Professor Director, Bioarchaeology and Biochemistry Laboratory My research seeks to explain how human beings come to physically embody the biological and social aspects of our environments. In varying sites across Europe, my work encapsulates the challenges of bioarchaeological analysis as the most direct indicator of human behavior. I examine diet change from the time of Greek colonization to the Medieval period, and I also helped geochemically assess archaeological human remains to test early written history. With a research team in Ethiopia, we studied wild Ethiopian geladas to generate the largest wild nonhuman primate gut microbiome and stable isotope data set to date. My research uniquely and advantageously incorporates human skeletal populations as well as extant non-human primates to clarify synergistic relationships between environmental impacts at multiple scales. I co-lead the UGA Human Remains Research Working Group, an interdisciplinary initiative dedicated to developing and applying innovative approaches to the search, recovery, and identification of individuals missing as a result of armed conflict, natural disaster, and other humanitarian crises. Research Research Areas: Biological Anthropology Research Interests: Bioarchaeology Stable isotope biogeochemistry Skeletal stress Adaptation Life-history Colonization Culture Contact Primates Migration Labs: Biological Anthropology Lab Complex Selected Publications Selected Publications: In press Reitsema LJ, Gancz AS, Vassallo S, Kyle B. A child-centered approach to cultural hybridity: Weaning and childhood diets in the Greek colony of Himera. Eur J Archaeol. 2025 Reitsema LJ. Commentary: Revisiting physiological and theoretical dimensions of stable isotope variation in human tissues. Am J Hum Biol 37: e70073. 2022 Reitsema LJ,+ Mittnik A,+ Kyle B,+ Catalano G, Fabbri PF, Kazmi A, Reinberger KL, ….. and Pinhasi R, Reich D. The diverse genetic origins of a Classical period Greek army. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119:e2205272119. 2022 Reitsema LJ, Kyle B, Koçi M, Horton RN, and Shehi E. Bioarchaeological evidence for ancient human diet and migration at Epidamnus/Dyrrachion and Apollonia in Illyria, Albania. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 14: 87. 2020 Reitsema LJ, Kyle B and Vassallo S. Food traditions and colonial interactions in the ancient Mediterranean: Stable isotope evidence from the Greek Sicilian Colony Himera. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 57: 101144. 2019 Gresham T, Reitsema LJ, Mulchrone K and Garland C. Archaeological Exhumation of Burials in the Baldwin Hall Portion of the Old Athens Cemetery, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia: Final Report. University of Georgia, Athens. 400 pages. 2014 Reitsema LJ and McIlvaine B K. Reconciling “stress” and “health”: What can bioarchaeologists learn from other subdisciplines? American Journal of Physical Anthropology 155(2): 181–185. 2013 Reitsema LJ. Beyond diet reconstruction: Stable isotope applications to human physiology, health and nutrition. American Journal of Human Biology 25(4): 445-456. Education Education: PhD, Anthropology, Anatomy minor, The Ohio State University, 2012
