Short Academic Biography
Bruce Winterhalder [Ph.D. Cornell University 1977; currently, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology and Member, Graduate Group in Ecology, Human Ecology Area of Interest and Graduate Group in International Agricultural Development, University of California at Davis.]
Areas of academic expertise: Behavioral and evolutionary ecology, cultural ecology, hunter-gatherers (sub-arctic Canada), agriculturalists/pastoralists (central Andes, Peru), origins of agriculture, models of human adaptive processes.
Research (titles of recent publications; see "Research" for details): "A simple model of technological intensification,"The ideal free distribution, food production, and the colonization of Oceania," "Behavioral ecology and the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture," "The half of it," "Human behavioral ecology," and "Behavioral and other human ecologies: Critique, response and progress through criticism."
Teaching (representative courses):
Undergraduate - Proseminar in Biological Anthropology; Evolution of Human Nature; Kinship and Social Organization.
Graduate - Human Applications of Foraging Theory; Origins of Agriculture; Cultural Ecology Classics and Their Consequences.
Administration: At UNC-Chapel Hill: Chair, Department of Anthropology (1991-1996) Chair, Curriculum in Ecology (1996-2002); Member, Administrative Board of the Graduate School; Faculty Advisory Committee, Carolina Environmental Program. At UC Davis: Chair, Department of Anthropology (2005- present).
Editorial Service: American Anthropologist, Editorial Board; University of California Press Series, Origins of Human Behavior and Culture, Editorial Board.
Three outstanding books to recommend (representative of the scholarship I enjoy and follow most closely.)
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. 1999 Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection. New York: Pantheon Books.
Dolores R. Piperno and Deborah M. Pearsall. 1998 The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics. San Diego: Academic Press.
Lester R. Hiatt. 1996 Arguments about Aborigines: Australia and the Evolution of Social Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
