Danielle Kurin

An assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Danielle Kurin holds a BA in anthropology and Hispanic studies from Bryn Mawr and an MA and PhD in anthropology from Vanderbilt University. In addition to her academic duties, Danielle Kurin is the co-director of the Andahuaylas Bioarchaeology Project in Peru.

Ms. Kurin and her research team discovered 32 fossils from the Late Intermediate Period in Peru’s Andahuaylas province. The excavation of burial caves revealed 45 instances of trepanation. The period, specifically CE 1000 to 1250, followed the collapse of the Andahuaylas, an empire that prospered from CE 600 to 1000. Considering the challenges and trauma that might have come with the empire’s collapse, it makes sense that the medical practitioners of the time resorted to trepanation, which involves drilling or scraping the skull to treat head injuries and other ailments.

Some individuals that underwent trepanation healed. This can be deduced from finger-like bone projections that are essentially bone growths after cranial surgery. Others suffered cranial fractures from the procedure, and some died. Multiple holes of various depths in some skulls suggest that the subjects’ bodies were studied after their deaths. Healers and medical students of the era experimented with them to learn how to drill to the deepest depth without disturbing the brain. Evidence of topically applied medical herbs confirms that the cranial surgery procedures were solely treatment efforts, not a from of torture. All the subjects are adult males, as the ancient culture’s laws prevented women and children from undergoing cranial surgery.

An assistant professor at the University of California, Danielle Kurin, holds several degrees in anthropology. In addition to her work as an anthropology professor and researcher, Danielle Kurin enjoys spending time with her dog and making pottery.

Handbuilding, one of the oldest known methods of making pottery, is a technique that creates forms without using a pottery wheel. Before the invention of pottery wheels, potters could only create ceramic artwork using only their hands. Although potters can now form clay in advanced ways thanks to the invention of pottery wheels, many potters still consider handbuilding a unique method of creating forms.

Although it seems to be a simple pottery technique, handbuilding takes a specific set of skills to master, for example, the three handbuilding methods of pinching, coiling, and slab building. To make a pinched pot, a potter takes a ball of clay and forms the shape they want out of it by pressing the ball into the center of the ball. Coiling involves taking rolled-up strips of clay and stacking them up to form the desired shape. In slab building, a potter rolls out flat slabs of clay and joins them to create angular or box-shaped designs.

Danielle Kurin earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology & Hispanic studies from Bryn Mawr College in 2005, after which she advanced her studies at Vanderbilt University to earn a master’s degree and PhD in the same field. During her postgraduate studies, Danielle Kurin participated in fieldwork in several archaeological sites in Peru. She has numerous academic publications, including those covering her work on cranial surgery in ancient Peru.

Despite the advances in medical technologies and clinical practice, cranial surgery continues to be a complicated procedure. Yet nearly 2,000 years ago, early Peruvian neurosurgeons were already performing trepanation, a surgical procedure which involves removing small portions of a patient’s skull to treat injuries.

Several archaeological findings suggest that the premodern neurosurgeons had tremendous success rates with their operations. So much that the survival rate was around 80 percent during the Incan era. This is nearly twice the survival rates of modern American neurosurgeons (50 percent) during the American Civil War some 400 years later.

Unlike modern cranial surgical procedures that are performed in conjunction with antibiotics and anesthesia, ancient Peruvian surgeons managed the patient’s pain using maize beer along with wild plants, such as coca and wild tobacco. They used natural antiseptics like balsam and saponin to control the spread of infection.

While teaching archaeology at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2013 to 2022, Danielle Kurin, PhD, focused her research efforts on the ancient peoples of the central Andes. Among Danielle Kurin’s abiding interests is ancient civilizations spanning what is today Peru and Bolivia.

As explored in a 2015 Smithsonian article, one of the most enduring legacies of the Inca Empire was its network of highways, which spanned a pair of main arteries and numerous side routes. The impetus of this system, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was the Incan leader Huayna Capac. While he ruled from the high altitude capital of Cusco, he preferred the balmier climes near the equator, and ordered the building of Quito as a second capital.

With more than a thousand rugged miles to traverse, Huayna Capac marshaled the efforts of able-bodied men from communities along the route. He was actually expanding and improving a narrow roadway, the Quapaq Nan, that had served communities for centuries. The completed highway, with guest houses along the way, was described as being flat and straight, to a point where 16th-century Spanish traveler Agustin de Zarate noted that “a cart could be rolled along it.” With this highway finished, Huayna Capac promptly ordered that a similar route be built along the coast.

These projects represented the apex of Inca culture, and at the time of Huayna Capac’s passing in 1527 he was still trying to incorporate northern regions within an expanding empire. Unfortunately, a civil war followed, with conquistadors in 1532 introducing a panoply of diseases that reduced the indigenous Andean population by half. Despite the many upheavals, though, the paving stones continue to mark this centuries-old road system that visitors can traverse to this day.

A former assistant professor and tenured associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Danielle Kurin, PhD, possesses extensive experience in the study of the indigenous people of Latin America. Dr. Danielle Kurin is a member of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA), an organization that advances the field of archaeology.

The SAA supports research in Latin America through the H. and T. King Grant for Precolumbian Archaeology, which may help researchers unearth answers to questions in Latin American culture and history. The King Grant is for field research, laboratory work, collection study, and the compilation and analysis of data sets.

Those interested in applying for the grant must have a degree in archaeology or a related field. Further, senior scholars or early-career archaeologists/scholars who have earned a degree in the past five years may have an advantage in receiving the grant. Learn more about the King Grant and applications for the grant at http://www.saa.org.

Danielle Kurin holds a PhD in anthropology and served as an assistant professor and then tenured associate professor of bioarchaeology at the University of California, Santa Barbara Department of Anthropology. Aside from teaching anthropology, Dr. Danielle Kurin also engages in field and laboratory analysis of bones from ancient human remains using a variety of techniques.

Ancient DNA, also referred to as aDNA, helps researchers answer important questions regarding the origin, distribution, and evolutionary changes of pathogens and their diseases. Aside from identifying the presence of pathogens in remains, aDNA study of excavated bones and teeth can help determine the sex of an individual and identify close genetic relatives.

While this may be appealing for the purpose of historical studies, contamination of human and pathogen DNA in materials has hindered the widespread adoption of aDNA analysis. Contamination of material can occur in the field, museum, or laboratory, since modern DNA may be accidentally introduced during the process of handling or cleaning. Contamination reduces the amount of aDNA available for analysis in materials, minimizing usable information.

To reduce the chance of errors from contamination during analysis and also maximize usable aDNA, researchers have developed procedures to correct for sample contamination. One such standard practice is the extraction of aDNA under thorough clean-room conditions. This entails the use of filtered air systems, as well as UV and bleach treatment of surfaces. In addition, special adapters are employed to tag molecules present during the time of extraction to help identify and separate additional molecules that may be added accidentally during sequencing steps.

Danielle Kurin, PhD, is a bioarchaeology professor and forensic anthropologist formerly with the University of California, Santa Barbara. With extensive field experience in the Andes region, Danielle Kurin is author of the book The Bioarchaeology of Societal Collapse and Regeneration in Ancient Peru (Springer, 2016).

In the work, Dr. Kurin explores the sudden, catastrophic demise of the Wari Empire a millennia ago, after the Wari had controlled a region the size of contemporary Peru for 500 years. With reasons for this collapse still not fully understood, this decline paved the way for the Inca to come to power around 1400 AD and form a new empire encompassing the “spine of South America.”

Dr. Kurin’s research of hundreds of skeletons reveals links between the last remaining populations of imperial Wari and the Chanka society that emerged in its wake. Unlike the Wari, the Chanka did not create elaborate cities or develop major commercial networks and written systems. In addition, they left behind relatively few goods and tools as evidence of their society.

As Dr. Kurin describes it, “prehistoric state fragmentation” of the Wari led to unprecedented genocidal attacks, displacement, and mass migrations. With community health impacted, individual life spans were reduced and access to clean water and nutritious food became less equally distributed.

At the same time, the Chanka began to display remarkable societal resilience mechanisms. These included trepanation medical procedures, new clan-like social formations, and religious practices centered on the worship of mummified ancestor-chief bodies. The archeological record reveals this upheaval and regeneration process in a novel way.