Richard R. Paine Associate Professor 218A Stewart 801-581-4021 Courses This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Areas of Specialization

Anthropological demography, archaeology, prehistoric demography, relationships between human populations and their environments, complex societies, Mesoamerica, Europe.

Research

  I am a demographic anthropologist.  I study how human populations interact with their environments: how population growth affects resources, and the long-term consequences for both the human population and the environment.  I take a multidisciplinary approach to these questions, employing human skeletal remains, archaeological settlement pattern studies, documentary records, and ethnographic data.  Earlier in my career, I used settlement and skeletal data to study population growth, environmental degradation, and the abandonment of the Classic Maya center of Copan, in Honduras.   Currently, I am using a large database of skeletal samples from Europe to examine the relationship between population growth, urbanism, and the changing impact of epidemic disease on human populations.  In the near future, I hope to begin a new project studying the re-colonization of a rainforest area in Nicaragua.  The indigenous populations of the Bosawas biosphere reserve were driven from their homes during the Contra Wars.  They began to re-colonize the space in the 1990s, at the same time the reserve was established.  This presents a unique opportunity to examine how populations exploit open environments and how they change (demographically and culturally) as that environment becomes limited.  This project is still in the planning phase, but I hope it will be at the center of my research for a long time. 

Selected Publications

Hawkes, K.H., and R.R.Paine, eds. (2006) The Evolution of Human Life History. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM.

Paine, R.R. and J.L. Boldsen (2006) Epidemic Cycles and Life History Change in the Holocene. IN:Hawkes, K.H., and R.R. Paine, editors, The Evolution of Human Life History, pp. 307-329. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, NM.

Paine, R.R. (2005) Demography. IN: Maschner, H.D.G. and Chippindale C., editors, Handbook of Archaeological Methods. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.

Paine, R.R., and G.R. Storey (2005) Catastrophic Mortality in Ancient Rome? IN:G.R. Storey, editor, Population and Preindustrial Cities: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Parker, B. J., A. Creekmore, L. S. Dodd, C. Meegan, E. Moseman, R. Paine, M. Abraham and P. Cobb (2003) "The Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project (UTARP): a Preliminary Report from the 2001 Field Season. Anatolica 29: 103-174.

Parker, B. J., A. Creekmore, C. Cavallo, R. Maliepaard, and R. Paine (2002) The Upper Tigris Archaeological Research Project: a final report from the 1999 field season. Anatolian Studies 52:19-74.

Paine, R.R., and J.L. Boldsen (2002) Linking Mortality and Population Dynamics. IN: Hoppa R.D. and Vaupel J.W., editors, Paleodemography: Age Distributions from Skeletal Samples. Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology 31, pp. 169-180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bentley, G.R., R.R. Paine and J.L. Boldsen (2001) Fertility Changes with the Prehistoric Transition to Agriculture: Perspectives from Reproductive Ecology and Paleodemography. IN: P.T. Ellison, editor, Reproductive Ecology and Human Evolution. pp. 203-231. Chicago: Aldine.

Paine R.R. (2000)  If a Population Crashes in Prehistory and there Is No Paleodemographer there to Hear It, Does It Make a Sound?  American Journal of Physical Anthropology 112(2):181-190. PDF

Paine, R.R., and H.C. Harpending (1998) The Effect of Sample Bias on Paleodemographic Fertility Estimates. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 105(2):231-240. PDF

Paine, R.R., ed. (1997) Integrating Archaeological Demography: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Prehistoric Population. Occasional Papers No 24, Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Paine, R.R. (1997) The Need for a Multidisciplinary Approach to Prehistoric Demography. IN: R.R. Paine, editor, Integrating Archaeological Demography: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Prehistoric Population. Occasional Papers 24, pp: 1-18. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Paine, R.R. (1997) The Role of Uniformitarian Models in Osteological Paleodemography, IN: R.R. Paine, editor, Integrating Archaeological Demography: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Prehistoric Population. Occasional Papers 24, pp: 191-204. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Paine, R.R., and H.C. Harpending (1996) Testing the Reliability of Paleodemographic Fertility Estimates Using Simulated Skeletal Distributions. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 101(2):151-160.  PDF

Paine, R.R., and AC. Freter 1996 Environmental Degradation and the Classic Maya Collapse at Copán, Honduras (AD 600-1250): Evidence from Studies of Household Survival, Ancient Mesoamerica 7:37-47. PDF

Paine, R.R., AC. Freter, and D.L. Webster 1996 Mathematical Projection of Population Growth in the Copán Valley, Honduras (AD 400-800), Latin American Antiquity 7(1): 51-60.  PDF

Courses

Anthropology 2313 Section 1: The Rise of Civilization

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