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Profile of Clark Spencer Larsen PROFILE PROFILE Profile of Clark Spencer Larsen PROFILE Jennifer Viegas, Science Writer The Ohio State University biological anthropologist Bass. “His demanding course Clark Spencer Larsen has conducted pioneering turned out to be a watershed research on biocultural adaptation that occurred event for me, having captured during the last 10,000 years of human evolution. He my interest in archaeological was among the first to apply multidisciplinary ap- human skeletal remains and proaches to the study of temporal trends in diet, what they tell us about the health, mobility, and interpersonal conflict. Elected past,” Larsen says. Bass recom- to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2016, mended him for a Smithsonian Larsen was part of a 25-year project at Çatalhöyük, a Institution-sponsored excavation site in south-central Turkey that was continuously oc- project involving anthropologists – cupied for more than 1,150 years (7100 5950 BC). Douglas Ubelaker and late Clark Spencer Larsen. Image courtesy of John ’ ’ Larsen s Inaugural Article (1) synthesizes his team s NAS member T. Dale Stewart. Nixon (photographer). bioarchaeological findings. These findings shed light Larsen says, “The experience ’ on how early farming affected Çatalhöyük s Neolithic was amazing and challenging, contributing to my in- societies and others, with impacts continuing to terest in the study of human remains from archaeo- the present. logical settings, a field now known as bioarchaeology.” Larsen next attended the University of Michigan, National Monument Sparks Interest in graduating with a doctorate in biological anthropol- Archaeology ogy in 1980. During Larsen’s first year as a Master’s Larsen grew up in Beatrice, Nebraska. Near this town student, David Hurst Thomas of the American Mu- is the national monument and associated museum for seum of Natural History recruited Larsen to serve as the initial homestead following President Abraham biological anthropologist for the St. Catherines Island Lincoln’s signing of the Homestead Act of 1863. “In Archaeology Project located at the southeastern my family’s first of many visits to the Homestead United States Atlantic coastline. The work formed the National Monument, my parents, Leon and Patricia basis of Larsen’s doctoral dissertation concerning the Larsen, showed me artifacts associated with early pi- oneer settlement,” Larsen says. “As an 8-year-old, I impacts of the foraging-to-farming transition on health was enthralled with what I was seeing. Ever since, I and lifestyle (2). Larsen determined that these effects have continued to be interested in earlier people, included reduced physical activity, a rise in infectious especially those documented and interpreted by ar- disease tied to population growth, skeletal size re- chaeologists and paleontologists.” By his early teens, ductions, and an increase in dental caries attributed to Larsen decided that archaeology was to be his a growing reliance on domesticated maize. life’s work. Larsen’s mother facilitated a meeting at their home Engineering Theory Applied to Bioarchaeology with late archaeologist R. Clark Mallam, who was Shortly before earning his doctorate, Larsen accepted teaching at the University of Nebraska. He advised the position of assistant professor of anthropology at Larsen to get fieldwork experience and to apply to the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth in 1979, Kansas State University (KSU). Larsen followed Mallam’s followed by assistant and associate professorships at guidance. Days after graduating from Beatrice Senior Northern Illinois University. At the same time, he con- High School, Larsen worked on an excavation project at tinued research on St. Catherines Island. Examining Nebraska’s Fort Atkinson before attending KSU. the evidence for dental caries, Larsen determined that the frequency of carious lesions among the island’s Mentors Instrumental to Early Training residents was more marked in females than males, As a KSU freshman, Larsen took a human osteology with the disparity resulting from probable subsistence course taught by biological anthropologist William M. role differences between the sexes (3). Published under the PNAS license. This is a Profile of a member of the National Academy of Sciences to accompany the member’s Inaugural Article, 10.1073/pnas.1904345116. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1908587116 PNAS Latest Articles | 1of3 Downloaded by guest on September 27, 2021 At the American Association of Physical Anthro- A summary of the La Florida project, also published pologists annual meeting in 1980, Larsen met with in 2001, underscored that postcolonization Florida anthropologist Christopher Ruff of The Johns Hopkins native groups experienced some of the most dramatic University School of Medicine to discuss his interest alterations in health and lifestyle in the New World (9). in applying engineering theory and cross-sectional The authors wrote: “These changes include a general geometric analysis to the study of human skeletal re- deterioration in health that began before European mains. Together with colleague Wilson Hayes, Larsen contact and missionization, but that were exacerbated and Ruff subsequently accomplished this feat while by changes in diet, settlement, work practices and investigating adult leg bones from the St. Catherines’ other consequences of exploitation and colonization project (4). The research revealed a decline in workload of the region by Spain.” The researchers used bio- and mobility with the adoption of a farming-based archaeology to document a sharp increase in osteo- subsistence economy. For this and prior achieve- arthritis prevalence among native individuals during ments, in 1984 Larsen was elected as a member of the Mission Period that coincides with the Spanish ’ Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Honor Society. colonizers draft labor system. Signatures of Human Dietary Change Seminal Textbooks, Teaching In 1989 Larsen went to Purdue University, having ac- In 2001, Larsen moved to The Ohio State University to cepted an associate professorship in the university’s become chair of the department of anthropology, department of anthropology. Two years later, he be- where he also served as a distinguished professor of came a full professor before moving to the University social and behavioral sciences. That same year he of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he rose through began work as editor-in-chief of the American Journal the ranks to Amos Hawley Distinguished Professor in of Physical Anthropology. For his accomplishments, 1999. Additionally, Larsen served as president of the Larsen was named a fellow of the American Association American Association of Physical Anthropologists. for the Advancement of Science (2006) and received ’ Continuing his active research program, in 1992 the American Association of Physical Anthropologists Gabriel W. Lasker Award (2008). In 2017, Larsen ac- Larsen led one of the earliest regional analyses of ar- cepted his current position as an Ohio State University chaeological human remains to document the shift in distinguished university professor of anthropology. diet from foraging to maize farming (5). With collab- Teaching remains central to his work. Larsen says, orator Margaret Schoeninger, then of the University of “It is in this capacity that I get to share with students Wisconsin, Larsen and his team measured carbon and new advances in my field and why it is important to nitrogen stable isotope ratios in bone collagen dating know how we humans got to where we are today and to 1150–1300 from coastal southeastern Georgia. The the long evolutionary route from earliest human-like measurements revealed a decrease in consumption of ancestors living 6–7 million years ago to the present.” marine resources and increased reliance on maize. He has mentored hundreds of students and has Larsen and his team, however, found that the pop- guided their careers. Larsen has also contributed to ulation consumed fewer carbohydrates from 1300 to several seminal books in his field. They include Bio- 1450, likely due to environmental stress and associ- archaeology: Interpreting Behavior from the Human ated reduced crop yield. Skeleton (author) (10), The Backbone of Europe: The researchers theorized that reduced dietary Health, Diet, Work and Violence Over Two Millenia – breadth during the Mission Period (1568 1684) con- (coeditor) (11), and the textbook, Our Origins: Dis- tributed to the reduction of Georgia coastal Native covering Biological Anthropology (author), for which American peoples in the 17th century. Larsen pre- he is now preparing the fifth edition (12). sented reviews of studies on agriculture-associated biological changes in this and other populations Bioarchaeology of the Çatalhöyük Project worldwide in papers published in 1995 (6) and 2003 When Larsen was completing the first phase of the (7). He linked adoption of agriculture to craniofacial Georgia coast research in the early 2000s, Stanford and dental alterations as well as to an overall decline in University archaeologist Ian Hodder invited him to join oral and general health. as a leader of the bioarchaeology component of Hodder’s Çatalhöyük Project in south-central Turkey. La Florida Bioarchaeology Project Larsen says, “My interest was captured when he told In 1982 Larsen initiated the La Florida Bioarchaeology me about the comprehensive nature of the project, Project, a 40-year interdisciplinary research program involving an impressive suite of archaeology special- focused on health and lifestyle
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