Marcus John Hamilton
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas 78249 USA
[email protected]
External Professor
Santa Fe Institute
1399 Hyde Park Rd
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 USA
[email protected]
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at San Antonio
San Antonio, Texas 78249 USA
[email protected]
External Professor
Santa Fe Institute
1399 Hyde Park Rd
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 USA
[email protected]
We live on an extraordinarily complex planet embedded within a vastly simpler universe. Here a molten core and a protective magnetosphere generate the stability required for a fragile biosphere to persist and evolve over billions of years. Out of this biophysical substrate, the particular complexity of the human world emerged not because the human organism is necessarily any more complex than any other form of life, but because we have the unique capacity to reflect on our circumstances, build predictive theories about them, and leverage the consequences. As the holistic study of the evolutionary diversity of the human condition, anthropology is not only the study of how this extraordinary complexity emerged in the Earth system, but how humanity became capable of developing recursive models of itself and its embedding.
I study the human world as a complex, evolving system shaped by the interplay of information, energy, and computation unfolding over deep time. My research lies at the intersection of anthropology, archaeology, ecology, and complexity science, with a particular focus on small-scale societies. I am interested in how human collectives generate, organize, and apply knowledge under ecological constraints, and how environmental variability and risk structure technological systems, social organization, and cultural diversity.
My work seeks to identify general principles underlying the organization and evolution of human systems using data-driven theory. In particular, I develop formal frameworks for understanding how societies solve complex problems through distributed, adaptive processes, and I explore what these dynamics imply for the foundations of anthropological science.
Research areas:
I study the human world as a complex, evolving system shaped by the interplay of information, energy, and computation unfolding over deep time. My research lies at the intersection of anthropology, archaeology, ecology, and complexity science, with a particular focus on small-scale societies. I am interested in how human collectives generate, organize, and apply knowledge under ecological constraints, and how environmental variability and risk structure technological systems, social organization, and cultural diversity.
My work seeks to identify general principles underlying the organization and evolution of human systems using data-driven theory. In particular, I develop formal frameworks for understanding how societies solve complex problems through distributed, adaptive processes, and I explore what these dynamics imply for the foundations of anthropological science.
Research areas:
- The complex human world
- Ecological and evolutionary theory
- Small-scale societies
- Paleoindian North America
- Complexity theory
- Data science
- Philosophy of science
Prospective graduate students
Prospective graduate students should email me for more information. I have plenty of opportunities for students to get involved in field work, or computational work, or both. Importantly, I am always interested in working with motivated undergraduates.
Prospective graduate students should email me for more information. I have plenty of opportunities for students to get involved in field work, or computational work, or both. Importantly, I am always interested in working with motivated undergraduates.
Teaching
- Human Population Ecology
- Stone Tools in Prehistory
- Statistical Computing in Anthropology
- Hunters and Gatherers
- Archaeology of North America
- Introduction to Anthropology
