The Department of Anthropology presents
The Roy A. Rappaport Lectures
"Patagonian Prehistory, Human Ecology and Cultural Evolution in the Land of Giants"
Fall 2019
"Foragers in a World of Farmers"
by Raven Garvey
Friday, December 6, 2019 at 3:00 p.m.
The Forum Hall, Palmer Commons
"Patagonia is one of relatively few world regions beyond the Arctic/Subarctic where farming never took root. This is intriguing because northern Patagonians lived alongside and interacted with farmers for at least 2000 years. Nevertheless, we seldom ask why Patagonians didn’t farm, perhaps because of the region’s reputation as a windswept wasteland, or because Patagonia’s population appears to have been too small to have warranted the effort. In this lecture, Garvey demonstrate that, in fact, dryland farming was possible in parts of Patagonia, and that growing populations could have benefitted from farming in late prehistory. She argues that risks associated with farming might simply have been too great despite potential benefits."
Raven Garvey, Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Assistant Curator, Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, studies the influences of ecological, demographic, and social factors on prehistoric hunter-gatherers’ behaviors and broader cultural change through time. Her current field projects in Patagonia use simple economic models incorporating these factors to generate predictions of hunter-gatherer settlement and resource use at different times in the past, and her current lab-based projects are designed to test and develop models of cultural transmission and technological evolution, and to refine Patagonian chronologies using obsidian hydration.
The Roy A. Rappaport Lectures are a series of lectures on a work in progress, designed as a special course for advanced students to work closely with a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology on a topic in which the instructor has an intensive current interest. As the description written by Professor Roy “Skip” Rappaport in 1976 states, “…it offers the opportunity for other students and faculty to hear a colleague in an extended discussion of their own work.”
The Roy A. Rappaport Lectures are free and open to the public
If you need accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us as soon as possible, as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange. Contact: anthro.events@umich.
Email : michigan-anthro@umich.edu
Department of Anthropology
101 West Hall
1085 S. University
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107
ph: 734-764-2319 fax: 734-
