Hi everybody, from Wondery welcome to another episode of Tides of History.

Thanks for joining me.

Studying the distant past means making the most of the evidence that's available to

us, whether that's pottery, tiny traces of charcoal, flakes of stone, or even just a

discolored patch of soil.

All of that has the potential to speak to the lives of people who lived many thousands

of years ago, but perhaps our best source of information on these people is their bones.

Not just the DNA that's occasionally preserved within them, but chemical isotopes, patterns

of use and trauma, and much more.

It's all literally embodied in the remains of people who were alive so long ago.

To help us understand more about the human body and prehistory, we've got a fantastic

guest with us here today.

As a bioarchaeologist and human osteologists, two studies human skeletal remains from

archaeological sites, focusing on the late prehistoric period in Europe, in particular the

Copper Age and Iberia.

She received her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2016 and then spent two years as

a fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge.

She's currently an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at Vassar.

Dr. Justbeck, thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

So your specialty is bioarchaeology.

What exactly is bioarchaeology and what can we learn from it?

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