Welcome to
Caren Bendror’s
Virtual Office
I’m Caren – forensic anthropologist and bioarchaeologist
I study how human bodies—living and dead—shape and sustain social worlds. Through bioarchaeology, I examine how labor, movement, and inequality are written into skeletal remains, and how past communities created continuity through the management of the dead. As a Native South American scholar, I am deeply committed to ethical, community-engaged archaeology.
My work connects osteology with mortuary archaeology and landscape archaeology to explore how communities responded to large-scale social change. I am particularly interested in moments of transformation—shifts in subsistence, migration, monumentality, and territorial organization—and in how those shifts were absorbed by human bodies. At the same time, I examine how the dead were treated not simply as remains, but as continuing participants in social life, integrated into architectural, environmental, and ancestral systems that outlasted individual lifetimes.
Although much of my recent research has focused on island and coastal societies, my work has taken me across the British Isles, North America, the Middle East, and the Aegean. I am especially drawn to hybrid geographies—places shaped by movement, maritime connectivity, and cultural interaction—and to the ways distinct regional traditions intersect to form broader landscapes of belonging.
As a Native South American scholar working in bioarchaeology, I approach the study of human remains with deep ethical awareness. I see skeletal remains not as specimens or collections, but as individuals who once lived, moved, worked, and were loved. This perspective informs my commitment to Indigenous archaeology, repatriation, and community-based collaboration. I work to bridge scientific methodology and Indigenous knowledge systems, recognizing that rigorous analysis and cultural accountability must move forward together.
Some Current Research Interests
Bioarchaeology
Focus on the study of human skeletal remains within their archaeological and mortuary contexts by utilizing methods from all four subfields of anthropology
Osteology & Forensics
Specialized knowledge of the human skeleton, its cartilaginous structures, and the archaeological methods required to assist with medicolegal death investigations.
Community-based Archaeology
Indigenous Archaeology, NAGPRA and Repatriation
Islandscapes and Hybrid Geographies
Theorizing landscapes, seascapes, and treescapes in order to show that these locations create a unique living environments
Landscape and Maritime Archaeology
The integration of both terrestrial and underwater archaeology in order to uncover human interaction.
Social Organization
Population histories, Biological Distance and Migration
“There is no such thing as a neutral educational process…”
This quotation captures how I approach teaching. Education is never neutral. It either reinforces existing systems, or it empowers students to question them.
In my classroom, I strive to create space for critical thinking without judgment. My role is not to dictate conclusions, but to provide tools — theoretical, methodological, and ethical — that allow students to engage deeply with complex issues. I run a student-centered classroom where inquiry is encouraged, disagreement is productive, and intellectual growth is collaborative.
Students bring their own experiences, histories, and strengths into the classroom. My goal is to help them recognize that knowledge is not something passively received — it is something actively constructed. If they leave my courses thinking more critically, asking better questions, and feeling empowered to participate in shaping their world, then I have succeeded.
Some Courses I Teach