Department of Anatomy Seminar by Professor Charlotte Roberts entitled “Captain of all the men of death: bioarchaeological approaches to the impact of tuberculosis on the past and its continuing influence on the present and future”

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infection caused by a bacteria, affecting humans and many other animals. A disease of poverty, it had all but disappeared by the late 1980s, but returned in the early 1990s. It remains a huge control challenge today. Bioarchaeologically the disease has a several thousand year old history. This seminar will start from my first encounter with TB in a living patient, and then my bioarchaeological work, starting with the very basic of analyses to the use of ancient DNA analysis. It is argued that the deep evolutionary perspective bioarchaeology has contributed to understanding TB today.