• Associate Professor, Anthropology

• Ph.D. in Anthropology at University of California at Berkeley
• M.A. in Anthropology at University of California at Berkeley
• B.A. in Archaeology at University of Reading (England)

News Stories & Tip Sheets:

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Domestication of the donkey New data on timing March 11, 2008 -- Ancient donkey skeletons at Abydos, Egypt. Download An international group of researchers, led by Fiona Marshall, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has found evidence for the earliest transport use of the donkey and the early phases of donkey domestication, suggesting the process of domestication may have been slower and less linear than previously thought.

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Wild ass tamed, buried with Egyptian king MSNBC.com and 14 others March 11, 2008 -- One of the earliest Egyptian kings carried his "beasts of burden" into the afterlife. Paleoscientists discovered the skeletons of 10 donkeys nestled in three mud graves dating back 5,000 years ago when Egypt was just forming a state. WUSTL anthropologist Fiona Marshall comments. The new findings are reported online in the March 10 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

WUSTL Archaeologist helps rewrite history of farming The New York Times July 27, 2004 -- New research, emerging in the last few years in academic books and articles, shows that Africans were relatively late to take up farming. WUSTL's Fiona Marshall was among the first to recognize that Africa followed a different paradigm.

Students at Washington University's zooarchaeological laboratory have undertaken research projects on topics such as the study of faunas from Ithaca, a Bronze Age site in Greece excavated by Dr. Symeonoglou of Washington University's Art and Archaeology department, faunas from sites in Missouri including Cahokia and prehistoric faunas from Africa and Europe and experimental studies of factors affecting bone breakage and carnivore damage to bone. The Zooarchaeology laboratory has worked closely with the Palaeothnobotany laboratory, the Art and Archaeology Department, the University's Tyson Research Center and the St. Louis Zoo.

Courses

Intro to Archaeology, The Archaeology of Africa, Pathways to Food Production in the Old World, Zooarchaeology, Experimental Zooarchaeology, Ethnoarchaeology, Human Patterns of Predation

Selected Publications

Marshall, Fiona

1991 Origins of specialized pastoral production in East Africa. American Anthropologist 92:873-894.

1999 Early food productions in Africa. Special Issue: The Transition to Agriculture in the Old World, O.Bar-Yosef Ed., The Review of Archaeology 19:47-57.

2000 The Origins of Domesticated Animals in Eastern Africa. The Origins and Development of African Livestock: Archaeology, genetics, linguistics and ethnography. K.C. McDonald and R.M. Blench, Eds. Chapter 10, pp. 191-221. London: University College London Press.

2001 Agriculture and use of wild and weedy vegetables by the Piik Ap Oom Okiek of Kenya. Economic Botany 55:32-46. In press.

Rose, L.M. and F. Marshall

1996 Meat eating, hominid sociality and home bases revisited. Current Anthropology 37:307-338.

Feibel, C.S., Agnew, N., Latimer, B., Demas, M., Marshall, F., Waane, S.A.C., and Schmid., P.

1996 A new look at the Laetoli hominid footprints - a preliminary report on the conservation and scientific restudy. Evolutionary Anthropology 4:149-154.

Marshall, F. and K. Mutundu

1999 The role of zooarchaeology in archaeological interpretation: A survey of the African literature from later Archaeological Periods, c. 20,000 BP-present. Zooarchaeologia X: 83-106. (with D. Dale and T. Pilgram)

Delayed-return hunter-gatherers in Africa? Historic perspectives from the Okiek and archaeological perspectives from the Kansyore. In Hunters and Gatherers in Theory in Archaeology. G. Crothers, Ed. Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper 21, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.