Dr Victoria Gibbon will present the Department of Archaeology seminar with a talk entitled, "Forensic Anthropology & Bioarchaeology: disentangle terminology used in discourse and practice". 

In this presentation, Biological anthropology is a broad area of study and the difference in the terminology and the core sub-disciplines will be discussed. The misuse of terminology is causing problems for me in the Province with both archaeologists, levels of government and community engaged science. As part of the discussion I will provide examples and preliminary results from research coming from my lab in these areas of research.  

Bio:

Victoria is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology in the Department of Human Biology, UCT. She obtained her PhD in Biological Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand developing a novel method of molecular sex determination from bone. Her research focus is using the skeleton as a proxy to better understand past and present South Africans in response to environmental adaptation and genetic admixture. Additionally, with her background in genetics she bridges a gap between the natural and social sciences in anthropological genetic studies, this includes her Mseleni Joint Disease research, a rare disease found only in South Africa. Through her skeletal and molecular knowledge, her research has expanded to include studies relevant to Forensic Anthropology, studying terrestrial decomposition and preliminary research on molecular degradation in the marine environment using porcine models. As service to community and country through the UCT Forensic Anthropology Cape Town service provider she directly assists the police and pathologists in active cases of missing and murdered people through the identification of human remains.