Profile of Clark Spencer Larsen

Abstract

The Ohio State University biological anthropologist Clark Spencer Larsen has conducted pioneering research on biocultural adaptation that occurred during the last 10,000 years of human evolution. He was among the first to apply multidisciplinary approaches to the study of temporal trends in diet, health, mobility, and interpersonal conflict. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2016, Larsen was part of a 25-year project at Catalhoyuk, a site in south-central Turkey that was continuously occupied for more than 1,150 years (7100–5950 BC). Larsen’s Inaugural Article (1) synthesizes his team’s bioarchaeological findings. These findings shed light on how early farming affected Catalhoyuk’s Neolithic societies and others, with impacts continuing to the present. Clark Spencer Larsen. Image courtesy of John Nixon (photographer). Larsen grew up in Beatrice, Nebraska. Near this town is the national monument and associated museum for the initial homestead following President Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Homestead Act of 1863. “In my family’s first of many visits to the Homestead National Monument, my parents, Leon and Patricia Larsen, showed me artifacts associated with early pioneer settlement,” Larsen says. “As an 8-year-old, I was enthralled with what I was seeing. Ever since, I have continued to be interested in earlier people, especially those documented and interpreted by archaeologists and paleontologists.” By his early teens, Larsen decided that archaeology was to be his life’s work. Larsen’s mother facilitated a meeting at their home with late archaeologist R. Clark Mallam, who was teaching at the University of Nebraska. He advised Larsen to get fieldwork experience and to apply to Kansas State University (KSU). Larsen followed Mallam’s guidance. Days after graduating from Beatrice Senior High School, Larsen worked on an excavation project at Nebraska’s Fort Atkinson before attending KSU. As a KSU freshman, Larsen took a human osteology course taught by biological …