Dr Heidi Dawson-Hobbis

Senior Lecturer

School of History, Archaeology and Philosophy

Heidi.Dawson-Hobbis@winchester.ac.uk

+44 (0)1962 827437

We encourage our staff and students to be enterprising in all they do and we maintain close ties with regional employers

View content

Biography

I became a Lecturer in Biological Anthropology at the University of Winchester in June 2017, and will be teaching on the new BA (Hons) degree in Anthropology and the MSc in Human Osteology and Funerary Studies. Prior to this I worked as a Lecturer in Forensic Anthropology at Kingston University (2013-14 and 2016-17) and as an Associate Teacher in Biological Anthropology at the University of Bristol from 2011.

I obtained my undergraduate degree in Archaeology at the University of Bristol in 2001, a Master’s degree in Osteoarchaeology at the University of Southampton in 2005, and my PhD from the University of Bristol in 2011. I have worked as a commercial archaeologist and a self-employed osteoarchaeologist, specialising in human remains analysis and reporting as well as teaching lifelong learning classes for various groups and museums.

Areas of expertise

Human osteology and paleopathology
Developmental osteology
Archaeology/Anthropology of childhood
Human evolution
Forensic anthropology
Funerary archaeology

Publications

Monographs

Dawson, H. 2014. Unearthing late medieval children: health, status and burial practice in southern England, BAR British series 593, Archaeopress, Oxford.

Book chapters

Dawson-Hobbis, H. 2024. The Sense of Touch in Relation to Working with Archaeological Human Skeletal Remains. In: C. Welch and J. Shadrack (eds) Religion, Death and the Senses. Equinox, Religion and the Senses Series.
Dawson-Hobbis, H. and David, J. 2024. 'Uncovering the lives of late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century inhabitants of Bristol through osteoarchaeological and documentary analysis' in E. Craig-Atkins and K. Harvey (eds) 'The Material Body: embodiment, history and archaeology in Industrialising England, 1700-1850'
Dawson-Hobbis, H. 2018. Diverse burial practices from a late medieval cemetery in Somerset, in: Holst, M and Alexander, M. (eds), Trends in Biological Anthropology Volume 2 British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, pp 28-34. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Dawson-Hobbis, H. 2017. Interpreting Cultural and Biological Markers of Stress and Status in Medieval Subadults from England, in: Murphy, E. and Le Roy, M. (eds), Children, death and burial: archaeological discourses, pp 216-26. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Dawson, H. 2016. Precious things: examining the status and care of children in late medieval England through the analysis of cultural and biological markers, in: Powell, L., Southwell-Wright, W. and Gowland, R. (eds), Care in the Past: Archaeological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, pp 53-69. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Journal articles

Urban C., Blom A., Avanzi C., Walker-Meikle K., Warren A.K., White-Iribhogbe K., Turle R., Marter P., Dawson-Hobbis H., Roffey S., A. Inskip S., Schuenemann V.J. (2024) Ancient Mycobacterium leprae genome reveals medieval English red squirrels as animal leprosy host Current Biology Vol. 34 Iss. 10, May 2024, 2221-30.
Michael Taylor, G, White-Iribhogbe, K, Cole, G, Ashby, D, Stewart, G.A. and Dawson-Hobbis, H. 2024 Bioarchaeological investigation of individuals with suspected multibacillary leprosy from the mediaeval leprosarium of St Mary Magdalen, Winchester, Hampshire, UK Journal of Medical Microbiology Volume 73, Issue 2
Dawson, H. and Robson Brown, K. 2013. Exploring the relationship between dental wear and status in late medieval sub-adults from England, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 150: 433-441.
Dawson, H. and Robson Brown, K. 2012. Childhood tuberculosis: a probable case from late medieval Somerset, England, International Journal of Paleopathology 2: 31-35.
Quam R., Sanz M., Darua J., Robson Brown K., Garcia R., Rodriguez L., Dawson H., Rodriguez R., Gomez S., Villaescusa L., Rubio A., Yague A., Ortega Martinez. M., Fullola J.M., Zilhao J., Luis Arsuaga J. 2015. The Neanderthals of northeastern Iberia: new remains from the Cova del Gegant (Sitges, Barcelona), Journal of Human Evolution 81: 13-28.

Book reviews

Dawson, H. 2016. Medieval childhood: archaeological approaches. Edited by D. M. Hadley and K. A. Hemer, in Childhood in the Past 9: 79-81.
Dawson, H. 2016. Digging for Richard III: How archaeology found the King by Mike Pitts, Chartered Institute for Archaeologists.
Dawson, H. 2016. The Bones of a King: Richard III rediscovered by The Greyfriars Research Team with Maev Kennedy and Lin Foxall, Chartered Institute for Archaeologists.

Return to the Staff Directory

Research interests

My PhD research, titled 'Unearthing Late Medieval Children: Health, status and burial practice in southern England', focussed on the health and status of children in late medieval England. I explored the relationships between age, growth, indicators of stress and disease, and location of burial. My research also focussed on recording wear patterns on deciduous molar teeth and explored how these may relate to both the age and status of individuals; a dental wear chart was created to aid in my analysis (see Dawson & Robson Brown 2013). This also focussed my archaeological interests on medieval burial practice, including the differential treatment of the body and diverse burial practices, as well as in the archaeology of childhood and gender.

My two main current research projects are: an analysis of a high-status commingled collection of early medieval human remains from Winchester Cathedral, and an exploration of the population of a 19th-century cemetery from Bristol. The first project is utilising forensic osteometric techniques to aid in the re-association of bone elements to individuals. The second project involves the analysis of several named individuals, which will be utilised to test various methods used for assessing age at death, sex determination and parturition in females, as well as exploring new sexing methodologies using the dentition. An exploration of pathologies on both these collections is also ongoing, with evidence for surgical interventions and post-mortem dissections occurring at the 19th-century Bristol cemetery.

Supervision of research students

I welcome enquiries about postgraduate research. My areas of supervision are: Human osteology: including developmental osteology, dental anthropology, and palaeopathology. Funerary archaeology with particular interest in the medieval and post-medieval periods.