The Importance of Integrating Social and Biological Anthropology
Dr. Danielle Kurin’s extensive research and experience in anthropological studies have resulted in the publication of academic journal articles, chapters in scholarly volumes and a book, The bioarchaeology of societal collapse and reorganization in ancient Peru. as well as university appointments, fellowships and research grants. Dr. Kurin is an assistant professor of bio-archaeology at the University of California at Santa Barbara where she is highly regarded as an excellent teacher and mentor, with her courses achieving outstanding student ratings.,
Kurin has long been an exponent of integrating social/cultural anthropology, biological anthropology and archaeology into her work. Her work is empirically-based on skeletal and other human remains with attendant morphological, DNA and isotope analyses and carbon-14 dating — but is informed by historical research and artifactual evidence as well. In her book and various publications, Kurin summons evidence of different types to build a picture of historical and pre-historical populations and their activities — from food getting and household living to migration, warfare and health care practices.
Kurin follows the evidence in a manner more like a forensic scientist and cultural detective or investigator. She forms hypotheses about how a population or community might have behaved and then tests those hypotheses against data she and her many collaborators collect. While her work is informed by various theoretical perspectives — giving her clues for what to look for with regard to ecological and environmental change, migration, conflict, and their correlates, she does not start out with a pre-determined theory of social change. She is no strict cultural evolutionist, cultural materialist, ecological determinist, sociobiologist, structuralist or functionalist. Thus her accounts of life in the pre-historic Andes are regarded as credible and factually driven.
Kurin’s findings have concentrated on areas where the bodily remains of ancient peoples show evidence of various social practices — and the beliefs that underlay them. For example, her work on ancient trepanation, or brain surgery, illustrates how warfare, which caused an uptick in skull wounds and injuries, actually prompted people of the period 1000–1400 AD to develop new, innovative forms of treatment, In another example, Kurin has demonstrated how the cranial modification of babies was employed by parents to express communal identity — something akin to the markings of ethnic groups.
