Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology: Sarah Reedy, Berkshire OLLI

Sarah Reedy speaks with John Krol, of OneEighty Media's Berkshire Business Today, about details of her Berkshire OLLI course, including specifics on the shapes and condition of skeletal remains. Sarah provides examples of a fractured pelvis that occurred shortly before the death of the individual and a bullet that had been lodged into a rib of another person, but had healed over time, showing that the individual lived for a significant period time after the wound.

Sarah Reedy, instructor of Berkshire OLLI's Spring 2015 Course BIOARCHAEOLOGY AND FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY, speaks about how particular characteristics in skeletal remains can tell us more about the everyday lives of our ancestors.

This course will introduce you to the field of osteology, the study of bones. During our six weeks, we will discuss how anthropologists look at skeletal remains to answer questions about who that person was and what he or she may have experienced during life. Age, sex, disease, and injuries can all be seen in skeletal remains. Bioarchaeologists aim to analyze skeletal remains of people from the past to decipher the unknowns of how they lived, whereas forensic anthropologists aim to help solve questions about skeletal remains associated with modern court trials.
In this hands-on course, you will handle the bones of the body and learn how to determine the biological profile of a skeleton: sex, age, ancestry, and stature. You will also look at examples of pathologies and traumas that help us to learn more about the story of that individual. Skeletons are a great source of information about people from the past and often hold the keys to unraveling many mysteries. Both real and replica human bones will be used in this course.

Sarah Reedy, Ph.D. candidate in the Anthropology Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, analyzing the skeletal growth and development patterns of boys and girls from different social classes during the industrial revolution of Europe; research background primarily working with human skeletal remains and focusing on human evolution, reproduction, and growth; undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; worked there with forensic anthropologists at the famed “Body Farm” forensic facility.