Marta Mirazón Lahr Telephone: +44 (0)1223 764705 Fax: +44 (0)1223 764710 E-mail: m.mirazon-lahr(at)human-evol.cam.ac.uk replace (at) with @ in address POSITIONS HELD Director of the Duckworth Laboratory University Lecturer in Biological Anthropology Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge

RESEARCH INTERESTS

My research interests cover two very different areas of biological anthropology - palaeoanthropology and human evolutionary ecology. Most of my research relates to late human evolution. Earlier research on the morphological and phylogenetic aspects of modern human diversity (based on skeletal material from recent and fossil populations) strongly supported the Single African Origin Model for modern human origins. This has led to a number of questions regarding the pattern and process of the evolution of human diversity from a single ancestral source in the last 150,000 years, particularly to the postulation, together with Rob Foley, of a process of Multiple Dispersals of human populations from Africa in the Upper Pleistocene. Recent work has focused on the earliest African modern human fossils and their immediate ancestors, late Pleistocene and Holocene African populations north and south of the Sahara; the morphological differentiation of Fueguian and Palaeoindian groups; and the evolution of eastern Asian diversity in the late Pleistocene. Related projects include the investigation of the functional units in human cranial anatomy, and the role of changes in subsistence strategy on the process of gracilization in prehistoric societies. Two themes unify these various studies - an interest in identifying the mechanisms by which human diversity was generated, with a particular focus on the role of population extinction; and the integration of the morphological, behavioural and genetic patterns observed among recent groups of people with fossil and archaeological data, leading to a better understanding of the role of history and geography in the process of differentiation.

A parallel interest is in problems of human growth, nutrition and development from an evolutionary perspective, leading to research on the genetic and environmental determinants of human diversity in size and form. Recent work in this area has focused on the growth, health and nutrition of caboclo children and the fertility patterns of women in western Amazonia; and the patterns of growth and development among populations of Asian and European ancestry in Brasil. New projects in this area are being carried out in collaboration with graduate students, and include the developmental and demographic relationships of Agta, Aeta, Batak and Tagalog populations in the Philippines, the developmental pattern of pygmy populations from Southeast Asia, and the ecological and behavioural influences on demographic parameters among nomadic pastoralists of the Sahel.

CURRENT PROJECTS

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Complete Publication List