Alexander Garcia-Putnam

Alex Garcia-Putnam is an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department and the Assistant Director of the Forensic Anthropology Identification and Recovery (F.A.I.R.) Lab at UNH. He is a historical bioarchaeologist who specializes in the intersections between inequality, violence, and epidemic disease. Alex’s bioarchaeological research is split between Louisiana and local projects in New Hampshire. His work in Louisiana focuses on a collection of skeletal remains from Charity Hospital (dating from the 1840s to the 1920s), an indigent or poor hospital in New Orleans. The individuals who make up the skeletal collections were the poorest inhabitants of the city, and they were subjected to violence, harsh labor demands, and epidemic disease, particularly yellow fever. Coupled with the inequalities they faced in life, in death their bodies were dissected and experimented upon without their consent, by the hospital’s medical students and staff. Their skeletal remains tell the story of their lived experiences and their postmortem fate. As an offshoot of this research, Alex has also begun a biohistoric project analyzing the hospital records from Charity, as well as local and regional newspapers and other sources to explore the lives of the individuals treated at Charity and to explore the role that yellow fever played in shaping the hospital, the city, and the country during the 19th century. Much of Alex's local work focuses on historic Poor Farms--facilities that traded room and board for agricultural labor--and the various forms of violence experienced by those who were sent to or elected to reside in almshouses or poor farms. These facilities were common across New England into the 20th century. Alex also works with collaborators to use remote sensing technologies to map unmarked historic burial grounds, local unmarked graves, and protect these spaces from disturbance and destruction.