News

CHES Graduate Affiliate Melanie Fenton was just awarded a research grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to support her work ""Coercive and affiliative mating tactics in olive baboons (Papio anubis)" at her major advisor's site in Kenya. As a recipient of the CHES...

CHES PhD Alumnus Jay Reti (2013) was just named as the new Director of the Santa Cruz Island Reserve of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Santa Cruz Island is the largest island off the coast of California (about four times larger than Manhattan Island) with many endemic species of...

Two CHES Undergraduate Affiliates recently won awards for their Senior Honors Thesis research. The Department of Anthropology held its annual symposium showcasing undergraduate research for Senior Honors Theses today. Several of the students were CHES Undergraduate Affiliates. One of them, Sara...

The final talk in the CHES Lecture Series for this academic year was today by archaeologist Yotam Asscher of the Israel Antiquities Authority. Dr. Asscher discussed the challenges of rescue excavations in Israel. He described in fascinating detail how mobile laboratories and portable instruments...

Anthropologist Brian Wood (University of California, Los Angeles) spoke today on sex differences in space use and spatial cognition among the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. Dr. Wood has been studying the Hadza for well over a decade, during which he has amassed a large array of data, some of...

Last night's "Featured Research" Evening highlighted the research CHES Graduate Affiliate Fred Foster is doing on the microstructure and mechanical behavior of primate tooth enamel. Fred is applying methods from material science engineering to look inside the teeth of extant primates and link fine details of...

At last week's annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Cleveland, Ohio, CHES Graduate Affiliate Will Aguado was awarded the Sherwood Washburn Prize for best podium presentation by a student. His lecture was entitled "Effective seed dispersal of an economically important...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Melanie Fenton was just awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation to support his research "Contextual and physiological correlates of complex behavioral strategies in primates." Melanie's research investigates aspects of the...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Fred Foster was recently awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation to support his research "Microstructure and mechanical properties of primate dental enamel." Fred is using methods from material science engineering to study the...

Dr. Ashley Hammond, who recently was appointed Curator of Biological Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, gave a lecture today on the evolution of bipedalism and hip anatomy in humans past and present. Dr. Hammond's research takes her to a number of fossil sites in East Africa, where...

Erin Vogel recently received the Robert W. Sussman Award for Scientific Contributions to Anthropology. Congratulations to Erin!

CHES Grad Affiliate Tom Conte passed his doctoral dissertation defense this afternoon. Tom's dissertation, Steppe Generosity: Cooperation , Labor Sharing, and Generous Giving Among Mongolian Pastoral Nomads, is based on his 9-month study of pastoralist families in Tosontsengel, Mongolia, one of...

The Third Lembersky Conference in Evolutionary Studies this coming October will focus on "Advances in Primate Nutritional Ecology, Health, and Energetics".  CHES member Erin Vogel (far left in photo) has begun work with collaborators and co-organizers Jessica Rothman (Hunter College, middle in photo)...

CHES member Mareike Janiak obtained her PhD in Anthropology last year and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Amanda Melin at the University of Calgary. Dr. Janiak was just awarded a major grant from the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation to support her research entitles...

"CHES Faculty Member Lee Cronk and CHES alumni Robert Lynch and Helen Wasielewski recently published a paper “Sexual conflict and the Trivers-Willard hypothesis: Females prefer daughters and males prefer sons” in Nature Scientific Reports. The TW hypothesis predicts that parents who are in good...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Melanie Fenton was just awarded a major grant from the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation to support her dissertation research "Coercive and affiliative mating tactics in olive baboons (Papio anubis)”. Melanie just arrived in Kenya a few weeks ago to commence this research. More...

Yesterday CHES held another “Featured Research Evening”, this time showcasing the work of CHES Graduate Affiliate Tim Bransford. For the research that forms the basis of the PhD dissertation he is currently writing, Tim investigated how wild orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) mothers modulate...

Today, the Second Lembersky Conference in Human Evolutionary Studies, focused on "Advances in Paleoecology," got off to an excellent start. CHES faculty member Rob Scott opened the conference (photo to right), whose program he developed in collaboration with Andrew Barr (George Washington...

"Recently, Dr. Amy Lu of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, delivered a CHES lecture "Male Takeovers and Infanticide Risk: Broadening the Scope of Potential Costs". Dr. Lu's presentation was based on many years' research with Jacinta Beehner and Thore Bergman (University of Michigan) on...

CHES Graduate Affiliate Alex Pritchard was awarded a major grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to support the study of olive baboons (Papio anubis) that he is currently conducting in Kenya. The title of this research is "Variation of Stress Coping: Life in a...