Jelmer Eerkens

Education

• Ph.D., Archaeology, UC Santa Barbara, 2001
• M.A., Archaeology, UC Santa Barbara, 1996
• B.S., Computer Science, UC Davis, 1992

About

Jelmer Eerkens received a B.S. in computer science in 1992 from UC Davis, and an M.A. (1996) and Ph.D. (2001) in archaeology from UC Santa Barbara. During his graduate training, he spent one semester at the University of Missouri at the Research Reactor (MURR), and two semesters at the University of Calgary as a visiting researcher. Prior to coming (back) to UC Davis, he served as assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach. He is also faculty in the UC Davis Forensic Science Graduate Program.

Research Focus

Professor Eerkens is interested in how humans, especially small-scale societies, adapt to social and environmental conditions and how these adaptations affect kinship, diet, resource extraction, land tenure practices, and the adoption and modification of material technologies. He applies evolutionary models to better understand change in the archaeological record, using especially ideas from cultural transmission theory. He has conducted archaeological field research in California, Nevada, South-Central Peru, and Northwest Europe. Much of his research incorporates archaeometric applications such as stable isotope analysis, proteomics, gas chromatography, electron microprobe, neutron activation, and X-Ray Fluorescence.

Publications

• Eerkens, Jelmer W., Lee M. Panich, Christopher Canzonieri, and Christopher Zimmer. (2025). Native Persistence at a California Mission Outpost: The Bioarchaeology and History of the Asistencia de San Pedro y San Pablo. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00106036/00001/pdf
• Tanya M Smith, Janaína N. Ávila, Jelmer W. Eerkens, Daniel R. Green, Katie Hinde, Edgar Huerta, Paul Tafforeau, Ian S. Williams. (2025). Primate teeth are good proxies for understanding past water inputs and seasonality. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 402: 200-216. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001670372500287X
• Buonasera, Tammy, Jelmer W. Eerkens, Diana Malarchik, Lee M. Panich, Christopher Canzonieri, Christopher Zimmer, Courtney Clough, Thomas Ostrander, Aja Sutton, Michell Salemi, and Glendon Parker. (2024). Immune proteins recovered in tooth enamel as a biochemical record of health in past populations: Paleoproteomic analysis of Mission Period Native Californians. Journal of Archaeological Science: 106069 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2024.106069
• Eerkens, Jelmer W., Sepideh Asgari, Karim Alizadeh, Diana Malarchik, Samantha Cramer, Glendon Parker. (2024). Stable isotope and proteomic insights into Bronze Age human dietary life history at Köhne Shahar, Northwest Iran. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 58: 104746. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104746
• Eerkens, Jelmer W., Charles Higham, Howard J. Spero. (2024) Isotopic and provenance analysis of Neolithic and Bronze Age shell disc beads from Ban Non Wat, north‐east Thailand. Antiquity 98 (400): 905–919. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2024.86
• Eerkens, Jelmer W., Kevin J. Vaughn, Moises Linares-Grados, and Christopher Beckham. (2024). Long-Term Camelid Husbandry and Agricultural Intensification in the Southern Nasca Region, Peru: Insight from Faunal Isotopes. Latin American Antiquity 35: 694–711. https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2023.44
• Eerkens, J.W. and A. de Voogt. (2022) Why are Roman‐period dice asymmetrical? An experimental and quantitative approach. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 14:134. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-022-01599-y
• Eerkens, J.W., A. Ryder, E. Evoy, and B. Hull. (2020). Hydrogen isotopes in serial hair samples record season of death in a mummified child from 19th century San Francisco, CA. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 173:606-614. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajpa.24137

Teaching

Introduction to Archaeology (ANT 3); World Prehistory (ANT 23); Ancient Crops and People (ANT 24); Mummies of the Ancient World (ANT 26); Andean Prehistory (ANT 175); Prehistory of California (ANT 176); Archaeometry (ANT 182); Prehistoric Technologies (ANT 184)