coffin burials; and analyses of activity patterns, health and diseases of American Indian populations from the Plains and Southwest. Source: http://anthropology.si.edu/anthro_staff.htm.

This Petrovich Lecture is co-sponsored by UMBC's Interdisciplinary Studies Council of Majors, Interdisciplinary Studies Program, the Departments of History, Ancient Studies, Anthropology and Sociology, Visual Arts, Biological Sciences, Psychology, the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, and the Honors College.