John Speth is currently conducting research on three very different topics, one concerned with the emergence of forager-farmer interaction in the late prehistoric Southwestern United States, another exploring the role of large-mammal hunting in the adaptations of Near Eastern Neanderthals toward the end of the Middle Paleolithic, and the third on the role of big-game hunting.
Southwest U.S.
In the Southwest, Speth has been excavating at two nearby and nearly contemporary villages, the Henderson Site (LA-1549) and Bloom Mound (LA-2528). 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 long-distance 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, 2003, and 2009.
Speth, John D. (editor). 2004. Life on the Periphery: Economic Change in Late Prehistoric Southeastern New Mexico. Memoir 37. University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology, Ann Arbor, MI.
Speth, John D. 2005. The Beginnings of Plains-Pueblo Interaction: An Archaeological Perspective from Southeastern New Mexico. In Engaged Anthropology: Research Essays on North American Archaeology, Ethnobotany, and Museology. Papers in Honor of Richard I. Ford, edited by Michelle Hegmon and B. Sunday Eiselt, pp. 129–147. Anthropological Paper 94. University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology, Ann Arbor, MI.
Speth, John D. and Khori Newlander. 2011. Plains-Pueblo Interaction: A View from the “Middle.” In Revisiting the Late Prehistoric in Central Texas: The Toyah Phase, edited by Nancy Kenmotsu and Douglas Boyd. Texas A&M University, College Station, TX (in press).
Israel
In Israel, Speth has been analyzing the larger mammal remains recovered in the 1980s from late Middle Paleolithic (60–48 ka) 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 overhunted 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 returns to Israel again in the summer of 2011 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.
Speth, John D. 2004. News Flash: Negative Evidence Convicts Neanderthals of Gross Mental Incompetence. World Archaeology 36(4):519–526.
Speth, John D. 2006. Housekeeping, Neanderthal-Style: Hearth Placement and Midden Formation in Kebara Cave (Israel). In Transitions Before the Transition: Evolution and Stability in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age, edited by Erella Hovers and Steven L. Kuhn, pp. 171–188. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY.
Speth, John D. and Jamie L. Clark. 2006. Hunting and Overhunting in the Levantine Late Middle Palaeolithic. Before Farming 3(1):1–42.
Big-Game Hunting
Speth has also been exploring the reasons why foragers invest large amounts of time and effort hunting big-game animals. For well over a century the answer has seemed almost trivially obvious—foragers go after big animals because they provide the most effective way for hunters to maximize their take of a high-quality food: animal protein. This view is bolstered by insights from optimal foraging theory and by the results of countless archaeological excavations. Speth has been examining the flip-side of this issue—the costs and negative consequences of diets involving high intakes of protein—and is finding that the deliberate targeting of the biggest animals on the landscape may actually be driven more by social and political concerns than by putting food on the table. The calories and nutrients one gets from eating meat are not to be dismissed as irrelevant, but they should be seen as added benefits (and, at times, as added costs) of big-game hunting, not its raison d’être.
Speth, John D. 2010. The Paleoanthropology and Archaeology of Big-Game Hunting: Protein, Fat or Politics? Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY.
Speth, John D., Khori Newlander, Andrew A. White, Ashley K. Lemke and Lars E. Anderson. 2011. Early Paleoindian Big-Game Hunting in North America: Provisioning or Politics? Quaternary International (online 2010, in press).
