Jessica Cerezo-Román

My academic and professional trajectory has enabled me to study the human body and mortuary customs across fascinating ancient, historical, and modern contexts, employing cutting-edge methodological and theoretical archaeological approaches. One of my technical strengths is my expertise in analyzing human remains, particularly highly burned and fragmented remains, to reconstruct posthumous treatments of bodies and answer broader anthropological questions. I am one of the leading experts on ancient cremation in North America. I have worked with more than 2,800 inhumation and complex cremation burials from Prehispanic populations in Arizona, Northern Mexico, and Mesoamerica, Gallo-Roman and Medieval period burials in Belgium, Middle Gobi Bronze Age burials from Mongolia, Neolithic cremations from China, Neo-Punic and Early Roman cremations from North Africa, Late Stone Age cremations in Malawi, and cremations from the Archaic period in Greece.
I am also a forensic anthropologist and a member of the American Academy of Forensic Science. Throughout my experiences working with modern human remains, and previously as a Forensic Anthropology Postdoctoral Fellow in the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME) - Forensic Science Center, Tucson, Arizona, I developed methods to document human remains more accurately. I have worked with cases of migrant death, homicide, child abuse, and, more recently, with issues of social justice and reparations. This is exemplified by my current involvement as a forensic anthropology consultant in the Tulsa Race Massacre investigation since 2020. In addition, I have also worked on over 90 forensic anthropology cases (details upon request).
I also am currently the director of the bioarchaeological component of the El Palmar Archaeological Project, Campeche, Mexico, where I am analyzing Classic Period Maya unburned human remains and mortuary materials to better understand the construction, display, and legitimation of power manifest in the funerary practices and remains of subordinate elites (lakams) and their impacts on health. Other themes I study include the construction of memory, the intersection of group identities, and personhood. I have a long-term project that explores broader regional changes in funerary rituals in the Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, from CE 600 to 1450/1500. I theorize the body as both person and object to understand the special role of the corpse and the construction of memory. This perspective is especially useful because the study of skeletal remains, mortuary customs, posthumous treatments of the body, and archaeological contexts can be integrated in different ways to explore how different aspects of identity intersect, such as health, class, and aging, among others, and how these were portrayed, emphasized, and contested throughout funerary customs.
I also have two ongoing projects related to hunter-gatherers and issues of memory, commemoration, and ancestral connections to the land. In Malawi, Africa, I am analyzing mortuary practices, “token” burials, mobility, persistent places, and body manipulation by Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers. In an exciting new project in Belize, I am currently working on , analyzing cremated human remains from the Paleoindian and Archaic periods.
I have extensive national and international museum experience, including working for six years at the Arizona State Museum (ASM), Tucson, and two years in the Anthropology and Prehistory Section of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), Brussels, Belgium. I developed methods for my research and for working with human remains and burial artifacts from museum collections, which have significantly impacted how these remains are studied, treated, and curated. I am engaged in the broader context of how archaeological research influences contemporary descendant communities, repatriation, and NAGPRA.