Virtual PAG XXIX Online Program Opens in a New Window
Presidential Research Professor and Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma, USA
January 14 - 8:45 AM
Town & Country Ballroom
Talk Title: "Reconstructing Our Ancient Microbial Self"
Christina Warinner is a biological anthropologist and archaeologist whose research focuses on the evolutionary and ecological relationships between humans, their diets, and their resident microbes (microbiomes) in both modern and ancient populations. Combining archaeological fieldwork with genomic and proteomic research, she investigates dental calculus, a mineralized form of dental plaque that preserves for tens of thousands of years and serves as a unique reservoir of bacterial, dietary, and host health information.
Christina earned her PhD in Anthropology at Harvard University in 2010 and conducted postdoctoral research on ancient biomolecules at the Centre for Evolutionary Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Zurich. She joined the Anthropology Department faculty at the University of Oklahoma in 2014. She is a 2012 TED Fellow, and her TED talks on ancient human diets and genetic analyses of dental calculus have been viewed more than 1,000,000 times. She is an author of the book Veiled Brightness: A History of Ancient Maya Color, and her new edited volume, Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany, is expected Fall 2014.
