Profile

In 8 ½ years (1998-2006) at the University of Bradford (UK), Dr. Pastor held the post of Lecturer in Biological and Forensic Anthropology at the Department of Archaeological Sciences. From 1993 to 1995, he held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Physical Anthropology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Pastor has more than nine years experience in the field of forensic anthropology and an additional eight years of experience in osteology. Between 1995 and 1998, he worked for the United States Army Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii (CILHI) on archaeological search and recovery, and the anthropological analysis, identification and repatriation of remains of military personnel from past conflicts in Southeast Asia, China, the Pacific and other international locations. Dr. Pastor has also worked for the United Nations (UN-ICTY) as a forensic anthropologist in Kosovo (2000), and routinely consulted for medico-legal agencies, pathologists, and police departments in the United Kingdom and occasionally abroad. He was one of two Specialty Assessors in forensic anthropology for the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners (CRFP), and founding and council member for the British Association for Human Identification (BAHID). While in the UK, Dr. Pastor also held an appointment (2003-2006) on the Panel of Examiners for the Diploma in Forensic Human Identification, with The Society of Apothecaries of London.
Research Interests: Dr. Pastor’s research interests in biological anthropology extend to the biocultural interface between nutritional anthropology and dental anthropology, especially to the application of dental microwear analyses to the reconstruction of prehistoric diets, with a focus on South Asian (Pakistani and India) and New World cemetery sites. His forensic anthropology research interests include: the development of new methods of morphometric and histological age estimation and sex determination; dental morphology and population variation; histological methods for distinguishing human and non-human fragmentary bone; antemortem and perimortem skeletal trauma in contemporary and archaeological populations; and taphonomy and preservation of the skeleton and soft tissue. He was awarded a Research Grant in 2003 from the British Academy to collect metric data on vertebral sexual dimorphism from several international documented skeletal collections. In addition, Dr. Pastor has been awarded a research grant from the University of Bradford Research Fund, and several Overseas Conference Travel Grants from The British Academy and The Royal Society.