Dickinson College Department of Anthropology

Karen Weinstein
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Ph.D. University of Florida
Phone: (717) 245-1281
FAX:(717) 245-1479
Email:weinstek@dickinson.edu

I am a biological anthropologist with expertise in human osteology, biological variation, adaptation, and evolution. Humans are a unique species among primates in that, over the course of our evolutionary history, we have come to inhabit all regions of the world. My research examines the human body's long-term evolutionary responses and short-term physiological adjustments to environmental stress, including high altitudes, cold climates, and poor nutrition. For the last several years, I have been comparing body proportions in ancient human skeletons from high and low altitudes in the Andes Mountains of South America in order to identify adaptations to high-altitude regions in human prehistory. I have also engaged in similar research with skeletons of macaques, a group of monkeys that are widespread across many ecological zones in Asia. My hope is to use my work on the long-term evolutionary effects of environmental stress on the human body as a model for understanding the relationship between geographic dispersal and the development of the modern human body form over the course of human evolutionary history, particularly in Neandertals and other archaic human groups of the Pleistocene epoch.

I am also embarking on a new research project in collaboration with Dr. James Ellison, a cultural anthropologist also at Dickinson College. We plan to examine changing agricultural practices in rural southwest Tanzania focusing on health and nutrition in the context of the region's diverse microenvironments and complex history. As a biological anthropology component to this project, I plan to examine biocultural responses to economic, cultural, and environmental change in southwest Tanzania over the last thirty years. This research will involve examining variations in diet, physical activity, and body composition among individuals who differ in age, gender, household size, and economic status. Professor Ellison and I plan to conduct this long-term research with the help of student researchers through our Department's summer ethnographic field school, which will take place in Tanzania every other summer.