Robert Jurmain

Robert Douglas Jurmain
Born1948 (1948)
Died2021 (aged 72–73)
EducationHarvard University
SpouseLynn Kilgore
Scientific career
FieldsPhysical Anthropology
Paleopathology
Paleoepidemiology
WorkplacesSan Jose State University
Thesis Distribution of Degenerative Joint Disease in Skeletal Populations  (1975)
William W. Howells

Robert Jurmain (1948 – 2021) was an American physical anthropologist.

Jurmain earned an A.B. in anthropology from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from Harvard. He joined the San Jose State faculty in 1975, and taught there until his retirement in 2004.

He is the co-author of several textbooks, including Introduction to Physical Anthropology, that "...had an enormous impact on generations of students and scholars". In addition, his monograph Stories from the Skeleton: Behavioral Reconstruction in Human Osteology (Gordon and Breach, 1999, ISBN 90-5700-541-7) discusses the problem of determining what a person did, based only on markers in the person's bones such as fractures or evidence of osteoarthritis. Jurmain demonstrates that much past inference of this type has been based on flawed or circular reasoning, and instead argues that a more rigorous approach to this sort of research is called for.

References

  1. ↑ Knüsel, Christopher (2013). The Routledge Handbook of the Bioarchaeology of Human Conflict. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. p. 299. ISBN 978-1-134-67797-9.
  2. ↑ Lewis, Barry; Jurmain, Robert; Kilgore, Lynn (2008), "About the Authors", Understanding Humans: Introduction to Physical Anthropology and Archaeology (10th ed.), Cengage Learning, p. xvi, ISBN 978-0-495-60474-7.
  3. ↑ Chin, Soo-Young (2022). "Robert Jurmain". Anthropology News. Archived from the original on 5 November 2025. Retrieved 8 October 2026.
  4. ↑ Review of Stories from the Skeleton by Sarah King (2003), Journal of Biosocial Science 35: 475–476, doi:10.1017/S0021932003224731.