Academic Career
About Carter
Carter Clinton is a doctoral candidate and Assistant Curator of the W. Montague Cobb Research Laboratory at Howard University, located in Washington, DC hailing from Brooklyn, NY. His research explores the New York African Burial Ground (NYABG), a historic burial site used during the 17th and 18th centuries in lower Manhattan. He currently reconstructs the lifestyles, diets, and environmental conditions of the NYABG population. Carter has elucidated evidence of 17th century pottery factories, vegetative diets of the population, and possible causes of their death by bacterial pathogen.
Carter is a member of several scientific organizations including the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the American Society of Human Genetics, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also an associate member of Sigma Xi where his research has been featured in their semi-annual journal American Scientist. Carter is a National Geographic Explorer and a Cosmos Foundation Scholar (with disctinction). He was named "Graduate Student of the Year" for the 2017-18 academic year.
Carter's research interests include genetic anthropolgy. evolutionary biology, molecular biology, and genetic engineering. He hopes to pursue a post-doctoral fellowship in the near future. His future research endevours include conducting research on understudied populations to discover disease susceptibilites and address them in contemporary populations through gene editing technology.
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About the New York African Burial Ground
The New York African Burial Ground (NYABG) is the burial site of an estimated 15,000 free and enslaved Africans located in lower Manhattan, steps away from City Hall. At the time of excavation in 1991, the remains of 404 individuals were brought to Howard University for analyses in the disciplines of skeletal biology, archaeology, and history. At the behest of the local African American community the skeletal remains were reburied leaving 74-cadaver associated burial soil samples for DNA investigation. To our knowledge, this project is the first of few to explore 400-year old burial soil. This multidisciplinary research using anthropology, microbiology, soil chemistry, and geospatial technology to explore the range of factors influencing the lifestyles of this historic NYABG population and the environmental factors that impacted them.
