Matthew E. Hill
Assistant Professor
Office: 235 MH
Phone: (319) 335-1425
matthew-e-hill@uiowa.edu
- Select Publications/Projects (PDF)
- Curriculum Vitae (PDF)
“My research is informed by the principles of historical ecology, which attempts to integrate the notions of ecology and the environment as central themes in the study of human societies. I examine the degree to which humans are a keystone species in driving environmental change and how human alterations to the environment can be large or small in scale and result from intentional and unintentional acts. My focus is on landscape-scale processes of human-environment interactions expressed in long-term behavioral changes (spanning from the end of the Ice Age to the historic period) across various environmental settings (Great Plains grasslands, Rocky Mountains, Desert Southwest).
Currently I am involved in three different research projects. The first considers how late 17th century Native American farmers changed their diet and lifestyle when they left their sedentary pueblo villages in the northwestern corner of New Mexico and took up a more mobile lifestyle among Great Plains bison hunters in Kansas following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The second project considers whether the actions of small bands of Ice Age big-game hunters living in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains created the wildlife landscape that dominated the region during early historic times. Specifically, I am trying to determine whether human hunting caused the extinction of a wide variety of large-bodied mammals in North America, including the mammoth, horse, and camel, or if human predation was behind the rapid decrease in the body size of bison across the continent. The third project explores how long term climatically induced vegetation changes on the Great Plains effected bison behavior, fitness, and phenotypic plasticity and as a result influenced human subsistence strategies.“
Courses Taught:
113:012-Introduction to Prehistory 113:268-Seminar: Archaeological Theory and Method |
Affiliations & Links
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