Michael E. Moseley
University of Florida
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Primary Section: 51, Anthropology Secondary Section: 64, Human Environmental Sciences Membership Type:
Emeritus
(elected 2000)
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Research Interests
I study human evolution in the Andean Cordillera and its Pacific coastal desert. My transdisciplinary research engages the 11,000-year record of maritime adaptations to the near-shore fishery; the 4,000-year performance of arid-land agricultural adaptations encoded in abandoned planting surfaces, fields, terraces, and canals of different ages; and the Quaternary geoarchaeological record of climate and tectonism, including recurrent El Nino perturbations, protracted droughts, above-normal rainfalls and runoff, volcanic eruptions, large-magnitude earthquakes, and tectonic creep. By integrating millennial scale documentation of environmental variability and stress with productivity fluctuations in fishing and farming and consequent changes in demographic distributions and densities, I seek to expand understanding of the development of human organization from early foraging societies through the rise and demise of states and nations. By integrating millennial scale documentation of environmental variability and stress with productivity fluctuations in fishing and farming and consequent changes in demographic distributions and densities, I seek to expand understanding of the development of human organization from early foraging societies through the rise and demise of states and nations.
