Marcus J. Hamilton's Web Page

Research interests: Integrative anthropology, archaeology and ecology; complex human and ecological systems; human organization and structure; hunter-gatherers; Paleoindians; colonization of the Americas; behavioral ecology; scaling theory; metabolic ecology; macroecology; life history theory; biogeography; population dynamics; biocultural diversity; comparative analysis; informatics; statistical and mathematical modeling; nonequilibrium systems.

I have a broad background in evolutionary anthropology, archaeology, and theoretical ecology. My research addresses the general mechanisms that have shaped human ecological and evolutionary dynamics in the past, present, and future at mutiple scales, from life history theory and behavioral ecology, to population dynamics and the biogeography of human diversity. My research emphasizes theory building and data analysis in equal parts and combines aspects of anthropology, archaeology, ecology, and economics. I am interested both in the theoretical understanding of complex human systems, but also in the applied role integrative anthropology can play in understanding the potential trajectories of human societies into the future, including the interplay of human energy use, population dynamics, biocultural diversity, and economic growth.

I recieved my B.Sc. from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London in 1998, conducting field work at Lubbock Lake Landmark, Texas, where I excavated for 8 field seasons with Texas Tech University. I began graduate school at the University of New Mexico in 2000 to work with James Boone and Bruce Huckell on human evolutionary ecology and hunter-gatherer archaeology. During this time I became increasingly involved with the NSF-funded Biocomplexity Program in the Department of Biology at UNM, run by James Brown and Bruce Milne, where we started to use macroecological principles to explore variation in ethnographic hunter-gatherer societies. This work quickly developed into a broader interest in human macroecology, and the general energetics of human-ecosystem interactions through time and space. After graduating with my PhD, I became a postdoctoral fellow in the Program for Interdisciplinary Biological and Biomedical Sciences in the Department of Biology at UNM, directed by Felisa Smith and James Brown. Currently, I am a postdoctoral fellow in the scaling group at the Santa Fe Institute working with Geoffrey West and Luis Bettencourt on the dynamics of cities, firms, and markets, dominant features of contemporary human ecology.

I have published articles in journals such as Science, PNAS, Proceedings: Biological Sciences, BioScence, PLoS ONE, Scientific Reports, Biological Reviews, American Antiquity, Current Anthropology, Journal of Archaeological Science, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology and elsewhere. My research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the McDonnell Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, Boeing, the University of New Mexico, and the Santa Fe Institute.

"All organized systems throughout the sciences share generic phenomena characterizing their emergence, development, and evolution.Whether they are physical, biological, or cultural systems, certain similarities and homologies pervade evolving entities throughout an amazingly diverse Universe.”

Eric Chaisson (2001). Cosmic Evolution. Harvard Press.

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