Robert Jurmain
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Robert Jurmain is a professor emeritus of
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
at
San Jose State University San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sy ...
. Jurmain holds an A.B. in
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
from
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
and a Ph.D. in
Biological Anthropology Biological anthropology, also known as physical anthropology, is a scientific discipline concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their extinct hominin ancestors, and related non-human primates, particularly from an e ...
from Harvard. He joined the San Jose State faculty in 1975, and taught there until his retirement in 2004. He is the author or coauthor of three textbooks on physical anthropology. In addition, his monograph ''Stories from the Skeleton: Behavioral Reconstruction in Human Osteology'' (Gordon and Breach, 1999, ) discusses the problem of determining what a person did, based only on markers in the person's bones such as fractures or evidence of
osteoarthritis Osteoarthritis (OA) is a type of degenerative joint disease that results from breakdown of joint cartilage and underlying bone which affects 1 in 7 adults in the United States. It is believed to be the fourth leading cause of disability in the w ...
. Jurmain demonstrates that much past inference of this type has been based on flawed or circular reasoning, and instead argues that a more rigorous approach to this sort of research is called for.Review of ''Stories from the Skeleton'' by Sarah King (2003), ''Journal of Biosocial Science'' 35: 475–476, .


References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American anthropologists University of California, Los Angeles alumni Harvard University alumni San Jose State University faculty {{US-anthropologist-stub