A new method for estimating the biological sex of human remains based on reading protein sequences rather than DNA has been used to study an archaeological site in Northern California. The protein-based technique developed at the University of California, Davis, gave superior results to DNA analysis in studying 55 sets of human remains between 300 and 2,300 years old.
Tom Turrentine (M.A. ’91, Ph.D. ’94, anthropology), the founding director of the UC Davis Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center and a longtime researcher in the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS), died unexpectedly on June 2.
A book by Jeffrey Kahn, assistant professor of anthropology, about Haitian boat migration to the U.S. is the winner of a 2020 Herbert Jacob Book Prize from the Law and Society Association.
Seven College of Letters and Science faculty members are among the professors honored by the UC Davis Academic Senate and Academic Federation for their teaching, research and public service.
Four associate professors in the College of Letters and Science recently were named Chancellor’s Fellows for excellence in their research, creative work, teaching and service. The college's newest Chancellor's Fellows include an expert on immigrant family well-being, an artist/author, a political theorist and an archaeologist.
Calling her an “institutional cornerstone,” the Middle East Studies Association of North America recently presented its annual Jere L. Bacharach Service Award to Distinguished Professor Suad Joseph. The award recognizes outstanding service to the association and the profession, and is named after the University of Washington historian who received the honor in 2004.
Inuit sled dogs have changed little since people migrated with them to the North American Arctic across the Bering Strait from Siberia, according to UC Davis researchers and colleagues who have examined DNA from the dogs from that time span. The legacy of these Inuit dogs survives today in Arctic sled dogs, making them one of the last remaining descendant populations of indigenous, pre-European dog lineages in the Americas.
UC Davis anthropologist Jeffrey Kahn’s book on Haitian boat migration to the United States is the co-winner of the 2019 Avant Garde Book Prize from the Haitian Studies Association. The award selection committee called Kahn’s book, "Islands of Sovereignty: Haitian Migration and the Borders of Empire" (Chicago University Press, 2019) a “timely and important contribution” to the field.
Many people mistakenly think of evolution as progress. But humans, despite their ability to manipulate objects and change their environment, are not “on top” of the world’s species. Research by Lynn Isbell, chair of the UC Davis Department of Anthropology, suggests that ancestral humans and other primates developed different strategies to find food and avoid predators.
