About The Body Blog: Explorations in Science and Culture:
WINNER OF THE 2016 FLORIDA AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION SILVER MEDAL PRESIDENT’S AWARD IN NONFICTION.
Natural selection has been honing the human form for millions of years. During that time, our brains have enlarged, our mouths have gotten smaller, our guts have been streamlined, and we’ve inhabited every ecological niche on the globe. And although we are a single species, with bodies that are both adaptable and intellectually malleable, how we live impacts our bodies in vast and often astounding ways. It all comes down to culture.
This book explores the numerous ways our bodies are affected by culture. Why do we mutilate our teeth, tattoo our skin, bind our feet, or deform our heads? How do some of our most intriguing cultural inventions – cooking our food, transplanting organs, transfusing blood, or treating infectious disease – impact our survival?
What about some of the darker aspects of culture? Why do we bury our dead? When did cremation first take root? How did embalming evolve? What compels the act of cannibalism, necrophilia, or grave robbing? These questions provide insight into our species, for how we treat the dead speaks volumes about how we view the living.
The Body Blog celebrates the fascinating and complex processes that keep us alive and the impact of culture on our remarkable bodies.
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Author Bio:
Dr. Wentz is a former firefighter/paramedic who retired from Orlando Fire Department and went on to complete an MS and PhD in Anthropology at Florida State University where she specialized in the analysis of human remains with foci on ancient disease and population health. Dr. Wentz has analyzed remains in Florida, England, St. Croix, and Ukraine. She obtained forensic experience at the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida. She is the author of seven books, including Let Burn: The Making and Breaking of a Firefighter/Paramedic (Silver Medal winner in the 2014 FAPA President’s Awards for Memoirs); Chasing Bones: An Archaeologist’s Pursuit of Skeletons; Life and Death at Windover: Excavations of a 7,000-Year-Old Pond Cemetery; Searching Sand and Surf; and her first novel, The Mass of Men (Silver Medal winner in the 2014 FAPA President’s Awards for Genre Fiction and now an IndieReader Approved Book).