John D. Speth is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and Curator
of North American Archaeology in the Museum of Anthropology. He completed his BA
(1965) in Geology at the University of New Mexico, and his MA (1968) and Ph. D (1971) in
Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Speth studies hunter-gatherers, past and present,
New World and Old World. He is interested generally in the evolution of foragers diet,
subsistence strategies, and food processing technologies and, more specifically in the ways that
hunter-gatherers (and small-scale farmers) cope with seasonal and inter-annual unpredictability
in their resource base. Largely through fauna, he also is exploring the nutritional and economic
basis of Plains-Pueblo interaction in the American Southwest and Neanderthal hunting in the
Near Eastern Levant. In 1994 Speth formally launched a University of Michigan Department
and Museum of Anthropology Field Training Program in Archaeology, and since then has
taken many undergraduate and graduate students to southeastern New Mexico to excavate late
prehistoric mixed bison-hunting/farming communities along the western margins of the
Southern High Plains.
2001 (Speth, J. D., and E. Tchernov) Neandertal Hunting and Meat-Processing in the Near
East: Evidence from Kebara Cave (Israel). In Meat-Eating and Human Evolution,
edited by C. B. Stanford and H. T. Bunn, pp. 52-72. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2000 (Speth, John D.) Boiling vs. Baking and Roasting: A Taphonomic Approach to the
Recognition of Cooking Techniques in Small Mammals. In Animal Bones, Human
Societies, edited by P. A. Rowley-Conwy, pp. 89-105. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
2000 (Cordain, L., J. B. Miller, S. B. Eaton, N. Mann, S. H. A. Holt, and J. D. Speth) Plant-
Animal Subsistence Ratios and Macronutrient Energy Estimations in Worldwide Hunter
Gatherer Diets. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 71(3):682-692.
1998 (Speth, J. D., and E. Tchernov) The Role of Hunting and Scavenging in Neandertal
Procurement Strategies: New Evidence from Kebara Cave (Israel). In Neandertals and
Modern Humans in Western Asia, edited by T. Akazawa, K. Aoki, and O. Bar-Yosef, pp.
223-239. New York: Plenum Press.
1992 (Speth, J. D.) Protein Selection and Avoidance Strategies of Contemporary and Ancestral
Foragers: Unresolved Issues. In Foraging Strategies and Natural Diet of Monkeys, Apes
and Humans, edited by A. Whiten and E. M. Widdowson, pp. 105-110. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
1989 (Speth, J. D., and S. L. Scott) Horticulture and Large-Mammal
Hunting: The Role of Resource Depletion and the Constraints of Time and
Labor. In Farmers as Hunters, edited by S. Kent, pp. 71-79. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
