Rate My Professor Amber Johnson

Dr. Johnson's research examines human adaptation to environmental variability and the demographic versus environmental drivers of cultural change, with a particular emphasis on macroecological patterns in the transition from foraging to food production. She builds on Lewis R. Binford's foundational strategies, maintaining an online resource for his hunter-gatherer ethnographic data and environmental frames of reference calculated via the EnvCalc program. In 2012, she received a $15,000 Wenner-Gren Historical Archives Program grant to facilitate the transfer and organization of Binford's personal research collection to Truman State University. Her peer-reviewed publications include "Archaeological Assessment Reveals Earth’s Early Transformation through Land Use" (Science, 2019), "Differentiating Ecological Contexts of Plant Cultivation and Animal Herding: Implications for Culture Process" (2023), "Climatic factors and human population changes in Eurasia between the Last Glacial Maximum and the early Holocene" (2023), "Comparative Study of Pastoral Property Regimes in Africa Offers No Support for Economic Defensibility Model" (Current Anthropology, 2019), "Exploring Adaptive Variation among Hunter-gatherers with Binford’s Frames of Reference" (Journal of Archaeological Research, 2014), and "Distinguishing environmental and density-dependent aspects of adaptation" (Before Farming, 2008). She edited Processual Archaeology: Exploring Analytical Strategies, Frames of Reference, and Culture Process (Praeger, 2004). Dr. Johnson has presented her work at meetings of the Society for American Archaeology and contributed to cross-cultural analyses of pastoral adaptations.