Description

Class Summary

How did people live thousands of years ago, and how have we changed since then? Anthropologists use a suite of tools to examine human skeletal remains to uncover who a person was and what they did in life. Teeth preserve better than any other body part and can inform us of the biology and culture of people in the past. In this class, Dr. Bailey will illustrate how anthropologists use dental remains to learn about how ancient people lived and their ancestry, sex, age at death, diet, health, and stress.

About the Instructor

Shara Bailey, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, Center for the Study of Human Origins, at New York University. Dr. Bailey’s research focuses on using teeth to answer questions about human evolution. She has extensively researched Neanderthals and modern human origins, including the earliest modern humans from Europe and Africa. She has collected human dental data from around the world. Her work has been featured on NPR, The History Channel, National Geographic, and PBS/Nova.