|
Dr. Jennifer Piehl Dr. Jennifer Piehl received her BA with honors in Anthropology and German from the University of California at Berkeley, and her Doctorate in Anthropology from Tulane University in New Orleans. She specializes in the archaeology and human osteology of the ancient Maya, and has conducted research in Honduras, Guatemala and Belize. Her investigation of community integration, social inequality, and ancient patterns of health and disease constitutes a multidisciplinary focus combining social, biological and medical sciences. Dr. Piehl has also worked on the ancient populations of West Texas, as the first Physical Anthropologist and Archaeologist on the staff of the Center for Big Bend Studies at Sul Ross State University. This research, like her research on Mesoamerican populations, combines study of mortuary behaviors, paleopathology, ethnic identity and social stratification. Such investigations analyze the indicators of health and cultural practices that differentiate subgroups of individuals within and between prehistoric communities. Dr. Piehl’s research incorporates the use of and contribution to the literature in medical pathologies, aging processes in humans, anthropology, and isotopic chemical analysis. She has direct experience in archaeological fieldwork, computer mapping and GPS applications, laboratory analysis of forensic and prehistoric skeletal materials, the study of disease in prehistoric populations, and stable isotope analysis. She is currently the Director of the El Peru-Waka’ Archaeological Project, working in Guatemala’s Laguna del Tigre National Park, and the Bioarchaeologist for the Baking Pot project under the Institute of Archaeology in Belize. |