Elsa M. Redmond

American Museum of Natural History


Primary Section: 51, Anthropology
Membership Type:
Member (elected 2014)

Biosketch

Elsa M. Redmond is a Research Associate in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Redmond is an archaeologist recognized for her expertise in Latin American archaeology. Her theoretical focus is the evolution of complex societies, and in particular, the role of warfare in the emergence of chiefdoms and states. Redmond was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1951, and grew up there. She graduated from Rice University in 1973 with a BA in anthropology. She pursued graduate studies in anthropology at Yale University, where she was admitted to doctoral candidacy in 1976, received her M.Phil. in 1980, and her PhD in 1981. Redmond was a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut from1981 to 1991. Since joining the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum in 1991, she has taught at Yale University, CUNY’s Hunter College, and Columbia University. Redmond was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014.

Research Interests

Elsa M. Redmond is an anthropological archaeologist whose expertise lies in Latin America. Her theoretical interest is the evolution of early complex societies. Redmond has examined the role that warfare, particularly inter-village raiding, played in the emergence of centralized, hierarchical societies (chiefdoms) ruled by hereditary chiefs in South America. She has also investigated the role of expansionistic conquest warfare in the formation of the early Zapotec state in southern Mexico. Her models of chiefdom and state emergence marshal both ethnohistoric data on warfare practices and archaeological data. Together with her husband and collaborator, Charles S. Spencer, Redmond has carried out long-term archaeological field projects in Oaxaca, Mexico and in Barinas, Venezuela. Since 1993, Redmond and Spencer have been carrying out archaeological research in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, designed to investigate the process of Zapotec state formation. She is also engaged in ethnohistorical research on the earliest Spanish encounters with Amerindian societies throughout the circum-Caribbean area, to assess the nature of indigenous resistance to the European incursions.

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