Barbara Hausmair

Barbara Hausmair is a Professor of Historical Archaeology at the University of Innsbruck. Her research focuses on identity formation in times of crisis, mortuary practices, and the archaeology of 20th-century conflict in Central Europe. Her studies on untimely death and the burial of unbaptized children, initiated during a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the Zukunftskolleg of the University of Konstanz, explore the intersection of parental grief, illicit mortuary rituals, and broader socio-religious conflicts in the later Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.

She has introduced innovative methodologies for integrating bioarchaeological analysis with cultural concepts of age and has deconstructed the popular archaeological narrative of medieval "eaves-drip burials" as a manifestation of folk beliefs in post-mortem baptism. Her widely published research demonstrates how medieval communities negotiated the ambiguous post-mortem status of unbaptized infants through subversive burial practices, revealing these acts as resistance against ecclesiastical authority. Through the lens of critical archaeology, her most recent research explores how historical responses to infant death can foster reflection on the ways modern legal and medical frameworks intersect with parents’ intimate experiences of pregnancy loss and infant death, highlighting the need for greater sensitivity in how contemporary societies recognize and support families navigating the loss of a child.

Links:

https://www.uibk.ac.at/archaeologien/institut/mitarbeiter/hausmair-barbara/barbara_hausmair.html.en

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barbara-Hausmair-2

https://www.kritischearchaeologie.de/en/