Dr Alicia Ventresca Miller
Steering committee member
Dr. Alicia Ventresca Miller is an Assistant Professor and Assistant Curator at the University of Michigan. She is the director of the Ventresca Miller Collaboratory and the Ancient Protein and Isotope Laboratory. She applies biomolecular techniques to investigate how shifts in food production intersect with the emergence of complex societies. As part of a multi-species anthropological approach, she explore the mechanisms fueling urbanization including residential mobility, settlement provisioning, and the adoption of domesticates such as millet and livestock. Through novel isotopic and proteomic methods, her work provides nuanced answers to questions of domestication and urbanization in the past.
Dr. Ventresca Miller is a co-founder of Steppe Sisters.
Research Interests
Ancient diet and mobility, pastoral lifeways and social complexity, rise of urban economies, dairying and domestication in Central Asia, Inner Asia, and Siberia
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