Alexis Boutin

Office

Advising Area

• General

Biography

To put it simply, I am a bioarchaeologist. My research focuses on ancient Near Eastern, Gulf, and eastern Mediterranean cultures, which I have cultivated through fieldwork in Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, and Crete. I have also worked on collections at the British Museum, University College London and, most recently, the Hearst Museum of Anthropology and the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology. My recent projects emphasize community collaboration and stakeholder-oriented interpretation and outreach.

To put it less simply, I am a broadly trained anthropologist whose research draws from biological anthropology, archaeology, and social theory, thus bridging the anthropological subfields. I use human skeletal remains, archaeological contexts, and ancient texts to explore embodied personhood in all of its iterations --gender, sex, age, class, kin relations, religion, etc. I interpret these personhoods by means of fictive osteobiographical narratives, which are framed in terms of a life course model.

Education

PhD, University of Pennsylvania 2008
BA, Pomona College 2000

Concentrations

Bioarchaeology, human skeletal biology, forensic anthropology, narrative interpretations of gender and identity; ancient Near East, eastern Mediterranean, Arabian gulf

Selected Publications & Presentations

2019
Alexis T. Boutin and Benjamin W. Porter. “The Elders of Dilmun: A Bioarchaeological Analysis of Masculiniy from the Peter B. Cornwall Collection.” In Life and Death in Ancient Arabia: Mortuary and Bioarchaeological Perspectives, L. Gregoricka and K. Williams, eds. University Press of Florida.

2019
Alexis T. Boutin and Matthew Paolucci Callahan. “Increasing Empathy and Reducing Prejudice: An Argument for Fictive Osteobiographical Narrative.” Bioarchaeology International 3(1).

2019
Alexis T. Boutin. “Writing Bioarchaeological Stories to Right Past Wrongs.” In Bioarchaeologists Speak Out: Deep Time Perspectives on Contemporary Issues, J. E. Buikstra, ed. Springer, pp. 283-303.

2018
Madison Long and Alexis T. Boutin. “A Skull's Tale: From Middle Bronze Age Subject to Teaching Collection 'Object'.” In Bioarchaeological Analyses and Bodies: New Ways of Knowing Anatomical and Archaeological Skeletal Collections, P. K. Stone, ed. Springer, pp. 213-230.

2017
Alexis T. Boutin, Madison Long, Rudy A. Dinarte, Erica R. Thompson. “Building a Better Bioarchaeology Through Community Engagement.” Bioarchaeology International 1(3-4): 191-204.

2016
Alexis T. Boutin, “Exploring the Social Construction of Disability: An Application of the Bioarchaeology of Personhood Model to a Pathological Skeleton from Ancient Bahrain.” International Journal of Paleopathology 12: 17-28.

2014
Benjamin W. Porter and Alexis T. Boutin, editors. Remembering and Commemorating the Dead: Recent Contributions in Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Analysis from the Ancient Near East. University of Colorado Press.

2014
Alexis T. Boutin and Benjamin W. Porter. “Commemorating Disability in Early Dilmun: Ancient and Contemporary Tales from the Peter B. Cornwall Collection.” In Remembering and Commemorating the Dead: Recent Contributions in Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Analysis from the Ancient Near East, B. W. Porter and A. T. Boutin, eds. University of Colorado Press, pp. 97-132.

2014
Alexis T. Boutin, Whitney R. McClellan, and Daniel A. Cusimano. “Life and Death at Tell en-Naṣbeh: A Bioarchaeological Analysis.” In "As for me, I will dwell at Mizpah ...": The Tell en-Naṣbeh Excavations after 85 Years. A. Brody and J. R. Zorn, eds. Gorgias Press, pp. 31-58.

2012
Alexis T. Boutin, Gloria L. Nusse, Sabrina B. Sholts, and Benjamin W. Porter. “Face to Face With the Past: Reconstructing a Teenage Boy from Early Dilmun,” Near Eastern Archaeology 75(2): 68-79.

2012
Benjamin W. Porter and Alexis T. Boutin. “The Dilmun Bioarchaeology Project:  A first look at the Peter B. Cornwall Collection at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 23: 35-49.

2012
Alexis T. Boutin. “Written in Stone, Written in Bone: The Osteobiography of a Bronze Age Craftsman from Alalakh.” In The Bioarchaeology of Individuals, A. L.W. Stodder and A. M. Palkovich, eds. University Press of Florida, pp. 193-214.

2011
Breathing New Life into the Evidence of Death: Contemporary Approaches to Bioarchaeology, A. Baadsgaard, A. T. Boutin, and J. E. Buikstra, eds. SAR Press.

2011
Alexis T. Boutin. “Crafting a Bioarchaeology of Personhood: Osteobiographical Narratives from Alalakh.” In Breathing New Life into the Evidence of Death: Contemporary Approaches to Bioarchaeology, A. Baadsgaard, A. T. Boutin, and J. E. Buikstra, eds. SAR Press, pp. 109-133.