Alexandra Greenwald, Ph.D.

Background

Alexandra Greenwald is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and a Curator of Ethnography at the Natural History Museum of Utah at the University of Utah. Dr. Greenwald earned her B.A. at Mills College and her M.A. and Ph.D. at University of California, Davis. She held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Evolution and Medicine and the School for Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University prior to arriving at the University of Utah in 2019. 

Dr. Greenwald’s expertise is in North American prehistoric archaeology and ethnography, behavioral ecology, biological anthropology, and bioarchaeology. Research conducted in Greenwald’s Archaeometric and Ethno-Experimental Lab (AELab) seeks to reconstruct prehistoric lifeways and understand the cultural continuity between ancient people and their historic and contemporary descendants using ethnography, archaeological data, collections-based research, and experimental methods. Projects include cross-cultural isotopic reconstruction of breastfeeding behavior and early childhood diets in collaboration with descendant communities, archaeological investigations into the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in California and the Colorado Plateau, energetics and behavioral ecology of Indigenous cradle technology, the biomechanics of ancient footwear, and collections-based ethnographic work with tribal communities across the Great Basin, Colorado Plateau, and Southwest.