Dolores Piperno

Research Professor of Anthropology
Fellow, Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology
E-mail pipernod@si.edu
No campus office

Dr. Piperno is a curator in the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology and a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. She studies prehistoric human adaptations in tropical lowlands and the use of phytoliths and other plant microfossils to study the origins of agriculture and changes in tropical environments in the Pleistocene and Holocene.

For a PubMed profile of Dolores Piperno, click here.

Research

Dr. Piperno's research focuses on the analysis of plant remains from archeological contexts

Selected Publications

Books

2006	Piperno, D.R. Phytoliths: A Comprehensive Guide for Archaeologists and Paleoecologists. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
1998	Piperno, D.R., and D.M. Pearsall. The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics. San Diego: Academic Press.

Articles and Book Chapters

2008	Piperno, D.R., and T. Dillehay. "Starch grains on human teeth reveal early broad crop diet in northern Peru," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(50):19622-19627.
2004	Piperno, D.R., E. Weiss, I. Holst, and D. Nadel. "Processing of wild cereal grains during the Upper Paleolithic revealed by starch grain analysis," Nature 430: 670-673.
2003	Piperno, D.R., and K.E. Stohert. "Phytolith evidence for early Holocene Cucurbita domestication in southwest Ecuador," Science 299: 1054-1057.

Course Taught

No courses taught at GW to date.

Education

Ph.D. 1983, Temple University
M.A. 1979, Temple University
B.S. 1971, Rutgers University