Sharon DeWitte
· Professor • Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Department ChairUniversity of Colorado Boulder · Anthropology
Active 2003–2026
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About
Sharon DeWitte is a biological anthropologist affiliated with the Institute of Behavioral Science and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She specializes in paleodemography, paleoepidemiology, and bioarchaeology, focusing on biosocial variation in health in past populations. Her research investigates how factors such as sex, gender, socioeconomic status, migration, developmental stress, and diet influenced risks of disease and mortality. She also studies how disease shapes population dynamics and how host and environmental factors affect disease patterns. Using data derived from human skeletal remains, DeWitte examines medieval mortality crises, including famine and plague, within European contexts. Her work explores mortality patterns, demographic and health consequences, and the historical context surrounding the emergence of the 14th-century plague pandemic commonly known as the Black Death. Additionally, she utilizes archival evidence to study health transitions during the periods of industrialization and urbanization in historical New York State. DeWitte's research integrates biological and social perspectives to understand health and mortality in historical populations, contributing to knowledge about the interplay between disease, environment, and social factors in shaping human health outcomes over time.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Political Science
- Psychology
- Medicine
- Biology
- Social Science
- Geography
- Archaeology
- Endocrinology
- Anthropology
Selected publications
Frailty and survival in the 1918 influenza pandemic
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023-10-09 · 20 citations
articleOpen accessSenior authorOne of the most well-known yet least understood aspects of the 1918 influenza pandemic is the disproportionately high mortality among young adults. Contemporary accounts further describe the victims as healthy young adults, which is contrary to the understanding of selective mortality, which posits that individuals with the highest frailty within a group are at the greatest risk of death. We use a bioarchaeological approach, combining individual-level information on health and stress gleaned fro…
Survivorship and the second epidemiological transition in industrial‐era London
American Journal of Biological Anthropology · 2023-06-14 · 9 citations
articleOpen accessAbstract Objectives The second epidemiological transition describes a shift in predominant causes of death from infectious to degenerative (non‐communicable) diseases associated with the demographic transition from high to low levels of mortality and fertility. In England, the epidemiological transition followed the Industrial Revolution, but there is little reliable historical data on cause of death beforehand. Because of the association between the demographic and epidemiological transitions,…
Science Advances · 2024-11-13 · 7 citations
articleOpen accessBioarchaeology uses human skeletal remains to reconstruct varied experiences of individuals and populations in the past, including patterns of health across time periods and cultural contexts. In the past three decades, bioarchaeological studies have highlighted the concept of "frailty," operationalizing it as increased risk of mortality or cumulative phenotypes. Using data from medieval London cemeteries, we integrate these two approaches to frailty in past populations. First, we estimate the r…
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-01-30 · 6 citations
articleOpen accessAmid global challenges like climate change, extinctions, and disease epidemics, science and society require nuanced, international solutions that are grounded in robust, interdisciplinary perspectives and datasets that span deep time. Natural history collections, from modern biological specimens to the archaeological and fossil records, are crucial tools for understanding cultural and biological processes that shape our modern world. At the same time, natural history collections in low and middl…
American Journal of Human Biology · 2024-02-13 · 5 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingOBJECTIVES: Previous bioarchaeological analyses of medieval monastic and nonmonastic cemeteries in London revealed evidence of lower risks of mortality, and thus better health, in the monastic settings. However, comparison of the two monastic communities, Bermondsey Abbey and Merton Priory, which adhered to different religious ideals, suggested lower risks of mortality in the former. This study examines patterns of skeletal biomarkers, which reflect developmental stress or inflammation, in an at…
Recent grants
Investigating the Long-Term Impacts of Pandemic Disease
NSF · $138k · 2021–2023
SBE-RCUK: Diet, Migration and Health in the Context of Mortality Crises
NSF · $162k · 2017–2022
NSF · $113k · 2013–2016
Frequent coauthors
- 17 shared
Hendrik N. Poinar
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
- 17 shared
Rebecca Redfern
- 15 shared
Peter T. Ellison
Case Western Reserve University
- 10 shared
Lyle W. Konigsberg
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- 10 shared
Trudy R. Turner
John Wiley & Sons (United States)
- 10 shared
Daniel J. Wescott
Texas State University
- 9 shared
Samantha L. Yaussy
James Madison University
- 8 shared
Tosha L. Dupras
Texas Tech University
Education
- 2006
PhD, Anthropology
Pennsylvania State University University Park
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