Dr. TR Kidder

Washington University scholars have a long history of engaging questions about the origins and development of complex hunter-gatherers in eastern North America. Today, research in this area is mainly focused on later Archaic groups who lived in the Mississippi Valley and its tributaries. We are pursuing a series of related themes in regards to complex hunter-gatherers: 1) what are the environmental, ecological, and climatic factors that underlie and/or influence hunter-gatherer behaviors; 2) what are the specific histories of regional hunter-gatherer groups and how do their historical trajectories vary through time (if at all); 3) how do economic practices and social patterns relate to one another and can we identify causal pathways leading to complexity; and 4) what is the role of ritual and landscape transformation in the origins and maintenance of hunter-gatherer sociality? Much of our work focuses on studies of large complex Archaic sites such as Poverty Point and Jaketown. However, we pursue these questions in other localities, such as the western Illinois uplands and the lower Illinois River valley. Our research has explored Middle Archaic mound building, Poverty Point social organization, the chronology and timing of occupation at Jaketown, and the role of complex hunter-gatherer behavior at the temporal and spatial edges of late Prehistoric agriculture through work at the Raffman and contemporary sites in Louisiana.

Dr. Fiona Marshall

Dr. Fiona Marshall’s current research examines variation in social organization and subsistence strategies among African hunter-gatherers over the last 20,000 years. She is currently studying hunting of African wild ass in northeastern Africa. She and her students are also conducting research on changing economic patterns through time among Holocene hunter-gatherers and early pastoralists of the Horn of Africa. Dr Marshall continues to conduct research on the beginnings and development of African pastoralism. She and her students are conducting research on pastoral land-use patterns, material complexity in mobile societies, the role of cattle in the development of pastoral identities, development of specialized pastoralism in eastern Africa, geoarchaeological and ethnoarchaeological approaches to recognizing ephemeral pastoral sites on the landscape, mobile responses to climatic change, niche construction by African pastoralists and their role in the development of African savannas.

Dr. Michael Frachetti

Michael Frachetti: specialize in the archaeology and ethnography of mobile pastoralist societies of Eurasia and Inner Asia. His research focusses on pastoralist's social and ecological adaptations to extreme environments of Central Asia, such as deserts and high moutains of Kazakhstan. He has also done considerable research on arctic reindeer herders of Scandanavia and transhumant pastoralists of the Alps.  His current work addresses issues of regional interaction among mobile socieities (and others) throughout the Inner Asian mountains (Pamir Mts, Tian Shan, Dzhungar Mts, and Altai Mts.) and how pastoralists have strategically generated cultural landscapes with deep historical roots in these regions.  He uses methods such as GIS and spatial analysis to model how Eurasian pastoralism has changed and evolved throughout prehistory and how this plays a role in  political and economic organization of Eurasian civilizations at the broadest theoretical levels.  He is currently directing projects in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

Dr. David Browman

Dr. David Browman has carried out research in the Jauja-Mantaro region of central Peru, where the local environmental situation favored long-term pastoral stability.  Dynamic, dominant pastoral groups were the norm long after adjacent more environmentally agri-friendly areas had developed vibrant plant agricultural economies.  Subsequent research has been in the southern Andean altiplano, where recently our ancient DNA work has suggested at least the possibility of a second center of camelid domestication in this region.  One of the most important aspects of animal ownership was their function as caravan animals; his research, thus has also focused upon the various long-distance trade and information systems.

Related Faculty Research:

David Friedel's has worked on Paleolithic camps in France and surveyed Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age sites in the Fars Province of Iran with William M. Sumner, who incorporated the data into his 1972 PhD at Penn.
Gayle Fritz's research has explored the use of wild crops amongst complex hunter/gatherers in the southwestern and southeastern United States.