Debra L. Martin, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, is an expert on violence in past societies, which includes expertise in human osteology and bioarchaeology. The analysis of skeletonized human remains from archaeological as well as historic and contemporary settings form a basis for understanding the effects of trauma, fractures, disability and wounds related to lethal and nonlethal violence. She is also interested in the intersectionality of violence with factors such as inequality, gender, status, health, diet, and marginal environments. She is the Series Editor for Bioarchaeology and Social Theory, a book series dedicated to cutting-edge bioarchaeological work published by Springer. She is Editor of the American Antiquity. Her recent publications include co-authoring Gender Violence in the American Southwest (AD 1100) (Routledge), co-editing Bioarchaeology of Borders and Frontiers (UPF), Massacres (UPF), and Bioarchaeological and Forensic Perspectives on Violence (Cambridge). She is co-author of the textbook, Bioarchaeology An Integrated Approach to Working with Human Remains which is going into its second edition (Springer). She has also co-authored Bodies and Lives: Health in America Before Columbus (Routledge) and Bioarchaeology of Climate Change and Violence (Springer). 

Ph.D. University of Massachusetts, Amherst 1983

debra.martin@unlv.edu

books

Published in 2018, this edited volume (above) has received positive reviews and was described as “a book of great scope … this book represents a new foundation for the study of massacres. (R. Brian Ferguson).

Published in 2022, the co-authored book (below) is among the first to focus on gender violence in the past.

NEWS FLASH!

Recipient of the UNLV Regent’s Distinguished Career Researcher Award in 2022

Recipient of an NSF Senior Research Project “Enslavement and Marginalization on the Spanish Colonial Frontier” Award #2-51184 [$300,611] NSF Award

Recipient of the Society of American Archaeology’s Fryxell Award in 2020

Sponsored Symposium FRYXELL AWARD SYMPOSIUM: PAPERS IN HONOR OF DEBRA L. MARTIN (Sponsored by Fryxell Committee) Friday April 24, 2020 Time: 8:00 a.m.–12:00

Chair: Pamela Stone

Abstract: Professor Martin’s extraordinary achievements in anthropology have crossed interdisciplinary boundaries to unpack the complexity of human experiences through direct archaeological and osteological analyses, theoretical scholarship, exhaustive publications, and her leadership across disciplines and within her teaching and mentoring. Her research has transformed our understanding how violent events are shaped, used, and experienced by people in the past, highlighting how violence impacts the lives of those on the margins. She is a role model in how to perform engaged, ethical, and forward-moving research. This session celebrates the ways her teaching, mentorship, and collaborative work has impacted her students and colleagues. The papers presented here reflect on Dr. Martin’s rock-steady mentorship, leadership, and collaboration in the ways we all work to read the past and strive for humanistic and scientific models of inquiry, and consider our own research questions. She has significantly reshaped the field of bioarchaeology, biological anthropology, biocultural studies, and forensic sciences. She shows by example not only how to do good anthropology but how to be a good anthropologist. We take tremendous pleasure in sharing our experiences and scholarship to recognize Dr. Martin in honor of the Fryxell award.

Participants: Pamela Stone; Ventura Pérez; Ryan Harrod; Anna Osterholtz; Kathryn Baustian; Cheryl Anderson; Caryn Tegtmeyer; Claira Ralston, Debra Martin, Pamela K. Stone and Ventura Pérez; Diana Simpson; Mark Toussaint; Bethany Turner, Molly Zuckerman and Haagen Klaus; Kristin Kuckelman; Catherine Cameron; Alan Swedlund Discussant: Debra Martin

research

2015-present Co-PI, Belén, New Mexico, Nuestra Señora de Belén Project: Excavation, Preservation, and Conservation of a Historic Genízaro church cemetery Belen Project 2019

2013-2017 Collaboration with Clark County Coroner’s Office Forensic Anthropology Project:  Broken Bodies, Broken Bones: Violence, Injury Recidivism and Violence in Southern Nevada Resulting Book Project

2007-2016 Hall of Columns, La Quemada, Zacatecas PI, Ben Nelson, ASU See Publication

2004-2007 PI, Ixlilco el Grande and Emiliano Zapato, Morelos, Mexico, NSF-REU 3-year project focused on field research into the effects of NAFTA on family health NSF-REU Project Description