The Most Influential People Across History

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential female people in Anthropology,

#651

Mary Marzke

#175542
Overall Influence
1937 - 2020 (83 years)
Mary W. Marzke was an American anthropologist. Her research focuses on the evolution of the hominin hand. Early life and education Mary Marzke was born Mary Walpole in Oakland, California. While in middle school and high school, ski trips with her family friends the McCowns sparked an interest in anthropology as both Professor and Mrs. McCown were physical anthropologists. Professor McCown later went on to serve as one of her Ph.D. supervisors. In 1959, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with an A.B. in Anthropology. Following this, she attained her M.A. in anthropology from Columbia University in New York in 1961.
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#652

Hella Eckardt

#111485
Overall Influence
Hella Eckardt is an archaeologist who specialises in Roman archaeology and material culture and a professor at the University of Reading. Since 2018 she has been the Editor of the journal Britannia.
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#653

Deborah James

#64640
Overall Influence
Deborah James, is a South African anthropologist and academic, who specialises in South Africa, economic anthropology, political anthropology, and ethnography. Since 2008, she has been Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics in England.
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#654

Sarah Green

Sarah Green
#177837
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Sarah Francesca Green is currently a professor of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Helsinki. She is a specialist on borders, spatial relations, gender and sexuality, and information and communications technologies. She has lived in Greece, the UK, US, Italy and currently lives in Helsinki, Finland. In September 2016, Green was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Grant to develop new research in the Mediterranean region. The project is called Crosslocations. She was also awarded an Academy of Finland Project, called Transit, Trade and Travel, which also concerns ...
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#655

Lynn Bolles

#152283
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Augusta Lynn Bolles is an anthropologist, professor of women's studies at the University of Maryland, and co-chair of The Cottagers' African American Cultural Festival. Biography She graduated from Syracuse University and earned a master's degree in sociocultural anthropology and a doctoral degree in anthropology from Rutgers University. She is the daughter of Augusta Beebe Bolles and George Bolles. She married James Mackin Walsh on February 9, 1980, in the Kirkpatrick Chapel of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
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#656

Caitlin E. Buck

#128860
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Caitlin E. Buck is a British archaeologist and statistician specialising the application of Bayesian statistics to archaeology, and known for her work in radiocarbon dating. She is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield.
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#657

Yukiko Koga

#153590
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Yukiko Koga is an anthropologist teaching at Yale University. She previously taught at CUNY's Hunter College. She specializes in legal anthropology, urban space, post-colonial & post-imperial relations, history & memory, and transnational East Asia .
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#658

Glynis Jones

#161929
Overall Influence
Glynis Eleanor Jones FBA is a British archaeobotanist, who is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. Biography Jones graduated from Cardiff University with a degree in zoology, before working as a science teacher in the UK and Greece. Next, Jones worked as a research assistant at the British School at Athens, before undertaking an MPhil and then PhD in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. After completing her PhD, Jones worked in the Department of Urban Archaeology, Museum of London, before commencing an academic post at the University of Sheffield in 1984. In 2004 Jon...
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#659

Audrey Meaney

#53207
Overall Influence
1931 - 2021 (90 years)
Audrey Lilian Meaney was an archaeologist and historian specialising in the study of Anglo-Saxon England. She published several books on the subject, including Gazetteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites and Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones .
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#660

Faye V. Harrison

#175496
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Faye Harrison is a professor of African-American Studies and Anthropology and Faculty Affiliate for the Program on Women & Gender in Global Perspectives, the Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies and the Center for African Studies, all for the University of Illinois. She earned her B.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D from Stanford University. Harrison’s research interests have taken her to Nigeria, South Africa, Japan, Jamaica, Denmark and many more countries. She has explored racism and human rights, gendered division of labor, gang politics and criminality, and feminism. She has been honored many times for her contributions to the field of anthropology.
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#661

Sharon N. DeWitte

#180939
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Sharon Nell DeWitte is an American bioarchaeologist. She is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her research interests include the Black Death.
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#662

Janet Richards

#120198
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Janet Richards is an American Egyptologist and academic. Biography Richards started her higher education at Northwestern University then continued it at Universite de Paris-IV and l'École du Louvre, which led her to her doctorate degree in anthropology and Oriental studies at University of Pennsylvania. Some of her previous occupations were education coordinator at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, field director for the Pennsylvania-Yale Abydos North Cemetery Project, and curatorial assistant, Egyptian Section at University of Pennsylvania Museum.
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#663

Lin Foxhall

#51453
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (64 years)
Lin Foxhall, FSA, MBE, is a Professor of archaeology and ancient Greek History. She has written on women, men, and gender in the classical world. She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Leicester, and in 2017 she was appointed to the Rathbone Chair of Ancient History and Classical Archaeology at the University of Liverpool.
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#664

Jane Balme

Jane Balme
#173183
Overall Influence
Jane Balme is a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Western Australia. She is an expert on early Indigenous groups and Australian archaeology. Biography Balme studied for an undergraduate degree in Anthropology at the University of Western Australia, graduating in 1979. Balme worked on cave sites in south west Australia for the Western Australian Museum and became interested in archaeology.
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#665

Jennie R. Joe

#85281
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Jennie R. Joe (born 1941) is an American academic, medical anthropologist, and fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Initially trained as a nurse, she was one of the health clinic workers during Occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. She is a professor in the Departments of Family and Community Medicine and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. Joe was one of the inaugural board members for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and serves on the board of the Urban Indian Health Commission. She graduated from the University of New Mexico as a public health ...
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#666

Jennifer Christine Nash

#122537
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (45 years)
Jennifer Christine Nash is the Jean Fox O'Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University within its Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. Her research interests include Black feminist theory, feminist legal theory, Black sexual politics, black motherhood, black maternal health, race and law, and intersectionality.
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#667

Jacqui Mulville

Jacqui Mulville
#170796
Overall Influence
Jacqueline Mulville is a British bioarchaeologist and Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University. Mulville is a field archaeologist whose research focuses on osteoarchaeology, human and animal identities, and island archaeologies concentrated on Britain.
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#668

Penelope Allison

#118963
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (71 years)
Penelope 'Pim' Allison is an academic archaeologist specialising the Roman Empire and since 2015 has been professor of archaeology at the University of Leicester. She is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
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#669

Tara Brabazon

#47058
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (56 years)
Tara Brabazon is Dean of Graduate Research and Professor of Cultural Studies at Charles Darwin University, in Darwin, Australia, moving from the same position at Flinders University in 2023. She has previously held academic positions in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, won six teaching awards, published 20 books, and written 250 refereed articles and contributed essays and opinion pieces on higher education and the arts.
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#670

Ufuk Esin

#80960
Overall Influence
1933 - 2008 (75 years)
Ufuk Esin was a Turkish archaeologist known for pioneering archaeological science in Turkey and for her excavations at Aşıklı Höyük. She was a professor at Istanbul University from 1966 until her retirement in 2000 and was instrumental in founding the Turkish Academy of Sciences.
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#671

Stella Nyanzi

#151689
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (51 years)
Stella Nyanzi is a Ugandan human rights advocate, poet, medical anthropologist, feminist, queer rights advocate, and scholar of sexuality, family planning, and public health. She was arrested in 2017 for insulting the Ugandan president. In January 2022, she was accepted to live in Germany on a writers-in-exile programme run by PEN Germany, with her three children.
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#672

Deborah Pellow

#96507
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Deborah Pellow is an American anthropologist. She is a professor emerita at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She is known for her work on urbanization and the anthropology of space and place in West Africa, particularly in Ghana.
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#673

Tanja Lange

#183676
Overall Influence
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#674

Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder

#167922
Overall Influence
1976 - Present (49 years)
Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder is an Israeli-Arab sociologist, anthropologist, and feminist activist with a specialty in gender studies. She is the first Bedouin woman in Israel to receive a doctorate, and to be promoted to Associate Professor. In June 2021, she was appointed Vice-President for Diversity and Inclusion at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
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#675

Sarah Colley

#96748
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (124 years)
Sarah Colley is an honorary research fellow in the University of Leicester, school of Archaeology and Ancient History. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2011. Colley is interested in using modern digital communication technology and applies them to enhance researches in the field of archaeology. Because of that interest, she is currently working with Penelope Allison on the development of digital research resources in the Kinchega Archaeological Research Project.
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#676

Ruth Cernea

#176163
Overall Influence
1934 - 2009 (75 years)
Ruth Fredman Cernea was an American cultural anthropologist, who dedicated virtually all her field research and writings to the analysis of Jewish culture and symbols, in various settings. Biography Born in Philadelphia in 1934, Ruth Fredman Cernea got her BA degree in English literature from Temple University, created and raised a family, and returned to Temple University to complete her graduate studies. After gaining a doctorate in cultural anthropology, she became the Director for Publications and Research at the national headquarters of the Hillel Foundation for Jewish Campus Life .
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#677

Lynley Wallis

#165093
Overall Influence
Lynley A. Wallis is an Australian archaeologist and Associate Professor at Griffith University. She is a specialist in palaeoenvironmental reconstruction through the analysis of phytoliths. Education Wallis obtained her PhD from the Australian National University . Her PhD thesis titled Phytoliths, Late Quaternary Environment and Archaeology in Tropical Semi-arid Northwest Australia demonstrated the suitability of phytolith analysis to questions of palaeoenvironmental interest in the tropical semi-arid areas and, subsequently, produced the first detailed late Quaternary terrestrial vegetation...
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#678

Leila Badre

#56645
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (82 years)
Leila Badre is a Lebanese archaeologist and director of the Archaeological Museum of the American University of Beirut. Biography Badre was born in Beirut and attended the "Dames de Nazareth" high school there. She obtained her B.A. and M.A. in Archaeology at the American University of Beirut and then went on to complete a doctorate at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. Her thesis, entitled "Anthrophomorphic figurines in Bronze Age Syria" was completed in 1976, published in 1980 and has become a reference book on the subject. She has also lectured at the Louvre, Institute of the Ara...
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#679

Donna Schwartz-Barcott

#138070
Overall Influence
Donna Schwartz-Barcott is an American nurse and anthropologist. She is a professor of nursing at University of Rhode Island. Schwartz-Barcott earned a B.S. in nursing from University of Washington. She completed an M.S. in public health and an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her 1978 dissertation was titled National family planning programs in developing nations: a theoretical and empirical examination of the adoption process. She is married to T. P. Barcott. They have a son, Rye Barcott.
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#680

Tamsin O'Connell

#172915
Overall Influence
Tamsin O'Connell is an archaeological scientist based at the University of Cambridge. Her work has pioneered the use of isotope analysis in archaeology, specifically diet and climate in human and animal tissues.
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#681

Caroline Wickham-Jones

#79311
Overall Influence
Caroline Rosa Wickham-Jones MA MSocSci FSA HonFSAScot MCIfA was a British archaeologist specialising in Stone Age Orkney. She was a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen until her retirement in 2015.
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#682

Kate Clark

#170455
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Kate Clark is a museum director and archaeologist. She was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2000. Clark was Director of Sydney Living Museums between 2008 and 2013 and the CEO of Cadw from 2014. Before that, she also worked for English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Council for British Archaeology, and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum.
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#683

Marijke van der Veen

#178202
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Marijke van der Veen, is a Dutch archaeobotanist and Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester. Biography Van der Veen studied History and Archaeology at the University of Groningen. During this time she worked together with Jan Lanting on the Bronze Age barrow landscape, and their circular post settings, at the Hooghalen-estate in the Dutch province of Drenthe. At the University of Sheffield, she studied for a MA in Economic Archaeology and a PhD in Archaeobotany. Following her PhD, Van der Veen worked at Durham University as the English Heritage advisor for environmental archaeology in northern England.
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#684

Nükhet Sirman

#175073
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Nükhet Sirman is a Turkish social anthropologist. She earned a doctorate degree from Britain's University College London in 1988, and since 1989, she is a professor of anthropology at the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. She has done academic analysis of the feminist movement in Turkey and introduced the concept of "familial citizenship" in the academic realm.
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#685

Carol Palmer

#110376
Overall Influence
Carol Palmer is a British anthropologist, environmental archaeologist and botanist. She is currently Director of the British Institute in Amman, an Honorary Fellow at Bournemouth University, and a part of the Thimar collective. Her primary research interests are in rural societies in the Arab world, changes in the practices of food production on the landscape and in society, and ethnobotany. She collaborates as Project Partner of the INEA project, which aims to examine archaeological site usage using phytolithic and geochemical evidence. She has also been a part of the Antikythera Survey Proje...
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#686

Jada Benn Torres

#177764
Overall Influence
Jada Benn Torres is an American genetic anthropologist and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. She serves as Director of the Laboratory of Genetic Anthropology and Biocultural Studies. Her research considers the genetic ancestry of African and Indigenous people
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#687

Margareta Steinby

#73854
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (87 years)
Eva Margareta Steinby FSA is a Finnish classical archaeologist. She was the director of the Finnish Institute in Rome from 1979–1982 and 1992–1994, and Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford from 1994 to 2004. She is best known for her work on the architecture and topography of Rome, especially due to her contributions to the Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae .
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#688

Magdalina Stancheva

Magdalina Stancheva
#159853
Overall Influence
1924 - 2014 (90 years)
Magdalina Stancheva was a Bulgarian archaeologist and museologist, recognized for her dedication in preserving Sofia's past. As one of the first museologists in the country, she influenced and taught many the scientific principals of conservation. She worked with both the International Council of Museums and UNESCO to designate national preservation sites and was recognized by many awards for her efforts in conserving the cultural history of the country, including the Order of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the National Order Of Labour, and a citation as an Honorary Citizen of Sofia.
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#689

Lisa Sattenspiel

#183121
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Lisa Sattenspiel is an anthropologist at the University of Missouri known for her work on infectious diseases, their spread and ecology. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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#690

Rubina Raja

#65588
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (50 years)
Rubina Raja is a classical archaeologist educated at University of Copenhagen , La Sapienza University and University of Oxford . She is professor of classical archaeology at Aarhus University and centre director of the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolutions . She specialises in the cultural, social and religious archaeology and history of past societies. Research foci include urban development and network studies, architecture and urban planning, the materiality of religion as well as iconography from the Hellenistic to Early Medieval periods.
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#691

Martha Macintyre

#154646
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Martha Macintyre is an Australian anthropologist and historian whose work has focused on studying social change in Papua New Guinea and Melanesia. As of 2021, she is an honorary professor at the University of Melbourne.
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#692

Naomi Sykes

#113210
Overall Influence
Naomi Sykes FSA is a zooarchaeologist and is currently the Lawrence Professor of Archaeology at the University of Exeter. Sykes researches human-animal relations in the past. Biography Sykes' early work studied the zooarchaeology of the Norman Conquest in Britain. Her thesis was completed at 2001 at the University of Southampton. Sykes was previously based at the University of Nottingham, and is currently the Lawrence Professor of Archaeology at the University of Exeter.
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#693

Payal Arora

Payal Arora
#172692
Overall Influence
Payal Arora is an Indian anthropologist, full Professor and Chair in Technology, Values, and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam, author and consultant. She is the founder of CatalystLab, an organization that connects academia, business and the public on social issues. Her work focuses on internet usage in the Global South, specifically on digital cultures, inequality and data governance.
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#694

Sally Foster

#71006
Overall Influence
Sally M. Foster is a Scottish archaeologist and senior lecturer at the University of Stirling. She specialises in the archaeology of Scotland, particularly the Picts and their neighbours in the early medieval period.
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#695

Malin Holst

#181124
Overall Influence
Malin Holst is a German bioarchaeologist, Director of York Ostoearchaeology Ltd. and a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. Career Malin Holst started working in archaeology in 1987 at the Raunds Area Project. She studied Practical Archaeology in 1991 at the Dorset Institute of Higher Education. She received a BA degree in 1993 from the University of Leicester and received an MSc degree in 1997 from the Universities of Sheffield and Bradford. She has been working in bioarchaeology since 1996.
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#696

Kathleen K. Gilmore

Kathleen K. Gilmore
#121588
Overall Influence
1914 - 2010 (96 years)
Kathleen K. Gilmore was an American archaeologist and specialist on Spanish colonial archaeology. She was the first archaeologist to prove the location of Fort St. Louis, established by the French explorer, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. She received the J. C. Harrington Award of Society for Historical Archaeology in 1995, the first woman ever honored by the society.
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#697

LuAnn Wandsnider

#182785
Overall Influence
Dr. LuAnn Wandsnider is an American professor who has served as Chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln since 2012. Biography Wandsnider received her Ph.D in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1989.
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#698

Alexandra Jones

#178007
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (48 years)
Alexandra Jones is a historical archaeologist and educator. She is founder and chief executive officer of Archaeology in the Community, "a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that aims to increase awareness of archaeology and history." She worked on the PBS television program, Time Team America, as Field Director of Archaeology for in 2013.
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#699

Sylvia Hallam

#164945
Overall Influence
1927 - 2019 (92 years)
Sylvia Hallam, FAHA was an English-born archaeologist who spent most of her academic career in Australia at the University of Western Australia. She is best known as author of Fire and Hearth and as an advocate for the protection of Aboriginal art, particularly at Murujuga in Western Australia.
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#700

Frances J. White

#105944
Overall Influence
Frances J. White is a British biological anthropologist, professor, and primatologist at the University of Oregon. As a behavioral ecologist, her research focuses on the evolution of primate sociality and social systems. She has studied the socioecology of the bonobo chimpanzee for over 35 years at Lomako Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is the foremost American authority on this species in the wild and has done extensive field research on the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzees. Her bonobo research examines why bonobos have evolved a very different social system compared to the closel...
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