Nicole Herzog

University of Denver · Department of Anthropology

Members of genus Homo are the only animals known to create and control fire. The adaptive significance of this unique behavior is broadly recognized, but the steps by which our ancestors evolved pyrotechnic abilities remain unknown. Many hypotheses attempting to answer this question attribute hominin fire to serendipitous, even accidental, discover...

Identifying the relationships between prehistoric technologies and their role in food processing is important in understanding the timing, constraints, and motivations for dietary shifts in the past. However, direct evidence linking tools to specific plant foods is often lacking. This is especially true for archaeological assemblages dating to the...

Archaeological research grounded in evolutionary ecology (EE), and specifically human behavioral ecology (HBE), has sought to explain past behavior using models that derive predictions from quantitative analyses of fitness-related tradeoffs. The appeal of these frameworks are their broad applications across many categories of human behavior, from p...

Archaeology and cultural evolution theory both predict that environmental variation and population size drive the likelihood of inventions (via individual learning) and their conversion to population-wide innovations (via social uptake). We use the case study of the adoption of the bow and arrow in the Great Basin to infer how patterns of cultural...

Starch-rich plants have played an important role in human evolution and societal development. Collected, grown, and consumed to support ever-increasing populations, such plants are integral to understanding past human diets. With the advent of starch granule analysis, plant resources that were invisible in the archaeological record can now be revea...

Humans' extensive use of fire is one behavior that sets us apart from all other animals. However, our ancestors' reliance on controlled forms of fire—i.e., for cooking—was likely preceded by a long familiarity with fire beginning with passive exploitation of naturally burned landscapes and followed by intermediate steps including active ecological...

Spanning more than one hundred years of women’s careers and lives, this collection illuminates what it was and is to be a female archaeologist. These personal accounts of researchers, ethnographers, and field archaeologists in the private, public, and academic sectors highlight the unique role women have played in the development of American and Gr...

The spatial behavior of primates is shaped by many factors including predation risk, the distribution of food sources, and access to water. In fire-prone settings, burning is a catalyst of change, altering the distribution of both plants and animals. Recent research has shown that primates alter their behavior in response to this change. Here, we s...

Plant species native to the American southwest may have been cultivated by indigenous people, but techniques to assess the extent, timing, and impacts of early manipulation are lacking. Herein we apply morphometric techniques to tubers and starch granules of the Four Corners potato, (Solanum jamesii Torrey) to determine if cultivation, even over a...

New analytical techniques in archaeobotany allow researchers to examine human plant use by developing interrelated, yet independent lines of evidence. Here we outline the results of a two-method archaeobotanical approach to investigate Archaic and Fremont Great Basin diets. We conducted both macro- and microbotanical (starch granule) analyses at ni...

Savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Fongoli, Senegal, appear to be able to predict the “behavior” of wildfires of various intensities. Although most wildfires are avoided, even the most intense fires are met with relative calm and seemingly calculated movement by apes in this arid, hot, and open environment. In addition to reviewing inst...

This presentation is an introduction to a newly established online database that contains descriptions of commonly utilized plants, a comparative collection of micro and macrobotanical images, and ethnographic excerpts detailing native plant use (https://nhmu.utah.edu/native-plants).

Identifying the relationships between prehistoric technologies and their role in food processing is important in understanding the timing, constraints, and motivations for dietary shifts in the past. However, direct evidence linking tools to specific plant foods is often lacking. This is especially true for archaeological assemblages dating to the...

Taxonomic identification of starch granules is critical to understanding dietary patterns from archaeological contexts, but achieving high levels of confidence around such identifications has been problematic. This study highlights a statistical approach to morphometric and morphological characteristics that reduces uncertainties when making compar...

Objectives: Anecdotal and formal evidence indicate that primates take advantage of burned landscapes. However, little work has been done to quantify the costs and benefits of this behavior. Using systematic behavioral observations from a population of South African vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops pygerythrus), we evaluate differences in food...

Both anecdotes and systematic observations show that primates take advantage of burned landscapes. However, few studies have made these behaviors the focus of attention. This dissertation includes three papers documenting the behavioral responses of South African vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops) to seasonal burning. The first paper details cha...

Starches preserved on prehistoric artifacts including ceramics, ground stone and other lithic tools have assisted archaeologists in better understanding the relationships between technologies and food products, food processing, activity areas and tool function. However, little research has been done to identify differential starch preservation acro...

Understanding variability in prehistoric diets requires data on plant and animal remains. While zooarchaeological approaches continue to provide fine-grained information on the animal components of diet, plant use is difficult to track within a wide range of archaeological contexts. Starch grain analysis is a proven method for identifying the taxon...

The behavioral adaptations of primates to fire-modified landscapes are of considerable interest to anthropologists because fire is fundamental to life in the African savanna-the setting in which genus Homo evolved. Here we report the behavioral responses of a savanna-dwelling primate, vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops), to fire-induced ecologica...

Investigating the timing, handling mechanisms and archaeological signatures of plant use is of increasing importance wherever questions of dietary reconstruction are concerned. In the Great Basin, this problem has received much attention, but little has been done to experimentally define the archaeological signature of USO (underground storage orga...