Noted anthropologist to speak at Cal U.
Dr. Douglas W. Owsley, a renowned anthropologist, will present a free lecture at 1 p.m. April 7 in Morgan Hall at California University of Pennsylvania.
Owsley, division head for physical anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., will speak about “Three Decades of Identification: Advances in Civil War Bioarchaeology.”
One of Owsley’s recent projects included analysis and identification of individuals whose remains were recovered from within the Civil War submarine H.L. Hunley.
He will discuss how the use of skeletal analysis, DNA analysis and historical research helps put remains into cultural context.
Owsley, who earned a doctorate in physical anthropology at the University of Tennessee, conducts extensive research on history and prehistoric populations from North America. These include the remains of 17th-century colonists, Civil War soldiers and ancient Americans, such as the nearly 9,000-year-old Kennewick Man.
Highlights of his work at Jamestown, Va., and Historic St. Mary’s City, a museum site in Maryland, were featured in an exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History titled “Written in Bone: Forensic Files of the 17th-Century Chesapeake.”