Sharon N. DeWitte

Sharon Nell DeWitte (born April 1976) is an American bioarchaeologist and professor of anthropology. She was elected in 2021 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Quotes

The medieval Black Death (c. 1347-1351) was one of the most devastating epidemics in human history. It killed tens of millions of Europeans, and recent analyses have shown that the disease targeted elderly adults and individuals who had been previously exposed to physiological stressors. Following the epidemic, there were improvements in standards of living, particularly in dietary quality for all socioeconomic strata.
- (2014) . "Mortality risk and survival in the aftermath of the medieval Black Death". PloS ONE 9 (5): e96513. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0096513.

Much of the published bioarchaeological research on the Black Death has been done using samples from the East Smithfield cemetery in London. The location, purpose, and dimensions of East Smithfield are recorded in historical documents. Reports of the Black Death preceded its arrival in London, and East Smithfield was established in anticipation of the high mortality that would result in the city (Grainger et al. 2008, Hawkins 1990). The Black Death arrived in 1349 and lasted in London until 1350; East Smithfield was used only during the Black Death, so most, if not all, of the people buried there were victims of the disease. East Smithfield was partially excavated in the 1980s as part of the larger Royal Mint site, and more than 600 individuals interred in single burials or mass burial trenches were excavated from the cemetery.
- (2016) . "Archaeological evidence of epidemics can inform future epidemics". Annual Review of Anthropology 45 (1): 63-77.

Demography is the study of population dynamics. The primary foci of demography are rates and levels of mortality, fertility, and migration and how these all interact to produce population growth (or decline), density, and age- and sex-structures; how these rates or levels vary across time and space and what produces such variation; and what consequences these have on other aspects of human (or nonhuman) existence. These demographic phenomena lie at the very heart of evolution. Natural selection occurs as a result of differential fertility and mortality within a population; gene flow occurs because of migration between populations; and the effects of genetic drift are dependent upon population size, which is an outcome of the interactions among mortality, fertility, and migration (Gage, DeWitte, & Wood, 2012).
These demographic forces also affect, are affected by, and reflect many of the things that anthropologists find most interesting. For example, the age–sex structure of a population influences the population’s ratio of consumers to producers and numbers of potential marriage partners, and thus places limits on such things as subsistence strategies and household structure.
- (2018) . "Demographic anthropology". American Journal of Physical Anthropology 165 (4): 893–903.