Mary C. Stiner, Regents Professor, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona

Humans are the only animal species that bury their dead, and this practice is preserved in Paleolithic sites as early as 120,000 years ago. The emergence of burial traditions in this time period implies that both Neanderthals and early humans had already begun to conceive of the individual as unique and irreplaceable. Mary Stiner will discuss the archaeological evidence for burial practices in the Paleolithic, the earliest-known ritualized bridge between the living and the deceased in human evolutionary history.

Hallam L. Movius, Jr. Lecture

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About the Speaker

Mary C. Stiner is Regents Professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. She is also curator of zooarchaeology at the Arizona State Museum. She conducts archaeological research on human ancestors, and examines paleoeconomics and social evolution across the Mediterranean Basin. She is particularly interested in the ever-changing relationship between human societies and Eurasian ecosystems. With an expertise in zooarchaeology, she has worked on a wide range of topics in human evolution, Paleolithic archaeology, hunter-gatherer ecology, animal domestication, the transition from hunter-gatherer to early village economies, and early art as media for visual communication.