The University of Southampton

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Phone:: (023) 8059 4778
Email:: S.R.Zakrzewski@soton.ac.uk

Dr Sonia Zakrzewski

Associate Professor

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Dr Sonia Zakrzewski is an Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton.

I am a bioarchaeologist, focusing on human skeletons. My interests are in biological anthropology, race, human diversity and variability, and the study of the human body to understand aspects of migration and mobility, diet, identity, religious practice and social organisation in past populations.

I joined the department from Durham, where I was briefly an Addison Wheeler Research Fellow. My work there focused upon human dispersals through Egypt and across the Sahara Desert. More recently, I have been interested in the interplay between funerary archaeology, the mortuary record and aspects of bodily identity. This research has concentrated on Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt groups and, more recently, on medieval burial grounds (both Christian and Muslim). Together with my graduate students, I have become interested in the bioarchaeology of religion and the activities associated with religious practice. This has implications for palaeopathology and studies of disease, and, within the skeletal collections here at Southampton, we have one of the earliest documented cases of leprosy in the UK.

I am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. I am on the organising board of the Society for the Study of Human Biology (SSHB), and, for several years, was a committee member for the British Association for Biological Anthropology & Osteoarchaeology (BABAO). Internationally, I am the Vice-President of the Paleopathology Association (PPA).

I am also the academic lead and director for Lifelong and Leisure Learning across the University of Southampton.

Links to external websites

AHRC grants awarded

The University cannot accept responsibility for external websites.

Other University of Southampton sites

Read my posts on the Archaeology blogs

Research

Publications

Teaching

Contact

Research interests

My research interests lie primarily in the analysis of human diversity and variability. By this, I mean understanding what it is that makes modern humans so similar and yet so different. My interests are therefore linked together by the human body and the funerary and mortuary archaeological record. My interest in human diversity developed from interests in human mobility and dispersal: are migrants different from sedentes? How can we identify migrating individuals within the archaeological record? Are there aspects of the body that we can read? As a result, I have been developing studies of human identity. How is identity expressed upon the human body? How plastic and malleable is the body? My research then links these aspects together with the funerary record to develop models of human ethnicity and identity. I am also interested in past human recognition of aspects of identity. Using palaeopathology and bioarchaeology, is it possible to develop models of disability and ability, and can we understand how past people viewed health and disease?

My research usually involves study of the gross morphology of the human body to then place individuals within a broader population context. This has primarily been working in Egypt. For the last few years, I have been working with colleagues from Berlin to excavate and analyse a Greco-Roman cemetery in the Egyptian delta. We are trying to situate the site within the broader Delta context and within the wider Greco-Roman world. In addition, I am working with American colleagues to study the diversity and variability of the population found buried in the cemeteries from New Kingdom Amarna. The site was occupied only briefly, during the reign of Akhenaten, and so provides a palimpsest of Egyptian ethnicity, health, disease, diet, occupation and activity.

Research group

Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins

Affiliate research group

Osteoarchaeology

Research project(s)

Identity and the life course in Islamic Écija

The Islamic necropolis at Écija, comprising more than 4,500 inhumations, is the largest excavated medieval cemetery in Iberia. The Islamic necropolis in Écija, in southern Andalucía, has been fully excavated by the Junta de Andalucía (Consejería de Cultura) with support of the local Imam.

Biological identity in ancient Egypt

Recent developments within bioarchaeology have enabled the role of the individual within archaeology to be better identified. In Egyptian contexts, these have included assessment of diet through stable isotopes (Thompson et al 2005) and DNA studies of modern (Krings et al 1999) and ancient human populations (Graver et al 2001).

Medicine in History and Society

Initially of interest to physicians from the time of the Enlightenment onwards, the history of medicine has gradually gained the attention of historians, sociologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and other social science students.

Articles

Schuenemann, V., Avanzi, C., Krause-Kyora, B., Seitz, A., Herbig, A., Inskip, S., ... Krause, J. (2018). Ancient genomes reveal a high diversity of Mycobacterium leprae in medieval Europe. PLoS Pathogens, 14(5), 1-17. [e1006997]. DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006997
Woods, C., Fernee, C., Browne, M., Zakrzewski, S., & Dickinson, A. (2017). The potential of statistical shape modelling for geometric morphometric analysis of human teeth in archaeological research. PLoS ONE. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186754
Carton, J., Pollard, J., & Zakrzewski, S. (2016). An early Neolithic mortuary deposit from the Woodford G2 long barrow. Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine, 109, 79-90.
Inskip, S. A., Taylor, G. M., Zakrzewski, S. R., Mays, S., Pike, A. W. G., Llewellyn, G., ... Stewart, G. R. (2015). Osteological, biomolecular and geochemical examination of an Early Anglo-Saxon case of lepromatous leprosy. PLoS ONE, 10(5), 1-128. [e0124282]. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124282
Cashmore, L., & Zakrzewski, S. R. (2013). Assessment of musculoskeletal stress marker development in the hand. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 23(3), 334-347. DOI: 10.1002/oa.1254
Pomeroy, E., Stock, J. T., Zakrzewski, S., & Mirazon Lahr, M. (2010). A metric study of three types of artificial cranial modification from north-central Peru. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 20(3), 317-334. DOI: 10.1002/oa.1044
Rowland, J., Inskip, S., & Zakrzewski, S. R. (2010). The Ptolemaic-Roman cemetery at the Quesna archaeological area. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 96, 31-48.
Pomeroy, E., & Zakrzewski, S. R. (2009). Sexual dimorphism in diaphyseal cross-sectional shape in the Medieval Muslim population of Écija, Spain and Anglo-Saxon Great Chesterford, UK. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 19(1), 50-65. DOI: 10.1002/oa.981
Rowland, J., & Zakrzewski, S. R. (2008). Quesna: the Ptolemaic and Roman cemetery. Egyptian Archaeology, 32, 15-17.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2007). Population continuity or population change: formation of the ancient Egyptian state. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 132(4), 501-509. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20569
Thompson, A. H., Richards, M. P., Shortland, A., & Zakrzewski, S. R. (2005). Isotopic palaeodiet studies of Ancient Egyptian fauna and humans. Journal of Archaeological Science, 32(3), 451-463. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2004.11.004
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2003). Variation in ancient Egyptian stature and body proportions. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 121(3), 219-229. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.10223
Zakrzewski, S. (2002). Exploring Migration and Population Boundaries in Ancient Egypt: A Craniometric Case Study. Tempus, 7, 195-204.

Books

Zakrzewski, S. R., Rowland, J., & Shortland, A. (2016). Science in the study of ancient Egypt. (Routledge Series in Egyptology; No. 3). USA: Routledge.
Zakrzewski, S. R., & White, W. (Eds.) (2007). Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology. (British Archaeological Reports International Series; Vol. 1712). Oxford, UK: Archaeopress.
Zakrzewski, S. R., & Clegg, M. (Eds.) (2005). Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology. (BAR international series; Vol. 1383). Oxford, UK: Archaeopress.

Book Chapters

Zakrzewski, S. (2018). Matryoshki, masks and identities: bioarchaeology and the body. In B. Jakob, & M. Holst (Eds.), Trends in Biological Anthropology (Vol. 2). Oxbow Books Limited.
Zakrzewski, S., Wright, S. S. E., & Inskip, S. (2017). Anglo-Saxon concepts of dis/ability: Placing disease at Great Chesterford in its wider context. In J. Byrnes, & J. Muller (Eds.), Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability: Theoretical, Ethnohistorical, and Methodological perspectives (1 ed., pp. 269-289). (Bioarchaeology and Social Theory). Springer International Publishing.
Zakrzewski, S. (2017). Skeletal morphology and social structure in Ancient Egypt: hierarchy, gender, body shape, and limb proportion (4000-1900 BC). In H. D. Klaus, A. R. Harvey, & M. N. Cohen (Eds.), Bones of Complexity: Bioarchaeological Case Studies of Social Organization and Skeletal Biology (pp. 111-140). (Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives). Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2015). “Behind every mask there is a face, and behind that a story”. Egyptian bioarchaeology and ancient identities. In S. Ikram, J. Kaiser, & R. Walker (Eds.), Egyptian Bioarchaeology: Humans, Animals, and the Environment. (pp. 157-167). Sidestone Press.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2015). Life expectancy. In UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology (pp. 1-14). (UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology). California, US: UCLA.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2015). Religious disruption and the Islamic conquest of Andalucia. In B. J. Baker, & T. Tsuda (Eds.), Migrations & Disruptions: Toward a Unifying Theory of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations (pp. 52-72). Gainesville, US: University Press of Florida.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2014). Palaeopathology, disability and bodily impairments. In R. Metcalfe, J. Cockitt, & R. David (Eds.), Palaeopathology in Egypt and Nubia: A Century in Review (pp. 57-68). (Archaeopress Egyptology; No. 6). Oxford, GB: Archaeopress.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2012). Dental morphology, dental health and its social implications. In Prehistory of Northeastern Africa: New Ideas and Discoveries (pp. 125-140). Poznan, Poland: Poznan Archaeological Museum.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2011). Population migration, variation and identity: an Islamic population in Iberia. In S. C. Agarwal, & B. A. Glencross (Eds.), Social Bioarchaeology (pp. 183-211). (Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology). Chichester, GB: Wiley-Blackwell.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2006). Human skeletal diversity in the Egyptian Nile valley. In K. Kroeper, M. Chlodnicki, & M. Kobusiewicz (Eds.), Archaeology of the Earliest Northeastern Africa: In Memory of Lech Krzyzaniak (pp. 893-907). Poznan, PL: Poznan Archaeological Museum.
Brothwell, D., & Zakrzewski, S. R. (2004). Metric and non-metric studies of archaeological human bone. In M. Brickley, & J. I. McKinley (Eds.), Guidelines to the Standards for Recording Human Remains (pp. 27-33). (IFA Paper; No. 7). Southampton, GB: Institute of Field Archaeologists / British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology.

Conferences

Woods, C., Dickinson, A., & Zakrzewski, S. (2016). A study of three human dental populations using statistical shape modelling. 22nd Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB 2016), France.
Mays, S., Zakrzewski, S. R., Inskip, S. A., Wright, S., & Sofaer, J. R. (2015). Anglo-Saxon concepts of dis/ability: placing disease at Great Chesterford in its wider context. Poster session presented at 84th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA 2015), United States.
Zakrzewski, S. R., & Powell, J. (2011). Cranial variability and population diversity at Hierakonpolis. In R. F. Friedman, & P. N. Fiske (Eds.), Egypt at its Origins (pp. 333-346). (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta; No. 205). Peeters.
Cashmore, L., & Zakrzewski, S. R. (2009). The expression of asymmetry in hand bones from the medieval cemetery at Écija, Spain. In M. E. Lewis, & M. Clegg (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (pp. 79-92). (British Archaeological Reports International Series; No. 1918). Oxford, GB: Archaeopress.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2008). Assessing the potential for dietary reconstruction from skeletal and isotopic data. In B. Midant-Reynes, Y. Tristant, J. Rowland, & S. Hendrickx (Eds.), Egypt at its Origins 2 (pp. 369-382). (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta; No. 172). Leuven, BE: Peeters.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2007). Gender relations and social organisation in the predynastic and early dynastic periods. In J-C. L. Goyon, & C. Cardin (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Egyptologists (pp. 2005-2019). (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta; No. 150). Leuven, BE: Peeters.
Zakrzewski, S. R. (2007). Teeth and diet: what more is there? Teeth as markers for population history. In K. A. Robson-Brown, & A. Roberts (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th Annual Meeting of the British Association of Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (pp. 26-36). (Archaeological Reports International Series; No. 1623). Archaeopress.
Morris, E., & Zakrzewski, S. R. (2007). Unusual neck pathology in a Nevisian prehistoric individual. In S. Zakrzewski, & W. White (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (pp. 43-48). (British Archaeological Reports International Series; No. 1712). London, GB: Archaeopress.
Bernal, J., Zakrzewski, S., & Jones, A. (2005). Measuring variation in the Neolithic human bones from the Orkney Islands. In S. Zakrzewski, & M. Clegg (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (pp. 105-112). (BAR International Series; Vol. 1383, No. 1383). Oxford, UK: Archaeopress.
Zakrzewski, S., & Bernal, J. (2004). Diversity within Orkney Islands Neolithic human skeletal material: what does it mean? In S. Zakrzewski, & M. Clegg (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (BAR International Series; No. BAR S1383 2005). Oxford, Uk: Archaeopress.

ARCH1047: Artefacts, materials and archaeological science (instructor)
ARCH1057: The development of archaeological and anthropological thought (instructor)
ARCH2027: Bones, bodies, and burials: osteology and comparative anatomy (co-ordinator / instructor)
ARCH6115: Human Skeletal Studies (co-ordinator / instructor)
ARCH6024: Human Skeletal Biology: Reconstructing Lifeways (co-ordinator / instructor)
UOSM2006: Building the Human Body (instructor)

PhD Supervision

I welcome the opportunity to supervise postgraduate student (PhD) research in the following broad bioarchaeological areas: human health and disease, identity and the lifecourse, ethnicity and the social construct of ‘race', diversity and activity, religion and religious practice.

I am currently supervising the following:

Identity, activity patterning and religious practice in Islamic Iberia
Archaeothanatology and the reconstruction of French and English Cluniac funerary practices
Palaeopathology and markers of occupational street in the spine
Variability, diversity and the palaeopathology of ear ossicles

Dr Sonia Zakrzewski
Faculty of Humanities, University of Southampton
Avenue Campus, Highfield
Southampton
SO17 1BF
United Kingdom

Room Number:65/2227

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