Faculty & Staff

Charles P. Egeland

Charles Egeland Professor & Director of Archaeology Program
Paleolithic Archaeology and Paleoanthropology
Ph.D., Indiana University, 2007
Email: cpegelan@uncg.edu
Curriculum Vitae
See my Blog

Research Interests

Human Evolution
Paleolithic Archaeology
Zooarchaeology
Vertebrate Taphonomy
Paleoenvironmental Studies
Hunter-Gatherer Ecology

Courses Taught

ATY 153: The Human Species
ATY 205: The World of the Neandertals
ATY 231: Race and Human Diversity
ATY 341: Paleolithic Archaeology
ATY 350: Human Origins and Evolution
ATY 357: Monkeys, Apes, and Humans
ATY 359: Forensic Anthropology
ATY 361: Methods in Biological Anthropology
ATY 369: Statistics for Anthropology
ATY 453: Human Osteology
ATY 457: Primate Behavior
ATY 477: Zooarchaeology
ATY 479: Analysis of Archaeological Data

Personal Statement

As an anthropologist, I am interested in how humans interact with their environments. My focus is the Pleistocene, or “Ice Age,” which lasted from 2.6 million years ago to about 12,000 years ago. I specialize in the analysis of ancient animal remains, which are a rich repository of past human behavior and past environments. Ultimately, I seek to identify how humans reacted to, and used technology and culture to actively construct, their environments over long periods of time. I believe strongly, to borrow from Barbara Kingslover’s novel The Lacuna, that “the past is all we know of the future.” Looking back in time offers a depth to our understanding of human-environment interactions that allows us to appropriately contextualize—and provide potential solutions to—the issues we face today. As a committed teacher and mentor, I regularly include students in research and strive to instill skills that prepare them for the 21st century economy.

Student Research

Books

Deconstructing Olduvai: A Taphonomic Study of the Bed I Sites. (with M. Domínguez-Rodrigo and R. Barba, Springer, 2007)

Articles

CP Egeland, Briana L. Pobiner, Stephen R. Merritt, and Suzanne Kunitz (2024), Actualistic Butchery Studies in Zooarchaeology: Where We’ve Been, Where We Are, and Where We Want to Go, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 73:101565 (view PDF)
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo, CP Egeland, Lucía Cobo-Sánchez, Enrique Baquedano, and Richard C. Hulbert Jr. (2022), Sabertooth Carcass Consumption Behavior and the Dynamics of Pleistocene Large Carnivoran Guilds, Scientific Reports 12:6045 (view PDF)
CP Egeland and Travis Rayne Pickering (2020), Cruel Traces: Bone Surface Modifications and Their Relevance to Forensic Science, WIREs Forensic Science 3: e1400
CP Egeland, Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo, Travis Rayne Pickering, Colin G. Menter, and Jason L. Heaton (2018), Hominin Skeletal Part Abundances and Claims of Deliberate Disposal of Corpses in the Middle Pleistocene, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 115: 4601-4606
CP Egeland (2014), Taphonomic Estimates of Competition and the Role of Carnivore Avoidance in Hominin Site Use Within the Early Pleistocene Olduvai Basin, Quaternary International 322/323: 95-106

Current Projects

My research revolves around three major projects. The first is the analysis of Early Pleistocene sites from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and Swartkrans, South Africa. Both are part of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and preserve important records of regional climate change and human evolution over the past two million years. The second is the study of modern bones on savanna landscapes. As animals die and decompose, the bones they leave behind reflect the ecological dynamics of specific times and places. I therefore use these bones as models for ancient environments, archives of climate change, and sources of information for land-use and conservation policy. The third project is an NSF-funded study that brings together a team of archaeologists and computer, data, and cognitive scientists to reconstruct how Ice Age hunter-gatherers used social networks to navigate post-glacial environments in western Europe.