Dr. Bethany Turner
After having earned her Ph.D. from Emory University, Dr. Turner happily joined the department in the fall of that same year. Her main research interest is bioarchaeology, the excavation and study of ancient human remains. Specifically, she focses on reconstructing geographic origins and residential mobility, diet, and health among skeletal populations using a combination of osteological analysis and both light and heavy isotope analyses. Her area focus is in the central Andes of South America, a region with a rich and complex history, boasting some of the largest and most complex Precolumbian civilizations in the Americas. Her Ph.D. research centered on the skeletal population from Machu Picchu, Peru; currently, she is involved in ongoing projects just outside of Cuzco, Peru and on the Peruvian north coast, and tangentially in central Mongolia.
She very much enjoys the classroom, and this year will be teaching courses in Introductory Anthropology (ANT 1102); Diet, Demography and Disease (ANT 4390); and Human Variation (ANT 4310); she has also taught, and plans to teach in the future, the evolution of the human diet, human osteology, and laboratory methods.
Outside of anthropology, Dr. Turner enjoys cooking, gardening, traveling, hiking around North Georgia and cheering on the Red Sox.