How to Become an Osteoarchaeologist: A Personal Reflection

Kirsty Squires is an Osteoarchaeologist and a Senior Lecturer in Forensic Anthropology at Staffordshire University. Kirsty completed her BSc (Hons) Archaeology award at the University of Nottingham. During this time, she volunteered at Grantham Museum and attended field schools and excavations in the UK, Greece, and Poland. She became interested in funerary archaeology during her undergraduate degree, and subsequently pursued an MSc in Human Osteology and Funerary Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. It was during the course of this award that she became interested in cremated bone and what these remains can tell us about past societies. Her doctoral research, also conducted at the University of Sheffield, focused upon demography, identity, and cremation technologies in early medieval Lincolnshire. Before entering academia as a lecturer, Kirsty worked in commercial archaeology and acted as a Field Director for an osteoarchaeology field school in Romania. Her research primarily focuses upon early medieval osteoarchaeology, the archaeology of childhood in the past, ethics in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology, and the analysis and interpretation of cremated human bone and mummified remains from archaeological and forensic contexts. She is the Student Development and Outreach Officer for the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past, and a Research Associate of the Observatory for the Mummified Heritage of Sicily.