Pamela L. Geller
Pamela L. Geller is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Miami. Over the years, she has conducted fieldwork in Hawaii, Belize, Honduras, Perú, and Haiti. Her intellectual interests include archaeology and bioarchaeology, feminist and queer studies, materiality of identity, the sociopolitics of the past, and bioethics. Based on her research, she has authored several books: The Bioarchaeology of Social-Sexual Lives (2017), Theorizing Bioarchaeology (2021), and Becoming Object: The Sociopolitics of the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection (2024). Edited volumes include Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present, and Future (2006) and The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Anthropology (2025).
More recently, she has wondered, “What does it mean to be human in an age of unprecedented anthropogenic impact on this planet?” The question is a longstanding one for anthropology; it seeks to address how the human condition shifts with technological innovation and socioeconomic interaction, as was the case during the Neolithic or Industrial Revolutions. Yet rather than look to ancient periods, she is undertaking an archaeology of the contemporary that focuses on plastics as material culture in the 21st century. She is particularly intrigued by the cultural maladaptability, ontological and biophysical implications, and future history of plastics. On this subject, her writings have appeared in scholarly publications and mainstream ones, such as Slate, Miami Herald, and The New York Times.
Geller currently serves as the Specialty Chief Editor of Human Bioarchaeology and Paleopathology for the open-access journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. She is also Series Editor for “Archaeology of Gender and Sexuality,” a book series with Routledge Press. Feel free to reach out with questions about submitting proposals or publications to either forum.
Phone: 305 284 5091
Address: University of Miami
Anthropology Department
P.O. Box 248106
Coral Gables, FL 33124-2005
More recently, she has wondered, “What does it mean to be human in an age of unprecedented anthropogenic impact on this planet?” The question is a longstanding one for anthropology; it seeks to address how the human condition shifts with technological innovation and socioeconomic interaction, as was the case during the Neolithic or Industrial Revolutions. Yet rather than look to ancient periods, she is undertaking an archaeology of the contemporary that focuses on plastics as material culture in the 21st century. She is particularly intrigued by the cultural maladaptability, ontological and biophysical implications, and future history of plastics. On this subject, her writings have appeared in scholarly publications and mainstream ones, such as Slate, Miami Herald, and The New York Times.
Geller currently serves as the Specialty Chief Editor of Human Bioarchaeology and Paleopathology for the open-access journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology. She is also Series Editor for “Archaeology of Gender and Sexuality,” a book series with Routledge Press. Feel free to reach out with questions about submitting proposals or publications to either forum.
Phone: 305 284 5091
Address: University of Miami
Anthropology Department
P.O. Box 248106
Coral Gables, FL 33124-2005
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Books by Pamela L. Geller
During a pivotal moment in US history-an interlude between the nation's cohesion and its civil unraveling-Morton and colleagues encouraged and developed biomedical interventions, public health initiatives, and scientific standards. Yet they also represented certain populations as biologically inferior; diseases were tied to non-white races, suffering was gendered female, and poverty was presumed inherited. Efforts by Morton and colleagues made it easier to rationalize the deaths of disenfranchised individuals, collect their skulls from almshouse hospitals and battlefields, and transform them into objects. Ultimately, these men's studies of diseases and skulls contributed to an understanding of American citizenship that valued whiteness, Christianity, and heroic masculinity defined by violence.
Though medicine came to repudiate Morton's work, his thinking became foundational for anthropology. The Morton Collection, a tangible reminder of his legacy, has become a barometer of the discipline's relationship to white supremacy and colonialism. To advance today's decolonial efforts, Becoming Object turns to the Morton Collection to document the diverse lives excluded from the body politic. To recount their stories, as Geller does, is to counter official histories, while the silences that remain hint at the subtle machinations of necropolitics.
This book also works to overcome the challenges presented by dense social theorizing, which has paid little attention to real bodies. It historicizes, explains, and adapts concepts, as well as discusses archaeological, historic, and contemporary case studies from around the world.
Theorizing Bioarchaeology is intended for individuals who may have initially dismissed social theorizing as postmodern but now acknowledge this characterization as oversimplified. It is for readers who foster curiosity about bioarchaeology’s contradictions and common sense. The ideas contained in these pages may also be of use to students who know that it is naive at best and myopic at worst to presume data derived from bodies speak for themselves.
Edited Volumes by Pamela L. Geller
Divided into three clear parts and comprising 34 chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook addresses topics in the following key areas:
- resisting violence
- communicating creatively
- labor
- migration and displacement
- health and disease
- reproduction
- intersectionality
- decolonial work
The collection assesses the field at an interesting moment in time—one defined by social justice and populist movements gone global; once and future pandemics; extreme environmental disasters; and neoliberalism interrupted. How do gender, sex, and sexuality intersect with these phenomena? In answer, contributors to this volume put a heterogeneous anthropological approach in place; they advance interdisciplinary conversations, as well as renew a commitment to intradisciplinary dialogue.
The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Anthropology is essential reading for students, researchers, and instructors in anthropology, and will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as gender studies, queer studies, economics, biomedicine, political science, sociology, geography, and science and technology studies.
Journal Articles by Pamela L. Geller
Para desarrollar un “bioethos” subdisciplinario, comienzo con el enfoque osteobiográfico de Clyde Snow, con su foco en el individuo y su reconocimiento de la especulación en la investigación. El concepto “bioethos” se refiere a la consolidación de un hábito que da lugar a prácticas morales y normativas relacionadas con la exhumación, documentación, análisis y tratamiento póstumo de cuerpos muertos. Para tal fin, las conversaciones en bioética (sobre el consentimiento, el anonimato, las poblaciones vulnerables, la legislación de políticas, etcétera) son pertinentes, pero requieren expansión para aquellos que estudian cuerpos muertos. Discuto el caso contemporáneo de HeLa / Henrietta Lacks. Esto caso ayuda a construir modelos que son aplicables a los restos antiguos (o históricos). Como ejemplo del último, discuto Hombre de Kennewick / El Antiguo. Más que un cuento de precaución o ejemplo idiosincrásico, los eventos que rodean el caso de Kennewick involucraron prácticas normativas y disciplinarias que requieren deliberación. Me concentro en nombrar, la reconstrucción facial y la prueba genética. Estas técnicas son útiles para personalizar individuos, lo que hace que el análisis académico sea más interesante para los no especialistas. Sin embargo, plantean inquietudes éticas y epistemológicas relacionadas con la seguridad ontológica (o su interrupción) y la difusión de narrativas en “mediascapes,” entre otras cuestiones. Para concluir, yo sugiero que los osteobiógrafos comiencen sus estudios haciendo preguntas clave sobre los antecedentes históricos de su trabajo, su contexto político y sus posibles repercusiones.
Materials and Methods: Standard craniometric measurements were recorded for seven Seminoles in the Samuel G. Morton Crania Collection and 10 European soldiers from the Fort St. Marks Military Cemetery; all individuals were men and died in Florida during the 19th century. Fordisc 3.1 was used to assess craniometric affinity with respect to three samples: the Forensic Data Bank, Howells data set, and an archival sample that best fits the target populations collected from 19th century Florida. Discriminant function analyses were used to evaluate how allocations change across the three comparative databases, which roughly reflect a temporal sequence.
Results: Most Seminoles allocated as Native American, while most soldiers allocated as Euro-American. Allocation of Seminole crania, however, was unstable across analysis runs with more individuals identifying as African Americans when compared to the Howells and Forensic Data Bank. To the contrary, most of the soldiers produced consistent allocations across analyses. Repeatability for the St. Marks sample was lower when using the archival sample database, contrary to expectations. For the Seminole crania, Cohen's κ indicates significantly lower repeatability. A possible Black Seminole individual was identified in the Morton Collection.
Discussion: Recent articles discussing the merits and weaknesses of comparative craniometry focus on methodological issues. In our biohistoric approach, we use the patterning of craniometric allocations across databases as a platform for discussing social race and its development during the 19th century, a process known as racialization. Here we propose that differences in repeatability for the Seminoles and Euro-American soldiers reflect this process and transformation of racialized identities during 19th century U.S. nation-building. In particular, notions of whiteness were and remain tightly controlled, while other racial categorizations were affected by legal, social, and political contexts that resulted in hybridity in lieu of boundedness.
Book Chapters by Pamela L. Geller
During a pivotal moment in US history-an interlude between the nation's cohesion and its civil unraveling-Morton and colleagues encouraged and developed biomedical interventions, public health initiatives, and scientific standards. Yet they also represented certain populations as biologically inferior; diseases were tied to non-white races, suffering was gendered female, and poverty was presumed inherited. Efforts by Morton and colleagues made it easier to rationalize the deaths of disenfranchised individuals, collect their skulls from almshouse hospitals and battlefields, and transform them into objects. Ultimately, these men's studies of diseases and skulls contributed to an understanding of American citizenship that valued whiteness, Christianity, and heroic masculinity defined by violence.
Though medicine came to repudiate Morton's work, his thinking became foundational for anthropology. The Morton Collection, a tangible reminder of his legacy, has become a barometer of the discipline's relationship to white supremacy and colonialism. To advance today's decolonial efforts, Becoming Object turns to the Morton Collection to document the diverse lives excluded from the body politic. To recount their stories, as Geller does, is to counter official histories, while the silences that remain hint at the subtle machinations of necropolitics.
This book also works to overcome the challenges presented by dense social theorizing, which has paid little attention to real bodies. It historicizes, explains, and adapts concepts, as well as discusses archaeological, historic, and contemporary case studies from around the world.
Theorizing Bioarchaeology is intended for individuals who may have initially dismissed social theorizing as postmodern but now acknowledge this characterization as oversimplified. It is for readers who foster curiosity about bioarchaeology’s contradictions and common sense. The ideas contained in these pages may also be of use to students who know that it is naive at best and myopic at worst to presume data derived from bodies speak for themselves.
Divided into three clear parts and comprising 34 chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook addresses topics in the following key areas:
- resisting violence
- communicating creatively
- labor
- migration and displacement
- health and disease
- reproduction
- intersectionality
- decolonial work
The collection assesses the field at an interesting moment in time—one defined by social justice and populist movements gone global; once and future pandemics; extreme environmental disasters; and neoliberalism interrupted. How do gender, sex, and sexuality intersect with these phenomena? In answer, contributors to this volume put a heterogeneous anthropological approach in place; they advance interdisciplinary conversations, as well as renew a commitment to intradisciplinary dialogue.
The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Anthropology is essential reading for students, researchers, and instructors in anthropology, and will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as gender studies, queer studies, economics, biomedicine, political science, sociology, geography, and science and technology studies.
Para desarrollar un “bioethos” subdisciplinario, comienzo con el enfoque osteobiográfico de Clyde Snow, con su foco en el individuo y su reconocimiento de la especulación en la investigación. El concepto “bioethos” se refiere a la consolidación de un hábito que da lugar a prácticas morales y normativas relacionadas con la exhumación, documentación, análisis y tratamiento póstumo de cuerpos muertos. Para tal fin, las conversaciones en bioética (sobre el consentimiento, el anonimato, las poblaciones vulnerables, la legislación de políticas, etcétera) son pertinentes, pero requieren expansión para aquellos que estudian cuerpos muertos. Discuto el caso contemporáneo de HeLa / Henrietta Lacks. Esto caso ayuda a construir modelos que son aplicables a los restos antiguos (o históricos). Como ejemplo del último, discuto Hombre de Kennewick / El Antiguo. Más que un cuento de precaución o ejemplo idiosincrásico, los eventos que rodean el caso de Kennewick involucraron prácticas normativas y disciplinarias que requieren deliberación. Me concentro en nombrar, la reconstrucción facial y la prueba genética. Estas técnicas son útiles para personalizar individuos, lo que hace que el análisis académico sea más interesante para los no especialistas. Sin embargo, plantean inquietudes éticas y epistemológicas relacionadas con la seguridad ontológica (o su interrupción) y la difusión de narrativas en “mediascapes,” entre otras cuestiones. Para concluir, yo sugiero que los osteobiógrafos comiencen sus estudios haciendo preguntas clave sobre los antecedentes históricos de su trabajo, su contexto político y sus posibles repercusiones.
Materials and Methods: Standard craniometric measurements were recorded for seven Seminoles in the Samuel G. Morton Crania Collection and 10 European soldiers from the Fort St. Marks Military Cemetery; all individuals were men and died in Florida during the 19th century. Fordisc 3.1 was used to assess craniometric affinity with respect to three samples: the Forensic Data Bank, Howells data set, and an archival sample that best fits the target populations collected from 19th century Florida. Discriminant function analyses were used to evaluate how allocations change across the three comparative databases, which roughly reflect a temporal sequence.
Results: Most Seminoles allocated as Native American, while most soldiers allocated as Euro-American. Allocation of Seminole crania, however, was unstable across analysis runs with more individuals identifying as African Americans when compared to the Howells and Forensic Data Bank. To the contrary, most of the soldiers produced consistent allocations across analyses. Repeatability for the St. Marks sample was lower when using the archival sample database, contrary to expectations. For the Seminole crania, Cohen's κ indicates significantly lower repeatability. A possible Black Seminole individual was identified in the Morton Collection.
Discussion: Recent articles discussing the merits and weaknesses of comparative craniometry focus on methodological issues. In our biohistoric approach, we use the patterning of craniometric allocations across databases as a platform for discussing social race and its development during the 19th century, a process known as racialization. Here we propose that differences in repeatability for the Seminoles and Euro-American soldiers reflect this process and transformation of racialized identities during 19th century U.S. nation-building. In particular, notions of whiteness were and remain tightly controlled, while other racial categorizations were affected by legal, social, and political contexts that resulted in hybridity in lieu of boundedness.
Please note that this episode contains some references to genocide and the Holocaust.
https://soundcloud.com/user-664136257/radiociams-with-pamela-geller
https://archaeology.cornell.edu/radiociams-archive
Coined by Michel Foucault in the 1970s, bio-power initially referred to the processes that transform humans’ biological attributes into politically strategic objects. Much subsequent theorizing about the concept has focused on the discursive and abstract. That is, the technical study and materiality of human remains have seldom been brought to the fore. My study of the Morton Collection has been a biohistoric one in which I examining textual and skeletal materials. The approach yields evidence of bio-power’s key attributes—the formation of Western biomedicine, violent nation-building by European or Euro-American forces, and racialization processes. To illustrate this point, I spotlight Morton’s relationships with the military and medical officers who supplied him with the crania of subjugated Others.
In thinking about the relevance of bio- (archaeological, anthropological, molecular) studies, I deliberate about bio-power. Coined by Michel Foucault in the 1970s, the concept initially referred to the processes that transform humans’ biological attributes into politically strategic objects. Hence, bio-power resides at the nexus of social identity, lived experience, and power relations. Much subsequent theorizing about bio-power has focused on the discursive and abstract. That is, the technical study and materiality of human remains have seldom been brought to the fore. To extend thinking about bio-power, I offer a biohistoric consideration of crania collected by the nineteenth-century natural historian Samuel G. Morton. The study of these remains, I argue, is intimately connected to the establishment and ongoing maintenance of the United States’ body politic.