T. Douglas Price
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Primary Section: 51, Anthropology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2018)
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Biosketch
T. Douglas Price (Doug), Weinstein Professor of European Archaeology, Emeritus, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, served on the faculty for 37 years and is known for his research in archaeological chemistry, the origins of agriculture and inequality, and the European Mesolithic. Doug was born in New Haven and spent a childhood often on the move. Louisville, Kentucky, and Kansas City, Missouri, are fixed points. A year in Zurich was influential. Doug went to Ann Arbor as a freshman in 1963. Educated and semi-acculturated at the University of Michigan, he continued there as a graduate student in the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (PhD 1975). First and only professorial position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Doug is the author or editor of more than 200 articles and 24 books, the most recent of which include An Introduction to Archaeological Chemistry (with James H. Burton, 2010), The Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas (with Ofer Bar-Yosef, 2011), Images of the Past 7e (with Gary Feinman, 2012), Europe Before Rome (2012), Ancient Scandinavia: An Archaeological History from the First Humans to the Vikings (2015), and Principles of Archaeology (with Kelly Knudson 2018).
Research Interests
T. Douglas Price’s field research in archaeology has focused on the investigation of the beginnings of agriculture in Denmark, some 6000 year ago. Thirty years of field survey and archaeological excavation in western Sjælland have produced a large set of data on the human use of the landscape before and after the arrival of the agricultural revolution. Another major area of interest involves archaeological chemistry and the use of isotopes in human tooth enamel to examine questions of prehistoric mobility. Doug founded and directed and the Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry and was . Major projects along these lines have been focused in Central America, the North Atlantic, North America, China, and Europe. Doug founded the Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry in 1988 for the instrumental study of archaeological materials. The Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry was involved in the chemical analysis of ceramics, ancient bone, soils, and other archaeological materials He also was appointed as 6th Century Chair in Archaeological Science at the University of Aberdeen.. Doug served as Chair of his department, President of the Society for Archaeological Science, and recently received the Pomerance Award for outstanding contributions to archaeological science from the American Institute of Archaeology.
