Post-doc Sofía Pacheco-Fores Receives NSF Award through the Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (DISES) program
Post-doctoral researcher Sofía Pacheco-Fores (anthropology), received an National Science Foundation (NSF) award through the Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems (DISES) program for a collaborative project entitled "Simulating social-ecological cascades during the second plague pandemic." Her role in the project will be to reconstruct the migratory histories of individual plague victims across medieval Europe via the stable isotope analysis of their bones and teeth. This will allow her to examine the interplay between social-ecological networks and the spread of disease during the second plague pandemic.
What are the goals you most want to accomplish through your work?
“I’m really interested in ancient migration. We don’t often think of people in the past as having had the ability to move around. When we do, we tend to think of them as arrows on a map showing movement from one place to another, not as people undertaking a life-altering journey. I’m interested in the human dimension of migration and moving away from ‘Did migration happen?’ to get at ‘What were migrants’ experiences like?’”
What drew you to study this field and/or this topic? Were there any life experiences you had that influenced you?
“I was drawn to this topic through my own experiences. I’m a migrant myself and a member of two diaspora communities with dramatically different historical trajectories: my mom came to the US as a refugee from Cuba and my dad first came to the US from Venezuela for college. Their different experiences, as well as my own, always made me curious as to what the migrant experience was like in the past. Obviously, it was variable, so how did individuals and communities experience migration in different times and places?
I tackle these questions from a bioarchaeological perspective, using evidence embedded in past peoples’ skeletons alongside archaeological and historical evidence of past migrations to tease out different migrant experiences and get a more holistic sense of migrant experiences in the past.”
How would you summarize this project in a few sentences?
“In this project, I’m interested in understanding how migration affected health outcomes. I’ll be working with skeletal remains from medieval European plague pandemic cemeteries. I’m curious whether migrants across medieval Europe were more likely to die of the Black Death than people who lived in the same place their whole lives. The answer to this question could tell us how assimilated (or not) migrants were in their new homes, as well as about hardships migrants faced or about support networks they formed.”
Can you describe the steps that were taken in this research project (locating data sources, interviews, finding source documents)?
“To answer these questions, I’ll be using bone and tooth chemistry to understand where people lived at different points in their lives. I’ll analyze bone and tooth samples from the skeletons of over 200 people buried in plague cemeteries across Europe to identify potential migrants.”
Did others collaborate with you on this research project? Who and how did they contribute?
“I’ll be working with a team of researchers to understand the spread of the Black Death and its impact on migrants. Dr. Amanda Wissler (bioarchaeologist) at McMaster University will be studying plague cemetery skeletons for signs of disease. Dr. Timothy Newfield (historical epidemiologist) at Georgetown will be examining historical records of the Black Death in medieval Europe. Dr. Nicolas Gauthier (archaeologist) and Dr. Gabriela Hamerlinck (ecologist) will use archaeological and climate data to model the spread of the Black Death throughout medieval Europe.”
