Faculty & Staff

Joel D. Gunn

Joel Gunn Lecturer
Ethology and Archaeology
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1974
Email: jdgunn@uncg.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

Global Climate Change Impacts on Local Cultures and Hydrology
Sustainability in Maya Lowlands
Regional Landscape Studies
Numerical Analysis
Lithic Analysis
Complex Systems Theory

Courses Taught

FMS 171 The Hungry Coyote: Anthropologists Look at Megacities, Freshman Seminar
ATY-212 How to Human
ATY-153 The Human Species
ATY-230 Cultures of Native North Americans
ATY 235 Cultures of Africa
SSC-400 BLS Capstone
ATY 363 History of Anthropological Theory
ATY-434 Archaeology of South America

Personal Statement

My background includes teaching at major universities, administration, pure research, and applied anthropology/archaeology. My field experience encompasses cultures in the southeastern United States, Mesoamerica, Southern Europe and Cyprus. Special areas of emphasis include global climate change as it affects local cultures, ecologies, and landscapes. I am especially interested in complex systems modeling of cultural change processes. I have undertaken the study of modern global climate in order to support anthropological investigations of local environments and to apply knowledge of current and past climates to the future of global environmental policy, especially as it relates to sustainability issues.

Books

Tracing A.D. 536 and Its Aftermath: The Years Without Summer. (British Archaeological Reports 872, Oxford, 2000)

Articles

JW Day, Jr., JD Gunn, WJ Folan, A Yáñez-Arancibia and BP Horton (2012) The Influence of Enhanced Post-Glacial Coastal Margin Productivity on the Emergence of Complex Societies. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 7:23–52. (view PDF)
JD Gunn, CL Crumley, Elizabeth Jones, and BK Young (2004) A Landscape Analysis of Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages. In The Archaeology of Global Change: The Impact of Humans on their Environment, edited by Charles L. Redman, Steven R. James, Paul R. Fish, and J. Daniel Rogers, pp. 165-185, Smithsonian Books Washington DC. (view PDF)
Visit Joel’s UNCG NC Docks page for more publications https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/clist.aspx?id=3465

Current Projects

IHOPE-Maya Website

Since 2009 when it was organized at the Santa Fe School for Advanced Research a working group of Mesoamerican archaeologists organized by Vernon Scarborough have been studying the impact of climate change on the Classic Period cultures. IHOPE-Maya is affiliated with IHOPE International (IHOPEnet.org), Integrated History and Future of People on Earth. The list of publications by this work group now includes the following.

Chase, Arlen F., and Vernon L. Scarborough. 2014. The Resilience and Vulnerability of Ancient Landscapes: Transforming Maya Archaeology through IHOPE. Vol. 24. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association. Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association. worldcat.org/title/893894572.

Gunn, Joel D., ed. 2025. 536 CE: A Historical Ecology of Mesoamerica during the Late Antique Little Ice Age. Provo, Utah: University of Utah Press.

Gunn, Joel D., and IHOPE-Maya Collaboration. 2024. “The Gods Are Angry: The Impact of the 536 CE Little Ice Age on Mesoamerica.” The Atlander: Magazine of the Americas 4 (6): 3–8. https://publuu.com/flip-book/288247/1191573.

Gunn, Joel D., Vernon L. Scarborough, William J. Folan, Christian Isendahl, Arlen F. Chase, Jeremy A. Sabloff, and Beniamino Volta. 2017. “A Distribution Analysis of the Central Maya Lowlands Ecoinformation Network: Its Rises, Falls, and Changes.” Ecology and Society 22:20. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08931-220120.

Isendahl, Christian, Nicholas P Dunning, Liwy Grazioso, Scott Hawken, David L Lentz, and Vernon L Scarborough. 2024. “Growth and Decline of a Sustainable City: A Multitemporal Perspective on Blue-Black-Green Infrastructures at the Pre-Columbian Lowland Maya City of Tikal.” Urban Studies, 00420980231224648. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231224648.

Torrescano-Valle, Nuria, William J. Folan, Alfredo Yanez-Montalvo, and Joel D. Gunn. 2023. “Climate and Agricultural History from the Petén Campechano in the Late Holocene Maya Lowlands of Southern Mexico.” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-023-00914-4.

Human-planetary interactions in Biophysical Economics: https://rdcu.be/bGlki

Cultural transformation of Maya information networks : http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss1/art20/

Maya Lithics: The Stones of Calakmul, Información 17 2020 PDF available on ResearchGate