Mindy Pitre

Mindy Pitre (Associate Professor and Chair, Ph.D. University of Alberta, Canada) is a bioarchaeologist who studies human skeletal remains from archaeological sites to explore the lived experience in the past. Her research focuses on understanding the presence and impact of disease, especially the experiences of women, children, and other marginalized individuals. She has excavated and studied human skeletons in Canada, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Sudan, and Syria. She is Assistant Editor of the journal Bioarchaeology of the Near East.

Dr. Pitre is the Director of the Death in St. Lawrence County Project (DSLC), which identifies, documents, excavates, and analyzes unmarked and marked historical graves across the region. She works with archaeologists, local historians, governmental agencies, students, and other stakeholders to document and preserve the lives of past community members. She has worked at the St. Lawrence County Poorhouse Cemetery in Canton, the Old Burial Ground in Heuvelton, and a historic site in LeRay. Her research has resulted in various presentations, opportunities for student involvement, and publications including the discovery of one of the first archaeological cases of vitamin D deficiency rickets in the Americas. She was awarded a New York State Historic Preservation Award for good ethical archaeological stewardship.

She also works as a bioarchaeologist on the Aswan Kom-Ombo Archaeological Project (AKAP) which investigates Egyptian and Nubian interactions during the Predynastic Period (5500–3100 BCE) near Egypt’s southern border. As a member of the project, she oversees the excavation, documentation, analysis, and curation of human skeletal remains. Her research has resulted in two major peer-reviewed papers in the International Journal of Paleopathology, which document some of the world’s earliest known archaeological examples of scurvy and rheumatoid arthritis. These findings have been profiled by major media outlets including Forbes, National Geographic, Live Science, and ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine. Her research was also featured among Egypt’s 10 Archaeological Finds in 2016.

Dr. Pitre also collaborates on the Tell Leilan Archaeology Project, based at Yale University. As the project’s bioarchaeologist, Dr. Pitre curates and studies human skeletal remains excavated at the site to investigate the lived experiences, health, and deaths of its inhabitants. Working with members of the Agricultural Origins of Urban Civilization Project, she has examined stable isotopes in skeletal remains from Tell Leilan and other archaeological sites across Mesopotamia to investigate dietary patterns in the region. This research was published in Nature Plants.

Dr. Pitre teaches biological anthropology courses such as Human Origins, Dealing with the Dead, Plagues and Peoples, and Forensic Anthropology. In the classroom she believes it is important to initiate students into the field of biological anthropology by exposing them to research and providing opportunities to apply what they learn in the classroom, laboratory, and field. Students in her courses participate in a variety of hands-on activities including mock crime scene investigations, field excavations, decomposition experiments, and experimental archaeology sessions.