SoS 270: Dr. Sara Juengst on using mixed methods to understand lived experiences of the past and ideologies of the body in coastal Ecuador

In this episode, hosts Courtney and Mecca talk with Dr. Sara Juengst about her bioarchaeological work in coastal Ecuador among the very early and early Gangala, including differing ideas of what it means to be a “body”, the sociocultural and subsistence roles of the ocean, and the benefits of combining paleopathological, mortuary, and stable isotopic analyses. Dr. Juengst is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC, USA. As an anthropological bioarchaeologist, her research integrates social theory and skeletal evidence to address lived experiences of disease, diet, migration, and violence in the past and present. Her research primarily focuses on South America (Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru), but she does consulting work on projects in North Carolina, Kenya, and Nigeria. In all of her work, she explores how people navigated changing social and environmental climates and highlights how skeletons embody power and community. She earned her BA in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University in 2008 and her PhD in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015. ------------------------------ Find the paper discussed in this episode: Juengst, S.L., Lunnis, R., Cruz, Y.Z., Cobb, E.M., Bythell, A. (2024). An Investigation of Identity and Ontology at Salango, Ecuador (BCE 100–300 CE) Combining Paleopathological, Mortuary, and Stable Isotopic Analyses. Bioarchaeology, 8(1-2). https://doi.org/10.5744/bi.2023.0010 ------------------------------ Contact Dr. Juengst at sjuengst@charlotte.edu and follow her work at https://www.sarajuengst.com/ ------------------------------ Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and the Human Biology Association: Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org Courtney Manthey, Co-Host Website: holylaetoli.com/ E-mail: cpierce4@uccs.edu, Twitter: @HolyLaetoli Mecca Howe, SoS Producer, HBA Fellow LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mecca-howe/, Email: howemecca@gmail.com