In the Wake of Columbus: The Biological Consequences of Contact and Colonialism in the Americas

Clark Spencer Larsen, Sigma Xi Lecturer, is Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the chair of the Department of Anthropology at Ohio State University. He is also the editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Larsen has spent most of his professional career directing the La Florida Bioarchaeology Project, a collaboration of scientists from the United States and elsewhere investigating the consequences of major adaptive shifts in coastal and terrestrial settings of the modern states of Georgia and Florida. A popular account of the project is presented in Skeletons in our Closet: Revealing our Past through Bioarchaeology (2000), and the most recent research results can be found in his edited book Bioarchaeology of Spanish Florida: The Impact of Colonialism (2001).