Constanze SCHATTKE

Constanze Schattke is a bioarchaeologist who studied biology and evolutionary anthropology in Kiel, Mainz, and Vienna. Her professional expertise includes ancient DNA and paleopathologies as well as the history of anthropology. Her current research focus is on the interconnection of different fields such as history and bioarchaeology to study the provenance of human remains in osteological collections. Here, she has worked together closely with communities from New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego, Chile. One of her main objectives is to help strengthen Indigenous’ identities through the careful study and analysis of ancestral human remains.
Since 2021, Constanze is a PhD student in the Vienna Doctoral School of Ecology and Evolution. Her interdisciplinary dissertation focuses on different contexts of violence found in osteological museum collections at the Natural History Museum Vienna, Department of Anthropology. Here she will combine bioarchaeological and forensic methods with historical approaches to create a comprehensive picture of collections with diverse provenance. To that end, she also looks at what constitutes a museum object, how human remains fall into that category, and how to deal with such legacies in a conscious and responsible manner.