BRISTOL, Tenn., Oct. 4, 2021 — King University’s Institute for Faith & Culture (IFC) welcomes King alumna Maria Liston, Ph.D., ‘82 as the 2021-22 speaker series, “Listen to Your Life,” continues Wednesday, Oct. 13, and Thursday, Oct. 14, with the IFC Annual Medical Lecture.
Liston is associate professor and chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. She pursues research as a skeletal biologist and archaeologist, focusing on the excavation and analysis of human remains and their mortuary contexts. She has been working in Greece for more than 30 years, studying skeletons on the island of Euboia. Her areas of specialization include Greek archaeology, skeletal biology and biological anthropology, paleopathology, and military and battlefield archaeology.
Liston will present “Looking Back to Earlier Pandemics: Plagues, Pestilence and the Origins of the Hospital in Early Christian Thebes, Greece” on Wednesday, Oct. 13, at 7 p.m. at Central Presbyterian Church. Guests are requested to observe the church’s masking and/or social distancing guidelines. On Thursday, Oct. 14, she will present “A Tale of Two Wells: Mothers, Midwives and Infant Mortality in Ancient Greece” at 10 a.m. in the Memorial Chapel on King’s main campus in Bristol.
“Dr. Liston’s research provides fascinating insight into the health and culture of early Christians in Greece,” said Martin Dotterweich, Ph.D., director of the IFC. “They lived alongside the specter of contagious disease, not unlike what our world is experiencing today. Her research has helped reveal the effects of these past epidemics, as well as the practices and outcomes of childbirth in this ancient culture. We look forward to sharing in Maria’s understanding of these cultures and to evaluating how much has changed – or not – over millennia.”
Liston is a 1982 graduate of King University, with majors in Classics and English. She also earned a Master’s degree in Classics from Indiana University, and a second Bachelor’s and Doctorate in Anthropology from the University of Tennessee. She is the co-author of “The Agora Bone Well,” and has two co-authored volumes in press on the Kavousi, Crete cemeteries, as well as numerous articles and book chapters.
For more information about the Institute, including the full schedule for the speaker series, visit king.edu/faithandculture.