Rebecca Gilmour

Rebecca Gilmour received her BA in Archaeology at SFU in 2008, followed by an MSc at Durham University and PhD at McMaster University.

She is now an Assistant Professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. Her bioarchaeological research focuses on the intersection of biomechanics and palaeopathology to investigate relationships between health and function preserved in the human skeleton. Rebecca has participated in excavations on sites ranging temporally from the Bronze Age to Roman to Post-Medieval. Working for an archaeology firm to excavate a Roman cemetery and equestrian camp sparked her interest in the Roman world. Today she is still researching Romans, using biomechanical methods and cross-sectional limb bone geometries to investigate how people in different parts of the Roman world responded to and recovered from injuries and skeletal trauma. Rebecca’s research areas include fragmentary skeletal remains, modern humans, and osteological pedagogy, all of which contribute to her goals to better represent and account for human variation. By questioning actual and assumed links between pathology and impairment, she aims for her studies to illuminate the diverse range of past and present human experiences, including risk, disability, adaptation, and resilience.