OLGA SOFFER
Professor
I came to prehistoric archaeology through a convoluted path that led from Cubism and Picasso to African art to prehistoric art to prehistoric lifeways. Anthropology is a second career which I began after some ten years working in fashion promotion in New York City. This "real world" experience was invaluable because it taught me organizational as well as leadership and team playing skills. As the excitement and stimulation of that world began to fade, I moved slowly into academia - receiving Ph.D. in Anthropology in 1984 from the Graduate Center, C.U.N.Y. After adjuncting at Hunter and Lehman Colleges in New York as well as at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, I came to the University of Illinois in 1985 as an assistant professor. I moved on to become associate professor in 1988 and full professor in 1992. For more about my path to this - my "second career" - see The Eclectic: A Former Fashion Maven Digs into Russian Mammoth Fields and Ancient Textiles and The Caveman's New Clothes.
My interests focus on ancestral lifeways in the Pleistocene - in reconstructing what they were and why they changed through time. This includes a focus on the diversity of hunter-gatherer cultural practices during the Late/Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia as well as attention to the lives of led by their predecessors, the Neanderthals. I investigate various components of these lifeways by focusing on subsistence practices, technologies, settlement patters, socio-political relationships, and the material expressions of past ideologies. I address these questions using both structure and agency, find these two approaches quite complimentary, and utilize the extraordinarily rich data base from Eastern, Central, and Western Europe.
My current research focuses on understanding technological innovations seen in Upper Paleolithic Europe within the social contexts that gave rise to them. At the moment I am investigating the origins of cordage, textiles, and basketry and the implications that these technologies have for our remonstrations of the lives lived by men, women, and children ca. 25,000 B.P. This research has brought me face to face with issues of gender and women's labor in the past. At the same time I am continuing my research on storage economies and their consequences on the Central East European Plain in evidence at such sites as Gontsy, Mezhirich , and Mezin. Finally, I am also grappling with the problems of "imagining the other" - namely, our Neanderthal predecessors,and how their worlds differed from those of people who came after them.
Research Interests:
Paleolithic archaeology, Old World – Europe, prehistoric lifeways, gender, hunter-gatherers.
EDUCATION:
B.A. Political Science, Hunter College, City University of New York, 1965
M.A. Anthropology, Hunter College, City University of New York, 1975
Ph.D. Anthropology, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 1984
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
Books:
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2007 | (co authored with J. M. Adovasio and Jake Page) The Invisible Sex. New York, Smithsonian-HarperCollins. |
| 2003 | (co-editor with S.A. Vasil'ev and J. Kozlowski) Perceived Landscapes and Built Environments:The Cultural Geography of Late Paleolithic Eurasia. B.A.R., International Series 1122. Oxford. |  |
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1993 | (co-editor with N.D. Praslov) From Kostenki to Clovis : Upper Paleolithic - Paleoindian Adaptations. New York: Plenum Publishing Corp. |
| 1990 | (co-editor with C. Gamble) The World at 18 000 BP. Two volumes: Northern Latitudes. Vol. 1, Southern Latitues. Vol. 2. London: Allen & Unwin. |  |
Essays & Articles:
| 2004 | Recovering Perishable Technologies through Use Wear on Tools: Preliminary Evidence for Upper Paleolithic Weaving and Net Making. Current Anthropology 45 : 407-418. |
| 2003 | "Mammoth Bone Accumulations: Death Sites? Kill Sites? Dwellings?" In Perceived Landscapes and Built Environments: The Cultural Geography of Last Paleolithic Eurasia, edited by S. A. Vasil'ev, O. Soffer, and J. Kozlowski. B.A.R.International Series 1122. 39-46. |
| 2001 | (with J. M. Adovasio and D.C. Hyland) "Perishable Technologies and Invisible People: Nets, Baskets, and 'Venus' Wear ca.26,000 B.P." In Enduring Records: The Environmental and Cultural Heritage of Wetlands, edited by B. A.Purdy. Oxford, Oxbow Books. 233-245. |
| 2001 | (with J. M. Adovasio, D. C. Hyland, J. S. Illingworth, B. Klima, and J. Svoboda) "Perishable Industries from Dolni Vestonice I: New Insights into the Nature and Origin of the Gravettian." Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 2(6): 48-65. |
| 1989 | (with P. Vandiver, B. Klima and J. Svoboda) "The Origins of Ceramic Technology at Dolni Vestonice, Czechoslovakia." Science 246: 1002-1008. |
For a complete list of publications and more see my c.v.
COURSES TAUGHT:
| ANTH 102 | HUMAN ORIGINS AND CULTURE |
| ANTH 150 | NOVEL ARCHAEOLOGY |
| ANTH 225 | WOMEN IN PREHISTORY |
| ANTH 258 | PEOPLE OF THE ICE AGE |
| ANTH 350 | PREHISTORIC EUROPE |
| ANTH 362 | THE HISTORY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL THEORY |
| ANTH 398I | DIMENSIONS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL INQUIRY |
| ANTH 450 | SEMINAR IN ANTHROPOLOGY |
| ANTH 459 | PROSEMINAR IN BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY |