Kristrina Shuler

Dr. Shuler has been active in bioanthropological research in the Caribbean for over ten years, exploring the biological consequences of enslavement during the African Diaspora.  Her ongoing research focuses on health, nutrition, and quality of life for enslaved Africans who lived at Newton Plantation, a large sugar plantation in Barbados, West Indies, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Caribbean sugar plantations have long been documented as the most brutal conditions of slavery, and Shuler’s work offers the first large-scale systemic bioarchaeological study of health and nutrition from Barbados.  Shuler indentified previously undocumented incidences of genetic diseases, high rates of activity-related stressors, and wide-spread generalized infection at the site.  She collected new data in support of earlier studies that demonstrated poor dental health and low life expectancy at the site, supporting archival records of rampant acute epidemics, malnourishment, and high rates of localized chronic infections in the West Indian sugar workers.  Shuler is currently completing research into the relationship of rare genetic defects in the population for evidence of social relations, identity, and population movement.  In addition to Caribbean research, Dr. Shuler previously examined the health and social statuses of sixteenth-century Maya children in the archaeological record through a collaborative project at the site of Tipu in west-central Belize.  In addition to ongoing explorations of the political economy of health and slavery, Shuler is currently completing a project examining the role of sex differences in the distribution of dental enamel defects among Native American agriculturalists during the Mississippian period in the southeastern United States.  Dr. Shuler teaches Introduction to Four-Field Anthropology, Introduction to Physical Anthropology, the History of Anthropological Theory, and Medical Anthropology.