Lucile Eleanor St. Hoyme (September 8, 1924 – November 15, 2001) was an American biological anthropologist who conducted research related to human variation, bioarcheology, and paleopathology. St. Hoyme served as an Assistant Curator in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History. St. Hoyme analyzed human remains excavated from the John Kerr (Buggs Island, Virginia) Reservoir Basin using a new bioarcheological approach combining data from other disciplines. Beyond her work with the Smithsonian collections, St. Hoyme also worked on FBI forensic cases in the 1960s with National Museum of Natural History Anthropology Curator J. Lawrence Angel.
Early life and education Lucile Eleanor St. Hoyme was born at the Garfield Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., on September 8, 1924, to Guy L. and Helen Bailey Hoyme. Her father, Guy L. Hoyme was a U.S. government architect. St. Hoyme started her career on April 6, 1942, as a seventeen-year-old assistant clerk-stenographer for Dr. Aleš Hrdlička (1942–1943) in the Division of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian. Hrdlička encouraged St. Hoyme to be accurate and detailed in her transcriptions and her mathematical analysis, and St. Hoyme continued to pursue this level of detail in her analysis and research throughout her life. After Hrdlička died, St. Hoyme worked under T. Dale Stewart between the early 1940s and mid-1950s, and St. Hoyme regularly working with Riley Mangum, the collections technician for Hrdlička.
While employed full-time by the National Museum of Natural History, St. Hoyme obtained a bachelor's in zoology in 1950 from George Washington University. St. Hoyme then earned a master's in biology from the same institution in 1953. Her master's thesis was titled, "The Role of Saliva Inheritance by the Ability to Taste Phenylthiocarbamide." St. Hoyme was also fluent in French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Greek, as well as Cyrillic, and was able to read many languages other than English.
St. Hoyme remained a caretaker for her parents throughout their lives and remained in northeast Washington, D.C., for her whole life, caring for her mother who had Alzheimer's disease and her father who became disabled later in life. St. Hoyme conducted personal genealogical research into her family history while she studied at Oxford University during her doctoral education and discovered that the "St." portion of her name had been removed when her family immigrated to the United States, so out of respect for her father, she waited to change her surname until after his death in September 1967. St. Hoyme was an active member of Wallace Presbyterian Church in Hyattsville, Maryland, and struggled with her disparate conservative Christian beliefs and her understanding of evolutionary theory.
Doctoral research and museum career St. Hoyme worked at the National Museum of Natural History throughout her life, taking on the role of a Museum Anthropological Aid in 1956. In 1957, St. Hoyme was awarded a National Science Foundation grant funding her doctoral education and research related to the accuracy of sex determination based on the human spine at Oxford University. While at Oxford, St. Hoyme also worked as a part-time anatomical demonstrator. After spending two and a half years participating in course and laboratory training as well as biological research at Oxford, St. Hoyme returned to the United States and to her role at the National Museum of Natural History in 1960. St. Hoyme became a Museum Specialist in 1961, and she later became a general anthropologist.
St. Hoyme earned her PhD in Anthropology from Oxford University in 1964, and the title of her doctoral dissertation was "Variation in Human Skeletal Characteristics." After receiving her PhD, she was promoted to Assistant Curator. St. Hoyme continued her research as an Assistant Curator until her retirement in 1982 and worked to author annual reports for the Department of Anthropology. In the 1960s, St. Hoyme worked under anthropology curator, J. Lawrence Angel, who advocated for her and encouraged her to remain active in publishing and teaching. St. Hoyme went on to publish her research related to sex determination based on the human pelvis, having previously published in article in 1957 on the delayed use of indices to estimate the sex of the individual based on the pelvis.
As an assistant curator, St. Hoyme worked with human skeletal collections, adding accessions, managing inventory and catalogue activity of the incoming specimens, searching the history of the acquisition and its excavation, conducting skeletal biological analysis for cataloguing purposes, and authoring reports related to the collection. St. Hoyme also received radiographic training and produced radiographic images of human skeletal remains, along with archaeological and ethnographic remains housed in the Smithsonian collections after the Smithsonian acquired an x-ray machine in the early 1960s. Because of her training in biological anthropology, St. Hoyme also collaborated with Angel on FBI forensic cases in the 1960s. Angel served as the primary consultant to the FBI until 1977, at which time the forensic consulting work fell to Douglas Ubelaker. After Angel's death, St. Hoyme wrote his obituary for the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
St. Hoyme was a human skeletal biologist who analyzed human morphological variations based on ecological and genetic influences related to individual and population levels. St. Hoyme analyzed the effects of nutritional stress on the human body in articles published in 1957 and 1984. She focused on population variation as a result of ecological differences and genetic factors, analyzing the relationship between the individual's climate and the nasal aperture form in 1965. St. Hoyme also worked with the Huntington Anatomical Collection at the Smithsonian Institution along with archaeological collections to study methods of organizing separated or comingled skeletal elements so that separated remains could be used for future biological anthropology research. Beyond human skeletal anatomy, St. Hoyme also studied comparative skeletal features in great apes.
John Kerr Reservation Basin Research Upon her return to the National Museum of Natural History from Oxford in 1960 and 1961, St. Hoyme was asked to examine skeletal remains excavated from the John Kerr (Buggs Island, Virginia) Reservoir Basin as part of the River Basin Survey to create an appendix for the Bureau of American Ethnology. William M. Bass had already conducted skeletal analysis in the summer of 1958 for the Smithsonian Institution, but St. Hoyme was asked to elaborate on his findings from the initial skeletal analysis. St. Hoyme reviewed his analysis and added additional metric data from two other sites, Tollifero from the late Archaic-early Woodland period (1000 BC – AD 500) and Clarksville from the terminal Woodland period (AD 800 – 1630). St. Hoyme compared the two sites based on demographic information, skeletal and dental pathologies, and mortuary treatments, including defleshing marks, as well as incorporating archaeological, biomedical, and historical data as part of her bioarcheological approach.
Ruthann Knudson notes that many established women archaeologists and anthropologists were called to help with the River Basin Survey as subject experts but not identified as co-authors in publications, including St. Hoyme who worked as a physical anthropologist on the project, along with Kate Peck Kent (textile specialist) and Florence Lister (ceramic specialist). St. Hoyme analyzed human remains from the Kerr Reservoir between 1947 and 1951 and documented evidence of scalping with noted defleshing marks. St. Hoyme authored publications in the early 1960s, but she was not mentioned or included as a contributing author in publications in the 1940s and 1950s for her earlier work with the Kerr Reservoir remains.
When St. Hoyme's report, "Human Skeletal Remains from the Tollifero (Ha6) and Clarksville (Mc14) Sites, John H. Kerr Reservoir Basin, Virginia," was published, the report notes that William M. Bass was conducting fieldwork and so not available to consult on the report when St. Hoyme was conducting comparative research, so "as a consequence the final presentation of the material, comparisons, and conclusions are Miss Hoyme's."
As part of her research, St. Hoyme utilized four categories of osteological changes associated with increasing pathology, and St. Hoyme used macroscopic and radiographic illustrations to study modifications in the cortical and endosteal bone, noting inflammation of the tibiae. St. Hoyme also incorporated descriptions of diseases occurring among the Native American people written by European explorers and settlers in the mid-Atlantic coastal region. Her analysis of taphonomy features mirror pathological modifications, interpretations of forensic evidence, including defleshing marks, and identification of pathologies, which are unique features for appendices written in the mid-twentieth century.
Fieldwork St. Hoyme conducted fieldwork to study the effects of urbanization and environmental changes on the physical health of human living populations. St. Hoyme traveled to Jamaica to gather anthropometric data for her studies of climatic and genetic influences reflected by the individual's phenotype, or physical appearance St. Hoyme traveled with Dr. Jane Phillips from Howard University during her trip to Jamaica. In 1969, St. Hoyme traveled to Poland, measuring crania and analyzing dental health, as dental disease and tooth loss serve as outward signs of stress markers and external pressure.
In the 1970s, St. Hoyme traveled with Phillips to Ethiopia to study the effect of the environment on human health. St. Hoyme also visited the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii in the mid-1970s to continue her studies of dental pathologies among the collections housed in the museum. St. Hoyme presented her research on the effect of the environment on dental pathologies with Dr. Richard Koritzer. St. Hoyme and Koritzer also co-authored research reports conducted in the Smithsonian Institution Conservation and Analytical Laboratory to compare human enamel in archaeological and modern tooth samples in order to study dental caries (tooth decay) frequency based on population and sex. St. Hoyme and Koritzer also collaborated on research related to the effect of metabolism on the frequency of dental caries, the chewing mechanism, and temporomandibular (TMJ) joint pathology.
During her fieldwork, St. Hoyme also collected biological and ethnographic objects for the Smithsonian Institution collections. Along with biological data from her fieldwork around the world, St. Hoyme also collected ethnographic materials, including textiles from New Delhi, India, and Yucatán, Mexico. Beyond her biological and ethnological research, St. Hoyme was also knowledgeable in botany and herbal medicine.
Professional career St. Hoyme was active in academic teaching and professional anthropological associations. St. Hoyme served as a professorial lecturer at American University and associate professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She also worked as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and Howard University. During her emeritus years, St. Hoyme was also a professional mentor for American University, Howard University, and George Washington University. St. Hoyme contributed to educational outreach programs at the Smithsonian Naturalist Center, serving on the advisory committee from 1981 until her death in 2001.