Women’s Week Results

The race was very close this year but three candidates stood out in the voting: Robin Torrence, Sarah Hrdy and Paolo Villa. Due to the fact that Dr. Torrence lives in Australia, she will not be able to visit Texas A&M until October during a previously planned visit to the United States. She has been designated the 2010-11 speaker and an invitation to one of the close runner-ups for 2009-10. Regretfully, Dr. Hrdy's schedule does not allow a visit to Texas A&M. Thus, we are happy to announce that in March of 2010 Dr. Paolo Villa will be our speaker for Women's Week. We will send out more information about dates and the schedule when the event gets closer. Thank you to all who voted. We look forward to you coming to hear Dr. Villa talk and spending some time with her.

Dr. Robin Torrence
Dr. Torrence currently holds the position of Principal Research Scientist in the Anthropology Division of the Australian Museum in Sydney. Her work is applicable across the multiple disciplines and regional foci within the department. Here are a few links describing Dr. Torrence’s research:  
http://australianmuseum.net.au/staff/robin-torrence
http://www.archaeologyweek.com/mta/mta.php?id=022

Dr. Torrence began her studies at Bryn Mawr and went on to complete her graduate work at UNM under Lewis Binford. Her PhD detailed the organization of stone tool production, distribution and consumption in Greece on a project lead by Colin Renfrew. She is an advocate of empirically grounded archaeology that employs systematic data collection towards a robust discussion for theoretical interpretations of human behavior. In addition to her pioneering research in the study of the organization of technology, Dr. Torrence has made significant contributions towards archaeological starch and phytolith research and the archaeological investigation of human response to disasters. Dr. Torrence has conducted research throughout areas within our departmental regional foci including the Mediterranean, North American Southwest, Oceania, and Siberia.

Dr. Sarah Hrdy
Dr. Hrdy is Professor Emerita at the University of California, Davis. Hrdy is a former Guggenheim fellow and was elected to the California Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She earned her doctorate in Anthropology from Harvard (1975). In 1999, Hrdy published Mother Nature - Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species. She places human mothers and infants in a broader comparative and evolutionary framework. She discusses how mothers are continually making trade-offs between quality and quantity and weighing the best possible actions for both her and her infant. Hrdy's view is that there is no defined 'maternal instinct', as it depends on a number of variables, and is therefore not innate, as once thought. She also stands by her view that humans evolved as cooperative breeders, making them essentially unable to raise offspring without a helper. This is where the concept of allomothering comes in - relatives other than the mother who spend time with an infant leaving the mother with more free time to meet her own needs.

Dr. Paola Villa
Dr. Villa is a Paleolithic archaeologist who studies technology and geoarchaeology. She's from Italy originally, and holds doctorates from University of Rome and UC-Berkeley. Currently holds positions at universities in France and Colorado. Early on she took on Henri deLumley and the Lower Paleolithic of Europe problem, reanalyzing the site formation processes at Terra Amata. More recently she has been studying MSA technology in southern Africa, trying to use it to understand human modernity there. She has also spent some time in the U.S. studying Paleoindian technology, primarily to enhance her own research in Africa. It might be interesting to get a European perspective on women in anthropology, and the perspective of a senior Paleolithic/paleoanthropological scientist who has been active in the field since the early 1970s.