Research Affiliate, Museum of Anthropological Archaeology
About
Dr J. Alyssa White is a Research Affiliate at the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology.
Dr White is a 2026 Wenner-Gren Hunt Postdoctoral Fellow, focused on publishing her doctoral research. She completed her doctorate in Archaeology (DPhil) at the University of Oxford (May 2024), researching skeletal evidence for violence from the southwestern Japanese archipelago during the end of the Jōmon hunter-gatherer period through the early Yayoi agricultural period (ca. 2500 BC – 250 AD).
Dr White’s Master of Science (MSc) research focused on stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic and radiocarbon analysis of prehistoric hunter-gatherers from Cis- and Trans-Baikal, Siberia, Russia. The aim of her research was to expand upon the extensive chronological assessment and dietary analysis that has been carried out in Lake Baikal by the Baikal Archaeology Project by analysing individuals from regions previously underrepresented in the study.
Dr White has appeared in several documentaries, podcasts, and radio interviews in relation to her work on a 3,000 year old shark attack from the Japanese archipelago.
Research interests: Archaeology, Bioarchaeology, Trauma, Palaeopathology, Growth and development, Shark attack, Stable isotope analysis, Radiocarbon dating, Japanese Archaeology, Jōmon, Yayoi, Asian Archaeology, Technological transitions, Siberia, GIS, 3D analysis, 3D GIS, Statistics, Prehistoric Archaeology
