Susanna, who edits our Journal, trained and taught happily as a science teacher in a local grammar school. Ten years ago, she joined a dig in the Cotswolds, excavating a Long Barrow and became completely hooked on what individuals from past ages can tell us about the lived experience of history, which often does not match up to the textbooks.

In 2023, she completed an MSc in Professional Human Osteoarchaeology at the University of Reading, in which she studied a cemetery from Roman Cirencester. She found that the individuals examined had a real story to tell, and so she is now completing a PhD on all the individuals from Roman Cirencester to learn what life was really like under Roman Rule in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE.

Susanna says: My talk will take people through what we do when an individual is first discovered in the archaeological context, how we analyse the bones and how to interpret what we find, as well as some of the more recent approaches and technologies that can be used. I will be including images of skeletons to illustrate this talk.