Dr. Fisher’s research is focused on unraveling the complex relationship that links humans to their past and present environments. This focus of anthropological archaeology is often called landscape archaeology or human ecodynamics. In the past decade attention drawn to global warming has created an immediacy to modern environmental problems, many of which have antecedents and parallels in the deep past. Ancient societies faced many of the same environmental problems we are confronting today and constructed both successful and disastrous responses. By studying this record of landscape change, which can be reconstructed through both earth-science and archaeological techniques, Prehistory can inform modern-based conceptions of land degradation, sustainability, development, and human and natural ecological change. Dr. Fisher has active research projects in two areas of Mesoamerica including the Malpaso Valley, Zacatecas, and the Lake Patzcuaro Basin, Michoacan. He has published articles in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Antiquity, and the American Anthropologist, chapters in several books, and is the co-editor of a recent volume on archaeological approaches to intensification.

Dr. Fisher is actively seeking graduate students at the MA and PhD. levels who have an interest in Mesoamerican and Central American archaeology, remote sensing, LiDAR, GIS and geospatial analysis, urbanism and early cities, and long-term records of human/environment interaction. Please contact Dr. Fisher for more details.

Dr. Fisher in the News

Research

Landscape archaeology; human ecodynamics; land degradation; sustainability; development; ecological change

Legacies of Resilience: a long-term research project