Susan Pfeiffer
Susan K. Pfeiffer, Ph.D. (University of Toronto, 1976)
Professor, St. George Campus
On Leave January - June 2012
(416) 978-4004
Office: AP 528
Lab: AP 530
Field: Biological anthropology, skeletal biology of past peoples; Southern Africa, North East North America
Research
Dr. Pfeiffer's research concentrates on reconstructing the conditions of life from characteristics of bones and teeth. She is especially interested in newer methods that focus at the tissue level, such as biomechanical modeling and histology. In the past decade she has focused on research questions based in southern Africa. She was drawn to that region because of its rich archaeological record and long temporal evidence for peoples with successful hunting and gathering adaptations. She is a research associate in the Archaeology Department at the University of Cape Town and has taught undergraduate courses in Human Evolution there.
Dr. Pfeiffer has also contributed to questions about the lives of the ancestors of Canadian First Nations peoples. Since her PhD thesis on hunter-gatherer populations of the Upper Great Lakes, she has published research on archaeologically derived skeletons from Ontario, especially the ossuaries of the Northern Iroquoians. She has served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Recent Publications
In press Pfeiffer, S. Pelvic stress injuries in a small-bodied forager. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. Online Aug 4, 2010.
2011 Pfeiffer, S., Harrington, L. Bioarchaeological evidence for the basis of small adult stature in southern Africa. Current Anthropology 52:3 (June 2011):449-461.
2011 Doyle, L.E., Lazenby, R.A., Pfeiffer, S. Cortical bone mass and geometry: age, sex, and intraskeletal variation in Nineteenth-Century Euro-Canadians. American Journal of Human Biology 23:534-545.
2010 Dewar, G., Pfeiffer, S. Approaches to estimation of marine protein in human collagen for radiocarbon date calibration. Radiocarbon, 52:4:1611-1625.
2010 Kurki, H.K., Ginter, J.K., Stock, J.T., Pfeiffer, S. Body size estimation of small-bodied humans: Applicability of current methods. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 141:2:169-180.
2010 Pfeiffer, S., Harrington, L. 2010. Child growth among southern African foragers. In: Moffat, T. and Prowse, T. (eds.) Human Diet and Nutrition in Biocultural Perspective, pp. 35-56, Biosocial Book Series, Catherine Panter-Brick (ed.), Berghahn Press (Oxford and New York).
2010 Crowder, C., Pfeiffer, S. 2010. The application of cortical bone histomorphometry to estimate age at death. In: Age Estimation from the Human Skeleton. Editors: Krista E. Latham and Michael Finnegan. Pp. 193-215. C.C.Thomas.
Conference Presentations
2011 Pfeiffer, S. Conditions for evolution of small adult body size in southern Africa.
Wenner-Gren Symposium 143, “Human Biology and the Origins of Homo”, March 4-11, Sintra, Portugal.
2011 Kurki, H., Pfeiffer, S., Stynder, D. Allometry of head and body size in Holocene forgers of the South African Cape (Abstract). American Journal of Physical Anthropology S52:193-194.
2010 Pfeiffer, S. Diversity in Later Stone Age burial practices, South Africa. 13th Congress of the Panafrican Archaeological Association for Prehistory and Related Studies/ 20th Meeting of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, Dakar, Senegal, 1-7 November.
2010 Pfeiffer, S. Holocene population dynamics on the southwest coast of Africa. CIFAR Workshop on Human-Environment Interactions in Long Term Perspective, Vancouver, BC, 13-14 October.
