Robert Bettinger
Professor, PhD, University of California, Riverside, 1975
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis , CA 95616
Office Hours for Spring 2012:
- Tuesdays & Thursdays, 3:00-4:00pm
Education:
- I received my B.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1975) degrees from the University of California. I conducted most of my early fieldwork in California and the western Great Basin. I continue to work there but have since 1989 broadened my interests to include the archaeology of China, Siberia, and Argentina. I have worked almost continuously in northern China (Gansu, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia) since 1989, collaborating with a team of US and PRC scholars interested in understanding the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and the origins of agriculture in north China.
Biography:
Research Interests
Nearly all of my work centers on hunter-gatherers. My archaeological fieldwork has centered on the study of intensive hunter-gatherer adaptations, their expression in marginal environments (alpine and desert), and their connection with early agriculture. My theoretical contributions to cultural ecology, quantitative methodology, and evolutionary theory are directed mainly to general models of hunter-gatherer behavior that can be applied in a wide range of archaeological and ethnographic contexts.
Selected Recent Publications
2004 Bettinger, R. L., and D. A. Young. Hunter-Gatherer Population Expansion In North Asia And The New World. In Entering America, edited by D. B. Madsen, pp. 239-251. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
2006 Bettinger, Robert L., Bruce Winterhalder, and Richard McElreath. A Simple Model of Technological Intensification. Journal of Archaeological Science 33(4): 538-545.
2006 Bettinger, R. L., and E. Wohlgemuth. California Plant Use. Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 3, Environment, Origins, and Population, edited by Douglas Ubelacker, pp. 274-283. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
2007 Bettinger, R. L., L. Barton, Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, H. Wang, W. Choi. The Transition to Agriculture in Northwestern China. In Late Quaternary Climate Change and Human Adaptation in Arid China, edited by Madsen B. David, FaHu Chen, and Xing Gao, pp. 83 - 101. Developments in Quaternary Science Vol. 9. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
2008 Bettinger, R. L. Cultural Transmission and Archaeology. In Cultural Transmission and Archaeology: Issues and Case Studies, edited by M. J. O’Brien, pp. 1-9. SAA Press, Washington, D.C.
2009 Bettinger, R. L. Hunter-Gatherer Foraging: Five Simple Models. Eliot Werner Publications, Clinton Corners, NY. ISBN: 9780979773136. (book)
2009 Barton, L., S. D. Newsome, F. H. Chen, H. Wang, T. P. Guilderson and R. L. Bettinger. Agricultural origins and the isotopic identity of domestication in northern China. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(14):5523-5528.
2010 Bettinger, Robert L., Loukas Barton, and Christopher Morgan. The Origins of Food Production in North China: A Different Kind of Agricultural Revolution. Evolutionary Anthropology 19:9-21.
Further Interests
