Out of the Whirlwind: Archaeology, Human Origins, and Computational Methods

Harvard FAS

The story of human origins has radically transformed in the last decade thanks to the integration of diverse data sources in Earth science, climatology, chemistry, genetics, and proteomics. In this course we will review key developments in archaeology and human evolution while introducing statistical and modeling techniques to understand data. Students will work on laboratory exercises that will teach aspects of climate and Earth sciences, probability and Bayesian inference, and forward and…