Aviva Cormier Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology

I'm a bioarchaeologist, examining human culture, behavior, and society through human skeletal remains and their archaeological or historical contexts.

In particular, I focus on individuals with physical differences—those whose bodies do not conform to our notions of a normal body or to the normal of the society being studied. I pay particular attention to the lived experiences of these individuals, how they might have navigated their physical and social environments, and how they might have self-identified or been identified by their community.

By studying how these individuals might have navigated the social construction of disability in their socio-cultural context, we can learn more about the intersections between individual experiences, disability, and culture today.

I recently published my research in the International Journal of Paleopathology, illuminating the life course experiences of those affected by Rare Disease in the past and the community that interacted with them.

I recently joined the Phaleron Bioarchaeological Project to address questions of disease, marginalization, and violence seen in the contextualized bioarchaeological analysis and interpretation of the Phaleron cemetery (700-480 BCE) in Athens, Greece.