The College of Arts and Sciences

The College of Arts and Sciences - Connecting the West with the World and Faculty with Students

Department of Anthropology

"From ancient to now, biology to language, diet to religion, global to local, anthropology explores all facets of the human experience."

• Anthropology was brought to the University of Montana by the storied Harry H. Turney-High in the 1930s; later, in the 1960s, the energetic scholar Carling I. Malouf founded the Department. Today, the Department has 17 tenure-track faculty, a lecturer, and numerous adjuncts, emeritus professors, and faculty affiliates. Our current faculty has worked on every continent (save Antarctica!) on topics ranging from the origins of modern humans to indigenous language preservation.
• We provide students with a holistic framework of humankind, opportunities for hands-on fieldwork and analyses, and the ability to specialize and learn from multiple professors in all areas of anthropology: social-cultural, linguistics, biological, and archaeology.
• The Anthropology Department offers B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees with specialties in cultural heritage, forensic anthropology, linguistics, and more.

Graduate Student Mark Timmons

Hometown: Missoula, MT

Research Advisor: Kelly Dixon

Research Project: Comparative archaeological community study of two western Montana mining towns - Coloma and Garnet

Mark’s Ph.D. research uses the lens of community studies to guide household-level interpretations of archaeological, architectural, and historical remains of Coloma and Garnet to better understand the individual community structure that makes up both mining towns/camps. This treatment of Coloma will foster an archaeology of mining that goes beyond material aspects of mining and male-dominated activities within the community in order to focus on women, children, and other groups frequently marginalized in the American West’s popular historical accounts.

 

Graduate Student Apryle Pickering

Hometown: Pittsford, Vermont

Research Advisor: Kimber McKay

Research Project: Declining population growth: the case of Montana Hutterites

The focus of Apryle’s Ph.D. research is the ongoing fertility transition experienced by the Hutterite Colonies of Montana. Today Hutterites are famous among demographers for their natural fertility standards set in the 1930s when the women averaged 10 to 13 children each. The extremely high fertility rates are no longer found among the colonies, despite their isolated communal way of life. I will be developing hypotheses as to what mechanisms have driven this transition in fertility as well as looking closely at how modern medical technology has contributed to this shift in ideology.

 

Undergraduate Student Carrie Brady

Hometown:  Winnett, MT

Research Advisor: Randall Skelton

Research Project: Identification of saliva in forensic cases

Tests available to the Montana State Crime Lab used in the past were not specific to human saliva. Carrie is undertaking tests of a new procedure to insure that it is reliable and accurate. The results of these tests will help determine whether this new method becomes a standard tool at the Crime Lab.

 

Undergraduate Student Dean S. Nicolai

Hometown:

Research Advisor: Thomas Foor

Research Project: Archaeological Survey for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes