In the summer of 2022, construction necessitated the relocation of a small 19th /20th century cemetery of nuns from southwest Denver. Before their reinterment, a team of local researchers and students worked with the Loretto Community to undertake a bioarchaeological analysis of the remains of the Sisters of Loretto. This ongoing project highlights community collaboration, education, and historical memory in the spirit of these women and their service to the Denver community.

Bio: Lauren Hosek (PhD Syracuse University 2020) is an assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder and a social bioarchaeologist with interests in skeletal approaches to embodied experiences of identity and social change. Broadly, her interests also include skeletal plasticity and the life course, paleopathology, materiality, religion and the body, and mortuary archaeology. Her research integrates skeletal analysis with the study of material culture and historical narratives to address the interactions between human bodies and their broader social, cultural, and physical environments. She is currently examining diet and mobility in early medieval Central Europe through the lens of stable isotopes, skeletal dental analysis, and archaeological data. She uses similar techniques to study different communities in 19th-century America.