LaurenÌýHosek

  • Assistant Professor
  • (PHD SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY 2020)
Lauren Hosek Headshot
Address

Hale 140

Lauren is a historical bioarchaeologist with interests in osteological approaches to embodied experiences of identity and social change. Broadly, her interests also include skeletal plasticity and the life course, paleopathology, materiality, religion and the body, mortuary archaeology, and bioarchaeological ethics. Her research integrates skeletal analysis with the study of material culture and archival sources to address the interactions between human bodies and their broader social, cultural, and physical environments. She emphasizes community engagement and ethical approaches to bioarchaeological research and osteological collections. Lauren has ongoing projects on atypical burials and Christianization in early medieval Central Europe, infant health and mortuary practices on the Adriatic coast of Italy, and dental health and care in the 19th-century American West.
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Featured Publications:

  • Forthcoming: Lauren R. Hosek, Alanna L. Warner-Smith, and Shannon A. Novak, eds. Doing Historical Bioarchaeology: Tissues and Traces in the Archive.ÌýManuscript in press with University Press of Florida.
  • Warner-Smith, Alanna L., Lauren R. Hosek, Meredith A. B. Ellis. (2026) On Making Descendant Communities: Three Case Studies From Historical Bioarchaeology. American Journal of Biological AnthropologyÌý190 (1): e70255.
  • William T. T. Taylor,…, Lauren Hosek,…, et al. (2025) Early transatlantic movement of horses and donkeys at Jamestown. Science Advances 11 (35).
  • Hosek, Lauren,ÌýRobin James,* and William Taylor. (2024) Tracing Horseback Riding and Transport in the Human Skeleton. Science AdvancesÌý10 (38), eado9774.
  • Hosek, Lauren, Alanna L. Warner-Smith, and Shannon A. Novak. (2021) The Body as (in, and with) Text: Doing Bioarchaeology with Archives. Archaeological Review of Cambridge 36(2):45-68.
  • Hosek, Lauren, Alanna L. Warner-Smith, and Cristina Watson. (2020) The Body Politic and the Citizen’s Mouth: Oral Health and Dental Care in Nineteenth Century Manhattan. Historical ArchaeologyÌý53(4):138-159.
  • Hosek, LaurenÌýand John Robb. (2019) Osteobiography: A Platform for Bioarchaeological Research. Bioarchaeology InternationalÌý3(1):1-15.
  • Hosek, Lauren. (2019) Osteobiography as Microhistory: Writing from the Bones Up. Bioarchaeology International3(1):44-57.
  • Hosek, Lauren. (2019) Variation beyond the Grave: Contextualizing Unusual Burials in Early Medieval Bohemia. In The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Animal & Human Deviant Burials and their Cultural Contexts. Tracy Betsinger, Amy Scott, and Anastasia Tsaliki, eds. University Press of Florida: Gainesville.
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