Santa Fe Institute

Bio

My earliest archaeological research was on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and in the Potomac River valley, recording the remains of prehistoric camp and village sites, as well colonial farms and town sites, and learning to view the past in regional and ecological perspectives. In 1960 I went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as an undergraduate, and was introduced to the anthropological perspectives on the total human achievement. I became fascinated with competing explanations of the evolution of the complex social formations that dominate our planet today. At the University of Chicago, I became interested in the ancient Near East, the planet's earliest civilization, centered in southwest Asia. I did dissertation research in southern Iraq on urban societies of ca. 3000 B.C., completing a doctorate in Anthropology in 1967. I returned to Ann Arbor to join the staff at the Museum of Anthropology as it was being transformed from a program concerned largely with North America into an international program focused on comparative studies of the early complex societies throughout our planet. I spent six of the subsequent ten years in the mountains and lowlands of Southern Iran, doing surveys studying the development of the first state administrations and urban economies between 4500 B.C. and 2500 B.C. with support from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and the government of Iran. I also participated in projects in Turkey and Egypt. During this time, I started to experiment with formal models and computer simulations

When the revolution in Iran stopped archaeological research, I decided to commence a program on the development of the more recent --but poorly understood-- civilization on Madagascar, one derived from a synthesis of Southeast Asian and African cultures during the past thousand years.. With the help of archaeologists from Madagascar, France, Sweden and the U.S. and of many enthusiastic Malagasy students, I have pursued a program of archaeological exploration and regional survey all over this fascinating mini-continent and on the nearby Comoro Islands. Throughout this time I have been a Research Associate of the Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie in Antananarivo. Much of this work has been done with paleo-ecologists trying to understand changes in Madagascar's unusual ecosystems. The theoretical constructs we have built in Madagascar help us to understand the earliest civilizations that arose millennia before in places like Mesopotamia, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes. We also can better understand how Madagascar's unique biology has been affected by humans.

In 1991, I commenced a two-year leave. While at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with James Neely, I published a volume on early settlement on the Deh Luran plain in southwestern Iran, a small valley important in the first steps towards village life and towards hierarchical societies. I also have constructed a Web page making the Museum of Anthropology's work there more widely available. (See ) In 1998, I joined the British Mission to Syria, part of in international team led by scholars from Cambridge University, working specifically in early settlement and state formation in the dry farming zone of Syria. Our evidence from Syria challenges traditional models of state origin in southern Iraq as a consequence of irrigation agriculture. In 1999 I joined an international team introducing the regional survey approach to Chinese archaeology. I continue to work each year with Chinese teams. Finally, I continue work on a book on late glacial "Paleo-Indian" foragers in the central Great Lakes region, my sole continuing area of active research in North America. Some of this leave, as well as my more recent research, was supported by a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. During this period, I was also elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1995 I was appointed to the Science Board of the Santa Fe Institute, and in 1997 I was appointed to their Science Steering committee. After a brief respite, I’ve recently been reelected to these committees and to their External Faculty.

In Santa Fe, I continue with the computer modeling of political evolution and the testing of such models with the evidence I and many colleagues have built for Mesopotamia, Madagascar, Mesoamerica, Peru, and other areas. I have just finished the final draft of a major monograph on archaeological survey of centers of early state formation in central Madagascar and another on Southwest Iran, and will also be involved in modeling these developments. I expect to cut back on fieldwork in the Near East, but hope to continue my work with Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Malagasy colleagues.