The Ohio State University Department of Anthropology

Nick Passalacqua, associate professor of anthropology, discusses how anthropologists recover and analyze skeletal remains to build biological profiles including age, s*x, stature, and ancestry. He contrasts real methods with those of TV dramas (such as Bones), noting the field relies on careful measurement and collaboration rather than flashy technology. Ethics remain central, guiding respectful treatment of the dead and their families. Ultimately, forensic anthropology serves a humanitarian mission: returning individuals to their communities. The program at Ohio State is expanding rapidly and training the next generation of professionals.

Check out our website to listen to the episode!
https://anthropology.osu.edu/news/nick-passalacqua-makes-no-bones-about-anthropologys-value

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows how culture and local norms help small farming communities manage forests sustainably. The study reflects more than a decade of work by Associate Professor of Anthropology Sean Downey, with support from an NSF CAREER award, and finds that social norms in small-scale societies can help communities manage forests sustainably. In other words, the forest is not simply being cleared; it is being managed through local knowledge, labor sharing, and ecological feedback.

The work brings together ethnographic fieldwork, mathematical modeling, remote sensing, and social theory. That mix made it possible to connect what farmers do on the ground with the large-scale patterns visible from above, and to test a social-ecological explanation against real landscapes.

The project brought together an interdisciplinary team with expertise in anthropology, remote sensing, mathematics, physics, and ecology, as well as undergraduate contributors, reflecting the department’s commitment to excellence in student mentoring and interdisciplinary research. Together, the team helped connect social life in farming communities with large-scale patterns in forest landscapes.

The study matters not only for communities using swidden today and policy designed to combat climate change, but also for understanding early societies known only through the archaeological record. By showing how local rules and ecological feedback can organize land use without centralized control, it offers a framework for thinking about the persistence of swidden across the Holocene.

The paper, “Adaptive self-organization of global swidden forests,” was led by Sean S. Downey, Associate Professor of Anthropology. He is Core Faculty in the OSU Sustainability Institute and affiliated with the OSU Translational Data Analytics Institute.

Check out the paper here:
https://lnkd.in/gaQZbMhF

Associate Professor Sean Downey (Department of Anthropology) has been selected as a Writing Resident at the [Paris Institute for Advanced Study (Paris IAS)] one of Europe's most prestigious centers for advanced scholarly inquiry. The fellowships are by invitation only and awarded through a competitive review by the Institute's Editorial Fellows and Scientific Advisory Board — they bring together a highly selective group of researchers from across the world to produce high-impact scholarly work in residence in Paris.

During his residency, Dr. Downey will complete an authoritative synthesis of more than a decade of empirical and theoretical research on swidden agriculture — a practice long stigmatized by the pejorative label "slash-and-burn." Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with indigenous communities in Southern Belize and complex systems theory, the work reframes swidden as a socioecological system whose resilience and vulnerability can be explained through adaptive self-organization, while critically reassessing long-standing assumptions that have shaped scientific and policy debates on traditional land use.

The fellowship reflects the kind of internationally recognized scholarship that distinguishes Ohio State's faculty. By synthesizing insights from anthropology, ecology, and complexity science into a work aimed at both academic and policy audiences, Dr. Downey's residency exemplifies the Department of Anthropology's commitment to empirically grounded, theoretically innovative, and publicly engaged research.

A study co-authored with Scott Maddux (University of North Texas Health Science Center), Robert Franciscus (University of Iowa), Anastasiya Kharlamova and Lyudmila Trut (Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences), and Habiba Chirchir (The Ohio State University) was presented with preliminary work on Russian silver foxes. This work is highlighted in the American Association for Anatomy's recent newsletter. Images included are the surface rendering of the proximal femur and the distribution of bone density, with warm colors indicating higher bone density and cool colors indicating lower bone density.
Read more about the research here:
https://anatomy.org/ANATOMY/News-Journals/Press-Releases/Below-the-Skull.aspx?_zs=brICI1&_zl=AkP58&shem=rimspwouoe

A team of scientists that includes four OSU anthropologists - Mackie O’Hara, Emma Lagan, Debbie Guatelli-Steinberg, and Scott McGraw - published a paper in the prestigious journal Nature showing that the durability of tooth enamel—the toughest substance in our bodies—depends heavily on the messy alignment of its microscopic crystals, which evolved in response to what our ancestors ate. Enamel is made of tiny mineral crystals that bundle together into rods, and the team found that in primates who eat hard, tough foods (like nuts or meat), these crystals are naturally misaligned and angled against each other. This strategic "misorientation" acts as a structural defense mechanism that stops cracks from spreading through the tooth. By examining non-human primate (e.g., sooty mangabeys in the Tai Forest) and hominin (e.g., Paranthropus boisei, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, Homo sapiens) teeth spanning 18 million years, the team discovered that crystal misalignment increased when early humans switched to eating meat, changed again with the birth of agriculture, and rose further with industrial food processing. Ultimately, while human teeth became smaller over time due to cooking making food softer, our enamel crystals adapted to become more misaligned to handle a highly varied, gritty, and flexible modern diet. Here are three figures from the paper.

Check out the paper here:
t.co/fRdC30kY0L

Julian Amedmariam was just awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Scholarship! The scholarship, which is $4500, will support Julian's continued work analyzing interview data from Dr. Nick Kawa's project in Northern California, which looks at how users of compost toilets understand this practice in relation to both their environmental and spiritual values.

Congratulations again Julian!

Newly admitted graduate student Mehrab Hasan won the Patricia Whitten Prize at this year's meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropology for his poster “Home range size and social organization of western Hoolock gibbons in the Lawachara National Park, Bangladesh”.This prize was created in honor of Patricia (Pat) Whitten. Professor Whitten received her PhD from Harvard (1982) and joined the Anthropology faculty at Emory University in 1989. Throughout her career her interests focused on the links between behavior, biology and reproduction.

Congratulations, Mehrab!

Congratulations to Kaita Gurian on receiving the prestigious Albert A. Dahlberg Paper Competition award at the American Association of Biological Anthropologists (AABA) conference!

Presented by the Dental Anthropology Association, this award recognizes the best student paper in dental anthropology. Kaita’s paper “What accentuated striae in tooth enamel reveal about developmental stress in two groups of children in Ohio,” will be published in the Dental Anthropology Journal.

The Dahlberg Prize honors the legacy of Dr. Albert A. Dahlberg, a pioneer in the study of dental morphology and human variation. This achievement highlights outstanding scholarship in understanding human health, development, and evolution through dental evidence.

Congratulations Kaita!

A huge congratulations to Lauren Hayden on being selected as a finalist for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program Research Award to Poland for academic year 2026-2027. The Fulbright Program is an international academic exchange program founded in 1946 to increase mutual understanding and support friendly and peaceful relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Today, the U.S. government oversees an extensive suite of fellowships and scholarships in partnership with more than 160 countries worldwide.

The application process is highly competitive, recognizing academic excellence, leadership, and service. This is an incredible achievement, and we can't wait to see the impact of her research abroad!

A new essential resource in forensic anthropology is on the way! Ethics and Professionalism in Forensic Anthropology (Second Edition) is set to release April 14, offering an updated and timely examination of ethical practice in the field.

Coauthored by our very own Nicholas V. Passalacqua, associate professor and director of the Forensic Anthropology Laboratory, here at The Ohio State University,

The book examines what it means to be a professional forensic anthropologist, addressing real-world challenges such as navigating ethical codes, identifying misconduct, and serving as an expert witness. This updated edition expands discussions on working within medicolegal systems, education and training in the discipline, and the growing use of digital representations of human remains. Through case studies and applied examples, it encourages critical reflection on how practitioners should respond to complex ethical situations.

Pre-orer the book here: https://floridapress.org/9781683405726/ethics-and-professionalism-in-forensic-anthropology-second-edition/