Karl Reinhard

Contact Information

My Story

Greetings,

I am Karl Reinhard, professor in forensic science in School of Natural Resources. I am also a fulbright commission senior specialist in botanical archaeology and served as a "flbrighter" three times: Brazil 2001, Brazil 2005, and Peru 2007. I have been a member of the UNL staff since 1989. I served in the Department of Anthropology from 1989 to 1999 before joining the School of Natural Resources in 2000.

My career has had many dimensions. In my early years, I was a field archaeologist in the southwest. My work with Linda Gregonis on Hohokam archaeology. In the past few years, I have returned to those roots, especially Ancestral Pueblo archaeology. Links to recent articles can be found in the publications tab of this site. In the next years, I will explore the cause of the modern diabetes epidemic among southwestern USA tribes from this archaeological perspective. With regard to diabetes, I have collected dietary data for the U.S. Southwest that spans a 10,000-year period. These data, when interpreted in context of new nutritional data that have been collected by other researchers, provide important insight into the relationship of plant use to cultural development and its effect on the evolution of human metabolism.

The main aim of my career between 1985 and 2005 was to find explanations for modern patterns of disease in the archaeological and historic record. I developed a new area of specialization, called archaeoparasitology. This is an approach to understanding the evolution of parasitic disease. It is also the topic of a course I developed for UNL students. Based on a Fulbright teaching-research award to Brazil in 2001, I helped edit a volume of papers on this topic.

I have also done research in Andean paleoethnobotany, which is the use of plants by ancient peoples. I began this research in 1988 with Chinchorro (an ancient tribe of Chilean Indians) mummy intestinal contents. The research was expanded in 1990, when I participated in NSF-funded excavation and autopsy of more than 100 mummies from the Moquegua Valley of southern Peru. My analysis of several hundred samples resulted in new methods for identification of Andean foods, and in the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic reconstruction of diet for the valley. Key results of the study defined the origins of maize agriculture, and subsistence specializations in different ecological zones of the valley. This work was augmented in 1993 when I and my colleagues completed trace elemental analysis of mummies. In 1996, I carried out ethnobotanical studies in Huancayo, Peru, and pioneered a new method of dietary analysis of dental calculus study of a formative skeletal series from Ilo, Peru. In 1997-1998, with funding from the Universidad de Tarapaca, Chile, I and my students traced the impact of the Inca Empire expansion on diet in ancient Chile. The most recent paper on that work can be found at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008069.

At one point, Sara LeRoy-Toren (Lincoln High School Science Focus Program) and I studied plant anatomy microstructure to identify the diet of Chinchorro people. We found evidence that the oldest cultures in the Atacama Desert subsisted on wetland species of plants. Previously, archaeologists thought that the cultures were completely dependent on marine animals: fish, shellfish and sea lions. The discovery of wetland plants was a surprise, since wetlands in the Atacama Desert had not been recognized. At the end of 2007, Chilean colleagues and I found a remote part of a small Atacama river valley that still had refugia of three of the four wetland types evidenced in the mummies. Cattail, horsetail, and sedges were growing abundantly. All of us realized then that we had overlooked these plant foods, largely because most of the wetlands disappeared under cultivation at the origin of agriculture in the region. Since then, we also looked at the fish remains and fish tapeworm prevalence. Some cemeteries are almost free of infection while others have a 33% prevalence of infection. What we found is that El Nino events alter the variety of fish available to coastal fisherman, even today, and this made and makes people more susceptible to infection today.

Since 2008, when I joined the UNL forensic science degree program, my responsibilities shifted from research to teaching. Since 1989, I served the state of Nebraska as a forensic scientist. Now, I am taking the lessons I learned at crime scenes and in the morgue to the classroom. I am teaching courses in the analysis of pollen and human remains in forensic settings.

In addition, I am spearheading the efforts to develop forensic science degree programs in other countries. As a result of this work, the UNL forensic science degree program has a partner with the Lagos State University College of Medicine's forensic science program in Nigeria. The forensic science degree program is in the final stages of developing a similar cooperative program with the Brazilian National School of Public Health at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. These joint ventures will provide valuable international experience for UNL forensic science students.

Selected Publications

Background

Education

Affiliations

• College of Education and Human Sciences, UNL
• Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, UNL
• Entomology, UNL
• Nebraska State Museum
• School of Biological Sciences, UNL

Awards

Professional Organizations

Websites

• Archeology and parasite research will take Searcey to Chile on Fulbright
• Bones of Contention Film
• Discovery Channel News Article - Unbrushed Teeth Reveal Ancient Diets
• Hohokam Indians of the Tucson Basin
• Sickness of Mummies - Discover Magazine
• Supervolcanoes Film
• The Ancient Art of Nit-picking
• Pathoecologist Karl Reinhard Reconstructing History
• American Scientist Article on Cannibalism

SNR Program Areas

• Applied Ecology

Areas of Interest/Expertise

• Relation of Ancient Diet to Modern Diabetes
• Origin and Pathoecology of Human Parasites
• Forensic Science
• International Education
• Archaeoparasitology
• Palynology
• Paleoethnobotany
• Ecology
• Humans and the Enivornment
• Paleoclimate
• Paleoenvironments
• Human Geography
• Human Dimensions of Natural Resources

Advising

Courses Taught