Dana Sue Lepofsky (born 1958) is a Canadian

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

and

ethnobiologist ] Ethnobiology is the scientific study of the way living things are treated or used by different human cultures. It studies the dynamic relationships between people, biota, and environments, from the distant past to the immediate present.culture ...

. She is a professor at

Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...

, a former president of the

Society of Ethnobiology A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...

, and received the Smith-Wintemberg Award in 2018. Her research focuses on the

historical ecology Historical ecology is a research program that focuses on the interactions between humans and their environment over long-term periods of time, typically over the course of centuries. In order to carry out this work, historical ecologists synthesiz ...

of the

indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast The Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast are composed of many nations and tribal affiliations, each with distinctive cultural and political identities. They share certain beliefs, traditions and prac ...

Education and career

Lepofsky grew up in Norwalk, CT. Lepofsky studied at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

(BA), the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

(MA, 1985) and the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

(PhD, 1995). Her doctoral dissertation was on

paleoethnobotany Paleoethnobotany (also spelled palaeoethnobotany), or archaeobotany, is the study of past human-plant interactions through the recovery and analysis of ancient plant remains. Both terms are synonymous, though paleoethnobotany (from the Greek words ...

in Polynesia. She has been a professor at

(SFU) since 1995. Lepofsky's research centers on the

and how they interacted with their environment in the past. She significantly revised anthropological thinking on the historical ecology of the Northwest Coast by showing that indigenous communities there have a long history of intensively managing coastal food resources. In particular, she has demonstrated the antiquity of

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, i ...

fishing and

clam garden A clam garden (k’yuu kudhlk’aat’iija in the Haida language, lux̌ʷxiwēys in the Kwakʼwala language) is a traditional Indigenous management system used principally by Coast Salish peoples. Clam gardens are a form of mariculture, where F ...

s in the region, the latter going back at least 3,500 years. Lepofsky's research is multidisciplinary, combining archaeology, paleoethnobotany, historical ecology, and incorporating traditional knowledge from indigenous peoples. Dana Lepofsky

Her work has been noted for its engagement with indigenous communities and in 2017 she received the Warren Gill Award for Community Impact from SFU. She has also served as the president of the

and, in 2018, received the Smith-Wintemberg Award from the

Canadian Archaeological Association The Canadian Archeological Association (CAA) is the primary archaeological organization in Canada. The CAA was founded in 1968 by a group of archaeologists that included William E. Taylor, the head of the Archaeology Division at the National Museum ...

. She has been the editor-in-chief of the ''

Journal of Ethnobiology The ''Journal of Ethnobiology'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering ethnobiology. It was established in 1981 as the biannual official journal of the Society of Ethnobiology; publication frequency increased to triannually in 2014 ...

'' since 2013.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lepofsky, Dana 1958 births Canadian archaeologists Ethnobiologists Canadian women archaeologists Simon Fraser University faculty University of Michigan alumni University of British Columbia alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Living people 20th-century archaeologists 21st-century archaeologists Canadian expatriates in the United States Academic journal editors