Lauren Hosek

Lauren is a social bioarchaeologist with interests in skeletal 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, and mortuary archaeology. Her research integrates skeletal analysis with the study of material culture and historical narratives to address the interactions between human bodies and their broader social, cultural, and physical environments. She is currently examining diet and mobility in early medieval Central Europe through the lens of stable isotopes, skeletal dental analysis, and archaeological data.

Selected publications:

• Hosek, Lauren, Alanna Warner-Smith and Cristina Watson. (2020) The Body Politic and the Citizen’s Mouth: Oral Health and Dental Care in Nineteenth Century Manhattan. Historical Archaeology 53(4).
• Hosek, Lauren and John Robb. (2019) Osteobiography: A Platform for Bioarchaeological Research. Bioarchaeology International 3(1):1-15.
• Hosek, Lauren. (2019) Osteobiography as Microhistory: Writing from the Bones Up. Bioarchaeology International 3(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.

Graduate Studies Information

*Professor Hosek is currently accepting Ph.D. applicants​ for Fall 2023