Affiliation: University of California, Merced
Professor Mark Aldenderfer is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and holds the Edward A. Dickson Emeriti Professorship Endowed Chair in the Department of Anthropology and Heritage Studies at the University of California, Merced; he is also Adjunct Professor with the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, Tucson His research focuses the comparative analysis of high altitude cultural and biological adaptations from an archaeological perspective, and he is likely to be the only archaeologist who has done research on the three high elevation plateaus of the planet—Ethiopian, Andean, and Tibetan—over the course of his career. He currently works in the High Himalayas of Nepal studying pre-Buddhist and Buddhist-era sites. He holds his degrees from Pennsylvania State University (Ph.D.) and Wake Forest University. He has conducted fieldwork in Tibet, Nepal, Peru, Argentina, Ethiopia, and at sites throughout the United States. Professor Aldenderfer was the AIA’s Norton Lecturer for 2013/2014.
