Robbins Schug Lab: Research Interests

My research is focused on biological, developmental, cultural, and structural determinants of health in the context of past environmental and climate changes. As a bioarchaeologist, I combine paleoclimate data with evidence from archaeological human skeletal populations to assess human demographic and epidemiological patterns over the past 12,000 years. In addition to the effects of Rapid Climate Change (RCC) events in the Holocene, I have done research on health impacts of broader environmental trends—agricultural production, rapid urbanization, and environmental degradation. My work underscores the profound impacts of diverse historical and sociocultural circumstances on recent human evolution and highlights the importance of social inequality in determining the strategies employed by past people in the face of climate change, the experience of resilience, and the long-term health and demographic consequences of these choices. Here is a recent talk describing this research. 

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My broader research interests include ethics of curation and use of human skeletons in research and teaching (here is a link to a recent talk on this subject at Duke evolutionary Anthropology); human skeletal and dental anatomy, biology, and histology; paleopathology and paleoepidemiology; and forensic anthropological methods. A description of lab facilities and resources can be found here.