- Apply
- Visit
- Request Info
- Give
Biography
Dr. Amanda C. Leiss is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Eastern Connecticut State University. She is a paleoanthropologist who studies animal remains from paleolithic sites in Africa to learn about our early human ancestor's ecology. She earned her PhD in Anthropology from Yale University, and a B.S. in Anthropology from Southern Connecticut State University.
Her scholarship is focused on better understanding the impact of environmental change on significant behavioral transitions in tool technology (e.g., the shift from Oldowan choppers to Acheulean hand axes) and the origins of meat eating and hunting behavior. Her dissertation reconstructed paleoenvironments at Gona between ~3-1 Ma using stable isotope, ecomorphological, and traditional faunal analyses to test the hypothesis that the Acheulean technology developed in the context of increased grasslands and infer how these hominins utilized the landscape and resources available to them. This time is important for the evolution of Homo erectus, increases in behavioral complexity (stone tools), and brain expansion. Since Gona has the longest continuous record of Early Stone Age archaeology, including the oldest Oldowan and among the earliest occurrences of Acheulean, the data from her study fill a substantial gap in the eastern African Plio-Pleistocene paleoenvironmental record.
Dr. Leiss is also actively engaged in public outreach and dedicated to teaching science in an accessible and inclusive manner. She regularly collaborates in public programming with the Yale Peabody Museum and Yale Pathways to Science and is actively working on developing a podcast about the intersection of science, science fiction, and ethics.
Research Interests
Teaching Interests
Links
