Team Members

Dr. Nicole Burt began working at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in 2014. Her position as Curator of Human Health & Evolutionary Medicine is part of the legacy of the Museum’s 2007 merger with HealthSpace Cleveland, which made human health a cornerstone of the Museum’s mission and programming. Dr. Burt facilitates the Museum’s ongoing commitment and connection to Cleveland’s medical and health communities. She is an advocate for fostering equitable partnerships between scientists, museums, and the communities with whom they work. As part of this commitment, she has taken on service roles to support community health in Cleveland, such as serving as co-chair and a member of the Cleveland Cuyahoga County Food Policy Coalition Steering Committee.

Dr. Burt is a biological anthropologist who works with both archaeological and modern human populations. Her research centers around the question “What does it mean to be healthy?” and utilizes the best research and educational practices to promote understanding and empower the Museum community to take action. Her interdisciplinary approach combines many methods, including histology, molecular analysis, and even interviews, to explore health through the lens of evolutionary medicine. Methods formation and testing are a key part of her research program, with a focus on microsampling innovation and applying techniques to new fields. In addition to her anthropological research, Dr. Burt contributes to the literature on bioethics in museums, informal learning pedagogy, and creating evolutionary medicine–informed curricula for medical education.

Much of Dr. Burt’s anthropological research uses a technique called stable isotope analysis, which measures the ratio of heavy to light stable isotopes—forms of elements (e.g., carbon or nitrogen) that have the same atomic number but a different number of neutrons—in a sample. Isotopes can be used to reconstruct past diets, study migration, or understand molecular preservation of samples. Dr. Burt’s microsampling technique even allows for reconstruction of maternal diet during pregnancy by analyzing the formation of recovered baby teeth.

Dr. Burt earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Alberta, a master's degree in forensic science from Michigan State University, and a bachelor's degree from Beloit College.

Research areas: Diet and health, food access, bioethics, early-childhood feeding practice, One Health, osteology, stable isotope reconstruction, methods testing, informal learning pedagogy

Dr. Emma Finestone uses archaeological fieldwork to investigate adaptive shifts in the human lineage that relate to the early manufacture and use of stone tools. The origins of toolmaking have important implications for our ancestors’ relationship with their environment and their ability to forage for a wide range of food resources. Dr. Finestone’s field projects in eastern Africa span evolutionary changes over the past 3 million years and focus on reconstructing the mobility, range expansion, and landscape use of toolmakers to illuminate how early tool technology facilitated the spread of human ancestors around the globe. She studies some of the earliest-known stone tools, which were used to butcher hippos more than 2.6 million years ago. Her work has received awards from the National Science Foundation, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, and the American Association of Biological Anthropologists.

Dr. Finestone is passionate about science communication and outreach. She is enthusiastic about sharing international fieldwork in human origins with the Cleveland community by acting as a local resource and ambassador for science. Before joining the Cleveland Museum of Natural History as Assistant Curator of Human Origins, Dr. Finestone served as Group Leader of Archaeology and Head of the Archaeology Laboratory Unit at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. Previously, she served as an instructor at Lehman College and Hunter College and as a research affiliate of the National Museums of Kenya.

Dr. Finestone received her Ph.D. in biological anthropology in 2019 from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Prior to her time at CUNY, she worked in the Conservation and Science Department at the Lincoln Park Zoo studying the foraging and tool behaviors of chimpanzees and gorillas. Dr. Finestone earned a B.A. with honors in anthropology and biology from the University of Chicago in 2010.

Research areas: Oldowan, paleoanthropology, lithic analysis, hominin evolution

Dr. Elizabeth (Ebeth) Sawchuk is a bioarchaeologist who studies modern human evolution and population history in Africa over the past 50,000 years. Her interests include how herding and farming spread into sub-Saharan Africa beginning approximately 5,000 years ago, and how ancient peoples navigated issues of climate change, shifting economic and land-use strategies, and contact with foreign groups. Her work integrates diverse lines of evidence from archaeology, skeletal biology, dental anthropology, and ancient DNA to understand how past peoples coped with major changes in their world and what lessons can be learned from their experiences.

Dr. Sawchuk has worked at field sites across eastern Africa and maintains an active research program in Kenya in collaboration with the Turkana Basin Institute and the National Museums of Kenya. Her research has been published in journals such as Antiquity, African Archaeological Review, the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Nature, Science, Science Advances, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and PLOS One (for more information, check out Dr. Sawchuk’s Google Scholar profile). Her work is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Turkana Basin Institute, and the National Geographic Society.

Dr. Sawchuk advocates for ethical research in anthropology; community-based approaches; and equity, diversity, and inclusion. She is committed to fostering equitable partnerships between archaeologists, curators, and the communities with whom they work, as well as developing best practices for museums’ stewardship of and policies for research on human remains. Recently, she co-organized the first ancient DNA and DNA conference held in Africa, hosted by the National Museums of Kenya.

Dr. Sawchuk earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Toronto and bachelor’s and master’s degrees, both in anthropology, from the University of Alberta. Prior to joining the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, she served as Banting Postdoctoral Fellow and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta, Canada. She holds additional academic affiliations as an Adjunct Professor in Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio; a Research Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University, New York; and a Research Associate with the Turkana Basin Institute, Kenya.

Research areas: Bioarchaeology, ethics, health and disease, dental anthropology, ancient DNA, Africa

Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University

Research Associate, Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, Indiana University, Bloomington

Dr. Brian Redmond has devoted much of his career to understanding the prehistory of northern Ohio. His expertise at finding and interpreting evidence of the region’s first human residents is helping to clarify our understanding of the cultures that prevailed from the end of the last ice age to the start of recorded history in Ohio.

Redmond developed a passion for archaeology as a college student, thanks in part to ample opportunities to do fieldwork. Named a Museum curator in 1994, he continues to tackle ambitious archaeological field projects, primarily under the auspices of the Museum’s members’ archaeology field school program called Archaeology in Action.

Redmond initially developed an expertise in the archaeology of later prehistory, A.D. 500 to 1650. This focus broadened considerably when opportunities arose to work at much older archaeological sites in northern Ohio. Notable among these are Paleo Crossing and Sheriden Cave, both of which date to the Paleoindian Period, approximately 11,000 to 10,500 B.C.

Redmond is among a handful of archaeologists in the state pursuing research. While he has worked on salvage archaeology projects—the most significant being the Danbury site on the Marblehead Peninsula, where evidence of repeated prehistoric occupation was uncovered during construction of a housing development—he is generally able to return to sites as often as necessary for his field research.

Two archaeological sites in northern Ohio have provided Redmond with an abundance of archaeological data to analyze and new questions to answer. The Heckelman Site in Erie County has revealed evidence of multiple occupations dating between 3,000 and 400 years ago. The presence of earthwork enclosures likely indicates that the area initially had ceremonial purposes. Similarly intriguing finds have come from the Burrell Orchard Site in Lorain County, which dates to the Late Archaic Period, 4,000 years ago. Excavations of this repeatedly occupied site have uncovered prepared clay floors that are unlike anything ever reported from this time period.

Redmond has also had opportunities to examine the excavated bones of ice age mammals for signs of butchering by humans. He has analyzed and authored research on two different mastodon skeletons, as well as the skeleton of a giant ground sloth. The latter revealed the oldest evidence of prehistoric human activity in Ohio.

Learn more about Dr. Redmond's research and fieldwork.

Curriculum vitae and comprehensive list of publications