معرفی
Natalie Munro is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut, specializing in zooarchaeology and the study of human-animal interactions during the transition to agriculture. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona (2001), an M.A. from Simon Fraser University (1994), and a B.S. from Southern Methodist University (1991). She was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution (2001-02) and has held fellowships at the University of Connecticut's Humanities Institute (2015-2016) and the Mandel Scholion Center at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2017-2018).
Her research focuses on the emergence of agriculture, zooarchaeology and taphonomy, animal domestication, behavioral ecology, human hunting practices, and human-animal interactions during the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic periods of Southwest Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. She employs zooarchaeological methods to investigate the transition from hunting and gathering to food production, with particular attention to gazelle and other ungulate species in the Levant.
Munro's extensive publication record includes articles in top journals like Science, PNAS, Current Anthropology, and Journal of Human Evolution. Her work demonstrates a consistent focus on understanding the complex pathways to animal domestication, particularly sheep and goats in Anatolia and the Levant, as well as specialized hunting strategies and ritual animal use during the Neolithic period. Her recent research explores mountain gazelle body size variation, aquatic resource exploitation during the Natufian period, and the emergence of animal management practices.
She has received research support from prestigious organizations including the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Munro serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Human Evolution and is a long-term co-chair and board member of the Connecticut Museum of Natural History. She teaches courses including Old World Archaeology, Near Eastern Prehistory, Origins of Agriculture, Zooarchaeology Method and Theory, and Quantitative Zooarchaeology.
