Alaska News

Alaska's real life 'Bones' scientist puzzles out violence in ancient societies

University of Alaska Assistant Professor Ryan Harrod is a bioarchaeologist, a specialty within the field of physical anthropology. His work includes a lot of forensic anthropology.

Like the fictional character Dr. Temperance Brennan from the TV drama "Bones," he's sometimes called upon to closely study a skeleton to determine what happened to a person who died, or how they had lived. Unlike the TV character, Harrod is generally dealing with much older remains. But the work -- analyzing trauma and coming up with a profile of the deceased and how they died -- is largely the same.

His work as a bioarchaeologist takes information presented by human remains a step further, and uses the clues they contain to "aid in reconstructing the biology and culture of past populations."

Violence is an aspect of culture that Harrod has studied worldwide. Initially, he focused on past cultures, but now he's starting to look at how that research fits into modern day society's experience with and understanding of violence.

On Monday, Harrod will give a talk at the UAA bookstore exploring how his research and that of others in his field are helping scientists gain a new understanding of violence against women.

"The goal of my research is to take an anthropological perspective that looks both cross culturally and through time. The value of this is that it offers a way to explain the complexity of intimate partner violence," Harrod said.

In his work, Harrod is able to identify the patterns of violence that occur in a culture, and how that violence may differ from other cultures. Through deeper analysis across cultures and through time, he hopes to get at the "why" of violence. And this is where his work may pique the interest of Alaskans. If we know the "why," we should be able to attack the root causes of violence.

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Across the globe, domestic violence and child abuse are uncommon until a community shifts in a significant way, usually through the introduction of large scale agriculture and urbanization, Harrod said. Population density increases, and more families begin to live "behind closed doors" instead of in communal situations.

"When you have social inequalities and disparities, rates of violence go up," Harrod said. "When society is transformed, whether it is their choice to transform or others', that's where you see things shifting."

In the distant past, violence may have been seen between groups, such as warring factions or when one community raids another.

The development of large, permanent communities usually brings more interpersonal violence. He analyzes injury patterns. Evidence of domestic violence can be see in the facial region of the body, usually in a pattern different from trauma caused by something else.

"Research conducted on women admitted to hospitals with injuries as a result of abuse indicates that there is a significantly higher rate of trauma involving the face compared to other parts of the body," Harrod explained. "One study found that nearly 70 percent off all injuries among women who were victims of intimate partner violence involved the facial region of the head. Given the fragile structure of the bones of the face, they are easily broken. The importance of this finding is that fractures even after they heal can be identified on skeletal remains."

Another measurement concerns the quality of life people experience in a community. For example, an ancient culture may bury some women with care and others with casual attention. In one case Harrod studied, the carefully buried women were revealed to belong to the same ethnic origin as the community in which they died. Women treated with less care were outsiders, likely slaves brought in from other regions.

Harrod's work has focused on the origin and evolution of violence, and he has done research on ancient populations around the world. His early work looked at ancient groups and violence, but he's branched out to examine contemporary groups as well.

Many of the aspects of violence that can be studied in the ancient world (trauma to the head and body, types of implements used, social context of the violence) can also be used to understand violence in more contemporary settings.

Such data can help societies determine how to prevent violence, using interventions that make the most sense in that particular culture.

Learn more about how archaeological research contributes to our understanding of violence against women 5 to 7 p.m. Monday during Harrod's lecture at the UAA bookstore.

Jill Burke

Jill Burke is a former writer and columnist for Alaska Dispatch News.

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