Danielle Kurin

Danielle Kurin has developed a reputation in the field of anthropology as an authority in pre-Columbian population and health. She served as a visiting, assistant professor, and later tenured associate professor of bioarchaeology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a research professor at the Universidad Nacional de San Cristóbal de Huamanga, she has spent almost two dozen years conducting field research in the Andes, particularly in different regions of Peru, but also in Bolivia. Danielle Kurin founded and led the Andahuaylas Bioarchaeology Project, which with archaeological excavations at Sondor and others sites in the Apurimac Region, has generated scores of theses, dissertations and publications. She has also served as assistant director and senior osteoarchaeologist. with the project to excavate and analyze the human remains at the site of Wari, the capital of an ancient civilization located near the present-day Ayacucho.

Throughout her career as a researcher, Danielle Kurin has received more than two dozen grants and fellowships to support her field work and teaching.. She has published an important monograph The Bioarchaeology of Societal Collapse and Regeneration in Ancient Peru with Springer, an edited volume and various articles for the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology and the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Dr.. Kurin coauthored a Journal of Anthropological Archaeology article that described the use of multi-isotopic analysis to reconstruct the paleo-diet and paleo-mobility of ancient inhabitants of Apurimac, Peru. She well known around the world for her major discoveries with regard to trepanation, the ancient Andean form of brain surgery. Not only has she excavated numerous mummies and skulls exhibiting such surgery, but she found skulls indicated that ancient surgeons of the region actually experimented with materials and techniques to carry it out. Ancient surgeons would experiment with different drills and different sized holes that would penetrate the skull and relieve inter-cranial pressure. Kurin found that innovation in surgery was correlated with conflict and warfare in Andean society, and served as a new adaptation allowing the injured to survive. She draws parallels to modern innovation in prosthetics which has advanced as a result of soldiers surviving injuries in ever more destructive warfare.