25th Oct | Children of the Revolution | Dr. Becky Gowland, Senior Lecturer at Durham University. 7.30pm at Stockton Central Library TS18 1TU. Guests are welcome for £4 each on the door.

While researching for her PhD, Dr. Becky Gowland became interested in the divide between science and social theory in archaeology and the implications of this for human skeletal analysis and funerary archaeology, and became the co-editor of a book The Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains. More recently, she researched the skeletal remains of children to understand the impact of social processes upon population health. This talk draws upon her work with skeletal remains of children in the North of England during the Industrial Revolution, demonstrating health stresses in both urban-based and rural children. Surprisingly, higher-than-expected rates of health stress were found among rural children: possibly related to the relocation of pauper children from workhouses, to apprenticeships in rural-based Northern mills.

About the Speaker

Dr. Gowalnd is a graduate of the Durham University Archaeology Department. She later undertook an MSc in Osteology, Palaeopathology and Funerary Archaeology taught jointly between the Universities of Sheffield and Bradford. She returned to Durham to complete her PhD. Her studies became the subject of a book The Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains that she co-edited with Dr Chris Knüsel (University of Exeter).

After spells as a research assistant at the University of Sheffield and the Cambridge University she returned to Durham  for the third time as a lecturer in 2006. She currently teaches human skeletal analysis at both Undergraduate and Masters level. She has recently completed a co-authored book Human Identity and Identification with Dr Tim Thompson of Teesside University which examines the inter-relationship between social identity and the biological tissues of the body.