Staff
Directors
Clark Spencer Larsen, PhD
Dr. Larsen’s primary interest is in the history of the human condition, viewed from the perspective of health, quality of life, adaptation, and lifestyle during the last 10,000 years of human evolution. Dr Larsen has spent most of his professional career directing the La Florida Bioarchaeology Project, involving the collaboration of scientists from the United States and elsewhere. In collaboration with Richard Steckel, he co-directs the Global History of Health Project, involving the collaboration of scientists and study of skeletons from Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Since 2002 he has been co-directing the study of human remains from Çatalhöyük, Turkey. This enormous Neolithic site provides an ideal opportunity to test hypotheses about the impact of urbanization and increased commitment to agriculture on health and quality of life.
Dr. Larsen is Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University.
Personal Web Page: http://anthropology.osu.edu/faculty/pages/larsen.php
Gino Fornaciari, MD
Dr. Fornaciari’s research interests regard mummies, paleonutrition and ancient bacteria and viruses. He has used, and is using, different modern biomedical techniques (EM and immunohistochemistry) to study Italian, Peruvian and Egyptian mummies: in 1986, smallpox virus in 16th century Italian mummy; in 1989, syphilitic treponemes in Italian mummy of the same age; in 1992, Trypanosoma cruzi in pre-Columbian mummy with megavisceral syndrome; in 1996, K-ras mutation in the adenocarcinoma of Ferrante I of Aragon, a king of Naples of 15th century; in 2003, a sequence of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) in Renaissance Italian mummy; in 2004, digitalis poisoning in the natural mummy of Cangrande della Scala, lord of Verona (1291-1329); in 2010, Plasmodium falciparum and Leishmania sp. in the Medici Grand Dukes of Florence. The most important series of mummies: the Abbey of S. Domenico Maggiore in Naples (15th-16th centuries), the Dead Chapel of S. Maria della Grazia in Comiso, Sicily (18th-19th centuries) and the Grand Dukes of Medici in the Basilica of S. Lorenzo in Florence (16th-18th centuries).
Dr Fornaciari is Professor of History of Medicine at the Medical School of the University of Pisa, and of Paleopathology, Archaeoanthropology and Funerary Archaeology at University of Pisa.
Personal Web Page: http://www.paleopatologia.it/staff/staff.php?recordID=3
