Michigan's Museum curators and affiliated research scientists are actively involved in research all over the world—looking at simple hunters and gatherers, early farming communities, chiefly societies, and expansionist states and empires. Below are some examples of Michigan's ongoing archaeological research in North America, India, South America, Mesoamerica, Europe, Africa, and the Near East.

John D. Speth   John D. Speth is currently conducting research on two very different topics, one concerned with the emergence of forager-farmer interaction in the late prehistoric Southwestern United States, the other exploring the role of large-mammal hunting in the adaptations of Near Eastern Neanderthals toward the end of the Middle Paleolithic. In the Southwest, Speth has been excavating at two nearby and nearly contemporary villages, the Henderson Site and Bloom Mound.         These mixed farming-hunting villages, located in southeastern New Mexico at the interface between the Southwest and Plains, are providing valuable insights into the profound economic and social changes that these communities underwent during the 14th and early 15th century as they became increasingly committed to bison hunting and exchange with their corn-farming Pueblo neighbors to the west. Speth took the UMMA Field Training Program to the Henderson Site in 1994, 1995, and 1997, and then turned to nearby Bloom Mound in 2000 and 2003. He plans to return to Bloom Mound in 2009. In Israel, Speth has been analyzing the larger mammal remains recovered in the 1980s from the Middle Paleolithic deposits in Kebara Cave, a deeply stratified site on the Mediterranean coast near Haifa. After devoting several years to exploring basic taphonomic issues and demonstrating that Kebara's Neanderthal inhabitants were hunters of larger animals, not scavengers, he is now looking more explicitly at their hunting and transport decisions, and particularly at tantalizing new evidence that these archaic humans may have over-hunted their largest prey species,          particularly red deer and aurochs, forcing them to intensify their use of smaller, lower-ranked species such as fallow deer and gazelles. Speth plans to return to Israel again in the summer of 2005 to continue the analysis of the Kebara faunal collections, with the goal of developing a clearer understanding of the causes and the long-term behavioral and evolutionary consequences of gradually intensifying Neanderthal procurement strategies during the latter part of the Middle Paleolithic. Back to top

Richard I. Ford Richard Ford engages in three interrelated field research projects: paleoethnobotany, archaeology of the Archaic, and rock art. In addition, he is an ethnobotanist who does expert witness work for various Indian Pueblo nations. With the assistance of Dr. Heather Trigg, Dr. Ford is excavating a 19th century Spanish rancho near Lyden, New Mexico. The purpose is to detail rural trade networks and interethnic dependencies. The daily ceramics are Native American productions: plates from San Juan Pueblo, ollas from San Juan, cooking vessels of Apache and Nambe Pueblo production, and fancy ware from Santa Fe Trail and Camino Real purchase. The ranch did not make pottery but it did make all iron objects and tin ornaments. Ford works with Dr. Brad Vierra, who is the Los Alamos National Laboratory archaeologist, to assist San Ildefonso Pueblo to unravel the history of its maize. The research includes qualitatively assessing and measuring for morphometric analysis all archaeological cob and kernel fragments of maize from pre-contact sites in northern New Mexico. Many samples have been submitted for radio-metric dating. Archaeological kernels from dry shelters and kernels from cobs dating back to the 1880s collected by ethnologists and ethnobotanists and curated in museums have been submitted for DNA assessment. Ford is working with the Pueblo to learn the rules it follows to select culturally significant features, e.g., kernel color, and how they breed them. Maize from Jemez Cave is the oldest known from the Archaic period in northern New Mexico. The Pueblo continues to use "pure" color maize in all its rituals and in different traditional food recipes.     Ford has a career-long interest in the subsistence patterns, plant management techniques, and intellectual life of Archaic period cultures. He is assisting Dr. Severin Fowles as a paleoethnobotanist to identify and analyze plant remains sorted from flotation samples from the recently excavated Clements Site at Fort Burgwin, Taos County, New Mexico.      The site consists of many reoccupations over the preceramic millennia to form a complex of numerous hearth and baking pit types. The site is located in a pinyon-juniper forest with ponderosa pine on the upper slopes and a riparian habitat along the stream. Charcoal from these communities is abundant. The site represents the most extensive Archaic complex known in the area and the archaeological plant remains are well preserved. Ford assists the Vecinos del Rio community organization and the Bureau of Land Management to survey, record, and analyze petroglyphs from Mesa Prieta north of Espanola, New Mexico. Some 8,000 glyphs have been documented by 2004 and that number will probably double when the project is complete. The survey teams consist of Hispanic and Pueblo high school students and adult volunteers from the region. The glyphs cover a time period from 5,000 years ago to the late 20th century. The numerous Archaic petroglyphs provide insight into their world-view with some of the best bear paws and spirals associated with a recently discovered Archaic site. Historic Tewa Pueblo petroglyphs are carved with metal tools and are abundant. Several new religious shrine sites have been discovered with wonderful east-facing petroglyph panels. Hispanic rock art is frequently found and forms an unappreciated folk art in northern New Mexico. All data are stored on a GIS program that includes GPS-derived UTM points, drawings of each glyph, digital photographs, and a content analysis.   In addition to Dick's many research interests, he has been an expert witness for Okay Owingeh’s water rights case against the State of New Mexico. His role in the court case is to document water use for agriculture, grazing, and wild plant dependence. He actively serves on the advisory committee for developing San Ildefonso Pueblo’s museum and culture center. And he was recently appointed to the Education Advisory Committee for the Pueblo Studies Program at the North New Mexico College. His role will be to help develop an academic program for the Pueblo Studies Program including existing courses in the College, new courses, and the recruitment of faculty (mostly retired) to teach them. He will also suggest and arrange internship opportunities for the students to gain research experience. Back to top

Lisa C. Young Lisa C. Young’s research examines changes in the economic and social organization used by small-scale agricultural communities in the American Southwest. Her field work focuses on the Homol'ovi area of northeastern Arizona, specifically on a site (AZ J:14:36) where semi-subterranean habitation structures, called pithouses, were the housing form of choice from AD 600 until the early 13th century. Dr. Young's research explores changes in community organization through a detailed investigation of storage techniques, wild resource utilization, agricultural strategies, domestic architecture, and village organization. She is currently working on a project that examines variation in early farming populations of northeastern Arizona between AD 200 and 800. She is also beginning a project that compares pithouse and pueblo communities that inhabited the Homol'ovi area between AD 1100 and 1250. To read more about this project and learn how you might participate, click here. Public outreach and student education are integral to her research.     Basketmaker III pithouse occupied between the 6th and 7th centuries A.D. ©1990 Lord         Pueblo III pithouse occupied during the 12th century A.D. ©1998 Lord Back to top

Augustin F.C. Holl The Sine Ngayene Archaeological Project (SNAP) aims to investigate the structure and dynamics of the cultural landscape along the Petit-Bao Bolong Drainage in South Central Senegal. The landscape is dotted with Megalithic features of different size and shapes; their clustering, local, and regional density vary considerably. The archaeological research conducted in the area aims to understand and explain the diversity of megalithic feature, their patterns of clustering and aggregation, as well as their relationship with inhabited and craft production sites.      View of the excavation in progress at megalithic Circle #52, located in the northeastern periphery of Sine-Ngayene site. Balks are left for stratigraphic control.   Sine Quarry with elongated depressions, negatives of the removal of shaped megalithic pillars. A broken and abandoned megalith can be seen in the foreground. The study area, the Petit-Bao-Bolong Drainage, measures 25 km long NE-SW and 5-10 km wide. All of the major megalithic cemeteries in the project area have been mapped. A pedestrian survey is being conducted along the intermittent river shore, with hundreds of small village sites found in the northeastern portion of the study area. Four monuments were tested at Sine Ngayene, the most spectacular site of this part of the country: the central double-circle, the peripheric megalithic circle #52, the Warrior Tumulus #01, and the poorly preserved Tumulus #02. From the winter of 2004, the project has focused on the total excavation of a whole megalithic cemetery at Ngayene II with the aim of deciphering the organization and structures of the graveyard as a "Ritual Space."       View of the "Warrior burial" from Sine Ngayene Tumulus #01. He is buried with a long iron dagger, probably in a leather sheath, that can be seen laying on the right side of the chest, and seven long—ca. 30 cm—iron spear heads deposited on the left shoulder. He had an iron handle of what may have been a flywhisk as well as an iron-tipped walking stick. Additional items not visible on this picture include a thin alloyed copper wire necklace with a biconical copper pendant and two iron rattles, one at each ankle. Back to top

Kent V. Flannery Since 1966, the Valley of Oaxaca in Mexico's southern highlands has served as a laboratory for testing theories of sociocultural evolution. A consortium of scholars from the Universities of Michigan, Purdue, Georgia, and Southern Illinois, the Field Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History are investigating the valley's development from the Ice Age to the Spanish Conquest of AD 1521. Many University of Michigan students, graduate and undergraduate, have participated in surveys and excavations in Oaxaca.          Work in progress at Guilá Naquitz cave, Oaxaca, Mexico Among the sites excavated by Kent V. Flannery are Cueva Blanca—a cave occupied by hunters and gatherers as far back as 10,000 BC—and Guilá Naquitz, a rockshelter occupied during the beginnings of agriculture, 8000-4000 BC. Guilá Naquitz has produced the oldest gourds, squash, runner beans, and corn ever directly radiocarbon dated, and research continues on those plants today.   Workman cradles a jade statue from a temple at San José Mogote, Oaxaca, Mexico (AD 20).   Among the sites excavated by UMMA’s Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus is San José Mogote, the oldest permanent agricultural village in the valley (founded prior to 1500 BC). This village has produced the largest sample of houses known for the Early and Middle Formative periods (1500-500 BC). It has also produced Mexico's oldest known defensive palisades and ceremonial buildings (1300 BC), early use of adobes (850 BC), the first evidence for Zapotec hieroglyphic writing (600 BC), and early examples of architectural terracing, craft specialization, and irrigation (1150-850 BC) As of 2005, some 12 volumes on the discoveries in Oaxaca have been published by the Museum of Anthropology, and research there is projected to continue well into the 21st century. A list of volumes still in print can be found in the Publications section. Back to top

Joyce Marcus The coast of Peru has been the focus of another University of Michigan project. To address the topic of "community self-sufficiency" versus "community specialization," Dr. Joyce Marcus selected Cerro Azul, a prehispanic coastal site covering 80,000 square meters, for extensive excavation and ongoing analyses.  It is generally believed that Peru's early coastal communities were self-sufficient (3000 BC), but by the Inca period (AD 1470-1530), many were specialized. On the coast such specialization included farmers who did not fish and fishermen who did not farm. The question, then, is—When did such specialization arise? Did specialized communities exist before the Inca, or was such specialization imposed by the Inca after AD 1470?  The Kingdom of Huarco, covering about 150 km2, was one of the coastal polities eventually incorporated into the Inca Empire. That kingdom is located in the lower Cañete Valley, 130 km south of Lima, and surrounded by polities such as Chincha to the south, Mala to the north, and Lunaguaná to the east. Because Lunaguaná lay inland and Huarco was on the coast, the two polities had complementary environmental settings and exchanged several products.      The site of Cerro Azul—lying between the sea cliffs (Cerro Centinela and Cerro del Fraile) and a mountain (Cerro Camacho)—has as its most prominent features 10 buildings made of tapia, thick walls of poured mud that seem to have dried in place between wooden frames. Marcus excavated all of Structure D, a 1640 square meter tapia compound that was the residence of an elite family and its staff. Divided into at least a dozen rooms and four patios, Structure D included living quarters, a large kitchen, multiple storage rooms, unroofed work areas, and a series of doors and corridors that controlled access to the interior of the building.      A significant activity that took place in Structure D was the storage of small fish—mostly sardines and anchovies—in sand-filled rooms. Such fish, if spread out on a pavement of beach cobbles, can dry in a single day. The fish were then stored in layers of sand, which prevented the fish from touching each other, and the hygroscopic properties of the sand furthered the drying process by extracting the remaining moisture. Marcus' work has shown that Cerro Azul specialized in fishing before the Inca arrived. Evidently noble families, each with its retinue of commoners, lived in tapia compounds surrounded by storage buildings. These families oversaw hundreds of fishermen who procured more anchovies and sardines than the community could use. These surplus fish were temporarily stored in layers in sand-filled rooms and later shipped inland via llama caravans.      Marcus' research at Cerro Azul indicates that economic specialization, at the level of "fishing village" versus "farming village," did exist before the Inca conquest, and that under the aegis of a local hereditary lord, the people of Cerro Azul were part of a larger economic system in which agricultural and alpaca wool moved to the coast while fish moved inland. (For bibliographic references, see link to Marcus CV.)     In addition to the Cerro Azul project, Dr. Marcus is working on the rise and fall of ancient Maya dynasties, paying special attention to the politically powerful dynasty at Calakmul in Campeche, Mexico. Her ongoing work is in collaboration with Dr. William J. Folan, Centro de Investigaciones Históricas y Sociales, Universidad Autónoma de Campeche, Mexico. Together, they have focused on the polity and the city, publishing articles on the settlement pattern, roads, buildings, tombs, temples, palaces, and hieroglyphic texts.  As a result of ongoing work, we know Calakmul's domain was on a political par with Tikal's and that the two capitals were rivals, on and off, from AD 500-900. We have learned that noble Calakmul women were married to lords in other cities, sent out to forge political ties. The kingdom of Calakmul, once thought to be a lesser polity, has turned out to be the largest with the most far-flung allies. The founding of the Calakmul dynasty as well as its growth and collapse are ongoing projects. (For more information, see Marcus CV.) Back to top

Jeffrey R. Parsons The Lake Texcoco Survey Project—directed by Jeff Parsons (University of Michigan) and Luis Morett (Museo Nacional de Agricultura, Mexico). Archaeological, ethnographic, and historic sources indicate that aquatic flora and fauna were key components of economies in the Valley of Mexico throughout the Perhispanic and Colonial periods and well into the 20th century. However, the role of aquatic resources has always been regarded as secondary and supplementary relative to agricultural production. Prior to 2003, the dried surface of the former bed of saline ex-Lake Texcoco had never been systematically examined by archaeologists. This project was designed to evaluate the importance of aquatic resources by means of an intensive, "off-site" survey of part of the surviving lakebed that, apparently, had been little modified either by modern land use or by Holocene alluviation.          Survey was carried out between mid-May and the end of July, 2003. We worked in a team of 5-8 persons walking in linear formation at intervals of 10 meters. In this fashion, we covered about 22 square kilometers of the old lake bed surface. We discovered over 1100 locations with archaeological materials—ranging from single ceramic sherds of lithic artifacts to clusters of ceramics and lithics up to c.100 m in diameter. At one locality we discovered, and excavated, an extremely well preserved ritual offering. Preliminary analyses have indicated that a wide variety of activities were carried out on the lake bed surface—probably including cutting of reeds, fishing, duck hunting, salt making, netting edible insects, and hunting and collecting other types of aquatic plants and animals. In addition to the formal offering, we noted a number of localities where small encampments were made and that included food preparation activities. The most intensive activity was clearly Late Postclassic, but occupation extends back at least to Epiclassic, and possible Classic times.     Back to top

Carla M. Sinopoli      Late Prehistoric and Early Historic Landscapes of the Tungabhadra Corridor—This project examines the formation and organization of sociopolitical and economic complexity in inland South India during the first millennium BCE and early centuries of the Current Era. The project, funded by the National Geographic Society, National Science Foundation, and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, is co-directed by Sinopoli and Kathleen D. Morrison of the University of Chicago. It focuses on a 35 square kilometer area along the Tungabhadra River in Northern Karnataka, near the ruins of the historic imperial city of Vijayanagara. Located within this area are four late prehistoric/early historic settlements, including one major hilltop center, some 40 hectares in extent. Also documented in the area are several rock art sites and megalithic cemeteries of the same period, producing evidence for a complexly and densely utilized landscape. Excavations in 2003 at the large settlement site (Kadebakele) revealed evidence for long-distance trade in semi-precious stones, a subsistence economy involving diverse wild and domestic plant and animal species, and specialist produced craft goods, including wheel and hand-built ceramics and iron, brass, and copper artifacts.      Remains of several structures were also identified. Further excavations at Kadebakele and the other settlement sites in the project region are planned for 2005 and 2006. Back to top

Robert Whallon Current research projects include both fieldwork and the development of agent-based simulations of early hominid behavior and cultural evolution. Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro (A collaboration between the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, the Center for Archaeological Research of Montenegro, Podgorica, and the National Heritage Museum, Niksic.)     Crvena Stijena is a large rock shelter in Montenegro. Most of the Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic occupations of this site were removed by earlier excavations.     The focus of our project is the remaining, massive Middle Paleolithic deposit. According to earlier, typological analyses of the Middle Paleolithic industries from Crvena Stijena, these occupations run from the "Premousterian," or "Protomousterian," up to the end of the Middle Paleolithic. The first field season of this project, in 2004, established a new reference grid for the site, cleaned the old profiles, began systematic, geological sampling of the ca. 12 m-thick Middle Paleolithic sequence, and removed some remaining, later layers in the upper portions of the site. Among the finds from the 2004 season are many Mousterian and later artifacts, and a well preserved Neanderthal tooth. Excavations at Grotta S. Angelo (A collaboration between the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology and the University of Rome.) The Grotta S. Angelo is a small rock shelter in the province of Abruzzo in Italy. Excavations here have uncovered an Upper Paleolithic lithic workshop, dated to ca. 25,000 B.P. Local flint resources apparently were exploited for raw material that was prepared at this site, with preforms and finished products being removed for use elsewhere.     Agent-based simulation of early hominid behavior (A collaboration with Wayne State University.)     In this project, we are attempting to build models of early hominid foraging and cultural behavior. Some results so far have suggested that, in the absence of language for sharing of information, the sharing of foraged resources leads inevitably to extinction, and only dominance-hierarchy-based access to foraged resources is evolutionarily stable.   Back to top

Henry T. Wright Much of my research is focused on the problem of the origins of primary states from a context of interacting pre-state societies. On the one hand, in my work at the Santa Fe Institute, I am trying to develop new theoretical constructs that will show how such pre-state and early state formations worked and that will explain the emergence of states. On the other hand, I am leading or facilitating field projects in several areas of the world where primary states did emerge, in order to assemble the evidence needed to evaluate such theoretical constructs. Let me discuss some of these field projects first. Mesopotamia From a cultural point of view, Mesopotamia includes not only the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates but the surrounding deserts, foothills and mountains, including parts of the modern countries of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. It is the homeland of the world's oldest experiments in statecraft, which we now know occurred during the Early Uruk Period, about 4000 BC. I first began working here in 1965, and have since worked on excavations and surveys with many colleagues, to develop regional data based on changing environments, populations, settlements, social groups, foodways, crafts, trade, conflicts, and symbolic life between 4500 and 2500 BC.      View of Eastern Syria near Tell Brak Cemetery is on a cultural Mound (2000 BC).     My current work is with the British project at Tell Brak in the dry-farmed wheat belt of Eastern Syria. This long-term work has been directed by David and Joan Oates under the aegis of the McDonald Institute of Cambridge University. From 1998 until 2002, I helped with the excavations at Tell Brak itself of layers of the IVth millennium BCE under the field direction of Geoff Emberling and Helen McDonald. Beginning in the autumn of 2002, as part of the Brak project and with the cooperation of Syria's excellent Department of Antiquities, I have directed an archaeological survey of the sustaining area around Tell Brak. Tell Brak survey as of October 2003. With intensive surface examination assisted by satellite imagery, our teams have to date covered all the land within 15 km of Brak, and recorded more than 400 archaeological sites, ranging in age from Paleolithic to early modern times. The most striking result so far is the explosive growth of settlement about 4000 BCE, just as the excavations at Brak indicate that the center was becoming a differentiated urban center with evidence of economic and political specialization. Continued research here, and elsewhere in Mesopotamia, depends on the political situation.   Satellite image showing central citadel, the outer suburbs and many roads (600-1500 BC) radiating from town. ©J. Ur Madagascar   Andrianampoinimerina - State Founder   I first visited Madagascar in the western indian Ocean in 1975, drawn by the rich ethnohistorical accounts of indigenous state formation during the 17th and 18th centuries. I was shown extraordinary archaeological landscapes in the central highlands around the capital of Antananarivo. I was impressed to learn that, using conventional air photographs, archaeologists at the Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie had censused more than 16,000 sites in 'Imerina,' the heartland of state formation in the vicinity of the capital, and had done a number of high-quality excavations in this area. It was clear that archaeology could produce evidence of the cultural processes that the traditional histories rarely discussed—such as changing environments, populations, settlements, agriculture, crafts, trade, and conflict, and that the traditions could provide evidence about social groups, politics, ideology, and other issues archaeologists can document only with great effort and expense. With the colleagues from Musée, teams from Ann Arbor began intensive regional surveys and small site excavation in 1983. I have taken much time off from the work in the central highlands to help colleagues and students working on  the coasts, and we now have an island-wide archaeological framework. In Imerina, we have a sequence of seven cultural phases from the pioneering villages of AD 1200 until state consolidation in AD 1810. The dense hierarchical regional organization of the first state, ca. AD 1790, showing the capital, provincial centers, small centers, villages, and hamlets, can be closely correlated with traditional accounts of the first state ruler.     Survey landscape in Eastern Imarina.      Settlements occupied between 1760 and 1810 AD (in red): The time of state emergence. Much remains to be done, both in Imerina (where the renewed growth around Antananarivo is threatening many historical sites), and in other areas of Madagascar. We hope to continue to work with our colleagues there for many years. China          Landscape in central Henan, east of Eriltou.        Distribution of Erlitou period sites in Central China. Taken from http://www.latrobe.edu.au/archaeology/research/survey/index.htm In 1998, I was very fortunate to be invited to work with a regional archaeological survey project focused on the earliest state center in Central China. Like Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, the Indus Valley, Mesoamerica, and Andean America, China is one of the early centers of state development. Chinese archaeologists did wonderful excavations, but did not know about developments in regional survey because of the long political separation between China and the West. Now, young Chinese archaeologists wanted to try this approach. The team of Chen Xingcan of the Institute of Archaeology in Beijing, Li Liu of Latrobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and Yunkuen Lee of Harvard University negotiated a permit for a project in the eastern hinterlands of Erlitou, a capital that emerged about 1800 BC. Their program had many facets, but my primary contribution has been to help with the archaeological survey. Our survey and sampling program has documented centers, villages, and hamlets dating from the Peiligang Period about 6000 BC until the second or third generation Zhou states up to about 800 BC. We are ready to prepare our first monograph, and are planning expanded survey in other areas. Santa Fe The building of comprehensive regional understandings of areas of early state emergence (and areas such as the Southeastern North America where states did not emerge, though conditions seemed ripe), both by myself and by others at the Museum of Anthropology, is most useful when it is used to develop a more comprehensive understanding of primary state formation. Our data show that none of the simpler constructs involving a few variables proposed as explanations of such state building can account for all the cases. I believe we need more complex approaches. The best hope for achieving this are the multi-variant and multi-agent models being developed at the Santa Fe Institute and related centers. Mastering the mathematics and programming on which such models are based is not easy for someone who has devoted much of a lifetime to landscapes and excavations, but the effort is necessary and I will pursue it as long as necessary. Back to top

Richard Redding Richard Redding is interested in the role of subsistence behavior in the evolution of culture. Recently he has worked in the Middle East, Egypt, and China. His focus has been on the shift to complex societies in Egypt and the shift from hunting and gathering to food production in southeastern Turkey. Redding has been working on Old Kingdom sites in Egypt since 1983. He excavated an Old Kingdom village in the Nile Delta in 1984, 1986, and 1988. Since 1990, he has worked almost every winter at the Workers' Village near the Pyramids of Giza. The Workers' Village and associated areas supported and housed the work force that built the Pyramid of Menken're. Excavations at Giza will continue for several years.     Redding has been using the faunal and floral data from these Egyptian sites to examine the socio-economic infrastructure of the Old Kingdom. The site at Giza was a provisioned site that received animals from producing sites. The village site in the Nile Delta was a producing site. In the laboratory, Redding is working on the faunal remains from the site of Hallan Chemi in southeastern Turkey. This is an Epipaleolithic site that exhibits a shift over time in socio-economic structure. In the lower three meters, the inhabitants hunted and gathered and exhibit no evidence of social stratification. In the upper one meter of the site, elaborate stone wands and bowls appear. The wands are thought to be "wands of authority." Also in the upper meter, the pigs may have been managed in a system like that used among tribal groups in New Guinea. The wild sheep also may have been managed, with juvenile males preferentially hunted. Redding is also working on the faunal remains from the site of Franchti Cave, Greece. The excavations at this site produced material from the late Paleolithic through the Neolithic. The site was apparently occupied seasonally, and with the introduction of domestic sheep and goats, the inhabitants were nomadic herders who hunted. Other recent work includes: excavations at early food producing sites in China; the analysis of fauna from Greco-Roman sites in Northern Israel; and work on faunal remains from First Intermediate period and Greco-Roman sites in Upper Egypt. Back to top

C. Loring Brace Since 1967, Loring Brace has been involved in efforts to test the relationships of the skeletal remains in the Museum's collections with pre-Columbian inhabitants both from the rest of the western hemisphere and also with possible related or ancestral populations in the Old World. In the fall of 1980, he looked at the prehistoric Jomon of Japan, and was struck by the presence of traits that were similar to the northern Michigan specimens in the Museum's collection. Recently, Brace took measurements on the 8,200 to 9,500-year-old eastern Brazilian Lagoa Santa material in a museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, and followed that trip with a look at the Patagonian and Tierra del Fuego specimens in Florence, Italy. When these new measurements were run through the statistical program developed by Brace, he discovered that the Lagoa Santa material from Brazil linked with the Patagonians and also quite closely with the prehistoric Jomon from Japan. Now, Brace is trying to add to our prehistoric and recent Brazilian data the Baja California specimens that have been said to resemble Lagoa Santa. All of these have been claimed to resemble Melanesians, but none of that is borne out when they are statistically tested against Brace’s data set, the largest of its kind in the world.

Noriko Seguchi Norkio Seguchi has been conducting collaborative research with Professor C. Loring Brace and Dr. A. Russell Nelson on the relationships, based on craniometric features, among prehistoric and recent populations in the Old World, the Pacific Rim and Asia, and the New World.  In 2003-2004, they focused on the state of paleoanthropological research in the relatively underrepresented regions of Asia, such as Central Asia (including Mongolia), Northeast Asia (Japan and Korea), and peninsular South and Southeast Asia. They explored past and present population relationships in East and Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific, using odontometric and craniometric data, and examined the population relationships in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene of East Asia, especially the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave and Minatogawa, using craniometric data.  Currently, they are working on a project that focuses on the comparison of the craniofacial morphology of South Paleoamericans from Lagoa Santa, Brazil, with worldwide prehistoric and recent human craniofacial metric data, using the neighbor-joining method based on a Mahalanobis distance matrix, discriminant function analysis, canonical variate plots, posterior and typicality probabilities, and Relethford and Blangero’s R matrix method. Back to top

B. Holly Smith Humans have an unusual life history among mammals. Despite a modest body size, we have long gestation, slow growth, late reproduction, and the maximum lifespan of the terrestrial mammals. We might sum up this strategy as "live slow, die old," but other aspects are not so easy to categorize. We also have large but helpless neonates, a short period of breastfeeding, an adolescent growth spurt, concealed ovulation, and menopause. How do these characteristics fit together? What shaped our life strategy?  Is it 100,000 years old or 1,000,000 years old or older yet? There are two principal ways to study such questions. One is to compare aspects of life history among living animals; the second is to analyze the evidence of the bones and teeth of extinct species directly. My work takes both those approaches. Direct study of the dental development of human ancestors is yielding a broad outline of the approach to human life history. Early australopiths (once claimed to share human-like growth), it now appears, grew up something on the order of twice as fast as modern humans, living out their lives on the timescale of an ape. In Homo erectus, patterns of some growth events are shifted toward humans, but the overall picture remains surprisingly primitive. Although Neanderthal lives remain somewhat mysterious, it seems certain that human life history has evolved substantially in the Pleistocene.  Some human characteristics only begin to make sense, or become interpretable, when compared on a broad scale. Presently, my work seeks to understand how development of the hard tissues (like bones and teeth) is integrated into the overall life history of primates and other mammals. The more we understand about the links between life history and development of bones and teeth, the more we can reconstruct the actual evolution of mammal life histories, including that of our own ancestors. Back to top