Dolores Piperno

Dolores Piperno (born 1949)[1] is an American archaeologist specializing in archaeobotany. She is a senior scientist emeritus of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington.[2]

Dolores Piperno
Born1949
Alma materRutgers University (BS) Temple University (PhD)
Scientific career
FieldsArchaeobotany
InstitutionsSmithsonian Tropical Research Institute National Museum of Natural History
Doctoral advisorAnthony Ranere

Early life and education

Piperno grew up in Philadelphia before her family moved to Pennsauken, N.J.[1] Piperno earned a B.S. in Medical Technology (Rutgers University, 1971).[1] After graduating, she began her career as a medical technician at the Hematology Research Center of Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia.[1] She says she used this training and experience in this field when she moved into archaeology. She then pursued an M.A. in Anthropology (Temple University, 1979), and a Ph.D. in Anthropology (Temple University, 1983).[1]

Research and career

Piperno has worked extensively in the Amazon[3] and Central America. She has also worked in Israel.[4] Her research interests include the study of phytoliths, starch grains, and pollen at archaeological sites near the beginning of the domestication of various crops such as cucurbits, maize (corn), and peanuts.[5][6][7][8] She is well known for her groundbreaking work with Klaus Winter on the origin of corn which included the construction of a greenhouse which replicated ancient environmental conditions.[9] She and her colleagues have also found evidence for the earliest popcorn.[10] She has developed some of the procedures commonly used in phytolith studies in archaeology and is one of the pioneers in the archaeological study of starch grains.[1] She has built up a reference collection of over 400 species. Piperno has also studied plant remains in Neanderthal teeth calculus to reconstruct ancient diets.[11]

Honors and awards

In 2005 Piperno was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.[1] The Republic of Panama awarded her with the Orden de Vasco Nuñez de Balboa in 2006.[1] In 2009 Piperno received the Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology from the Archaeological Institute of America.[12] In 2011 Piperno received the National Museum of Natural History Science Achievement Award.

Personal life

Piperno has a daughter named Jenny. Piperno enjoys playing golf, reading history books, and gardening.[1]

Selected publications
  • Piperno DR, Ranere AJ, Holst I, Hansell P (October 2000). "Starch grains reveal early root crop horticulture in the Panamanian tropical forest". Nature. 407 (6806): 894–7. Bibcode:2000Natur.407..894P. doi:10.1038/35038055. PMID 11057665. S2CID 4429117.
  • Piperno DR, Pearsall DM (1998). The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-557180-7.
  • Piperno DR (1988). Phytolith Analysis: An Archaeological and Geological Perspective. Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-557175-3.

References
  1. Davis TH (July 2007). "Profile of Dolores R. Piperno". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 104 (29): 11871–3. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10411871D. doi:10.1073/pnas.0704904104. PMC 1924548. PMID 17626180.
  2. Gonzalez JH (2017-02-10). "Dolores Piperno". Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Retrieved 2018-11-24.
  3. Metcalf, William E.; Casey, P. J. (1988). "Understanding Ancient Coins: An Introduction for Archaeologists and Historians". The Classical World. 81 (4): 315. doi:10.2307/4350200. ISSN 0009-8418. JSTOR 4350200.
  4. "Oldest evidence for processing of wild cereals: starch grains from barley, wheat, on grinding stone". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  5. "Wild grass became maize crop more than 8,700 years ago". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  6. "Anthropologist Finds Earliest Evidence Of Maize Farming In Mexico". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  7. Carroll, Sean B. (2010-05-24). "Tracking the Ancestry of Corn Back 9,000 Years". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  8. "An origin of new world agriculture in coastal Ecuador". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  9. Yeager, Ashley (2014-05-06). "Earth & Environment: Huge space rock rattled Earth 3 billion years ago". Science News. 185 (10): 16. doi:10.1002/scin.5591851016. ISSN 0036-8423.
  10. January 2012, Remy Melina 20. "Evidence for Oldest Popcorn in South America Discovered". livescience.com. Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  11. "Neanderthal extinction not caused by diet". ZME Science. 2011-01-05. Retrieved 2020-06-25.
  12. "Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology - Archaeological Institute of America". www.archaeological.org. Retrieved 2018-11-11.

Further reading
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