Studying the Opioid Epidemic at Ground Level

Opioid overdose is now the leading cause of accidental injury death in the United States, surpassing both motor vehicle accidents and death by firearms. Specifically in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, the opioid overdose death rate nearly tripled between 1999 and 2015, claiming a cumulative 2,449 lives during that period. Figures like these led a White House commission to urge President Donald Trump to declare the U.S. opioid epidemic a national state of emergency in a report issued in late July.

If you ask Andrea López, an assistant professor in the UMD Department of Anthropology, it’s a call to action that’s long overdue.

Improving Policy to Address Migrant Health

Dr. Thurka Sangaramoorthy was featured in the Society for Medical Anthropology's Inaugural Series Edition on Improving Policy to Address Migrant Health, which was published on August 4th. Improving Policy to Address Migrant Health features policy insights from three anthropologists, including Dr. Sangaramoorthy, on border and migrant health and the relevance of medical anthropology.

Anthracite Heritage: Landscape, Memory and The Environment

Dr. Paul Shackel published an article in the Summer 2017 Issue of Open Rivers discussing the Anthracite Heritage.

Living with HIV as an Older Black Woman in Prince George’s County, Md.

Researchers with the University of Maryland Department of Anthropology and School of Public Health are calling attention to the unique and complex challenges faced by older Black women living with HIV in Prince George’s County, Md.

Research on The Hill Neighborhood

This summer archaeologists from the University of Maryland Department of Anthropology returned to Easton, Maryland to continue their research on The Hill neighborhood. This was their sixth summer of excavation on The Hill and they focused on the property of James and Henny Freeman, free African Americans who bought property and established an urban farm in the 1780s as the town was growing. The Freemans are the earliest African-American landowners currently identified in Easton, owning the site two generations before Emancipation. The earliest layers of the site date to this period, while later ones connect with African-American tenants living here since the 1870s. 

Archaeological and Historic Preservation Survey of Eckley Miners’ Village

During the summer 2017, the Department of Anthropology joined forces with Professor Don Linebaugh of the Historic Preservation program to undertake an archaeological and historic preservation survey of Eckley Miners’ Village. Professor Paul Shackel, along with former and current students (Mike Roller, V.

Alumna Profile - Megan E. Springate (PhD 2017)

Megan E. Springate is a graduate of the MAA and PhD programs in the Anthropology Department at the University of Maryland. An historical archaeologist, her dissertation focused on capitalism and identity creation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at a former resort site and women's retreat in New York State's Adirondack Park.