Christy G. Turner II (November 28, 1933, Columbia, Missouri – July 27, 2013,

Tempe, Arizona , settlement_type = City , named_for = Vale of Tempe , image_skyline = Tempeskyline3.jpg , imagesize = 260px , image_caption = Tempe skyline as se ...

) was an American anthropologist known for his research on dental anthropology, perimortem taphonomy, and his theories about the populating of the American continent in three migrating waves from Northeast Asia, which received support from genetic research. Turner's work spanned all the fields of Anthropology (physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and sociocultural anthropology), and his fieldwork included exploring the interaction between humans and animals during the Ice Age in Siberia and taking dental casts of indigenous peoples in the

Aleutian Islands The Aleutian Islands (; ; ale, Unangam Tanangin,”Land of the Aleuts", possibly from Chukchi ''aliat'', "island"), also called the Aleut Islands or Aleutic Islands and known before 1867 as the Catherine Archipelago, are a chain of 14 large v ...

. Turner graduated from

Van Nuys High School Van Nuys High School (VNHS) is a public high school in the Van Nuys district of Los Angeles, belonging to the Los Angeles Unified School District: District 2. The school is home to a Residential Program and three Magnet Programs—Math/Science, P ...

and received his BA and MA from the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

(1957, 1958), followed in 1967 by a PhD in Anthropology from the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

. Turner taught at Arizona State University as an assistant professor in 1966 and worked there for forty years, becoming an associate dean of the ASU Graduate College from 1971 to 1977 and ending his tenure as a Regents Professor Emeritus, retiring in 2004. Turner joined his wife, Jacqueline Adams Turner, in studying evidence for cannibalism among the

Anasazi The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, a ...

, and developed a controversial set of six criteria for determining whether human cannibalism was likely to have occurred, based on analysis of archaeological remains.

Family

Turner was married for forty years to Jacqueline Adams Turner, who preceded him in death. He then married Olga V. Pavlova who had two daughters from a previous marriage. Turner and Jacqueline had three daughters, Kali Holtschlag (Michael), Kimi Turner, and Korri Turner (John Rockhill).

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Turner II, Christy G. 1933 births 2013 deaths People from Columbia, Missouri American anthropologists University of Arizona alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni Arizona State University faculty