Martin H. Welker
About Martin H. Welker
I am an anthropological archaeologist, specializing in zooarchaeology. I am currently the Assistant Curator of Zooarchaeology at the Arizona State Museum, and also an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the School of Anthropology. My research focuses on human behavior and the mechanics of domestic animal management, and roles played by domesticates in human societies in the past. I am actively pursuing research on the detection of archaeological dog remains in the archaeological record, the roles dogs played in prehistoric and historic communities in North America, and the introduction, management, and ecological impacts of Eurasian domesticates in North America. I approach these reseach topics through a combination of zooarchaeology and morphometrics framed with ethnohistoric observations, quantitative modeling, and ecological theory.
Selected Publications
Welker, M. H., J. E. Hughes, and S. B. McClure
2022. Cooperation and Cattle Herding in 18th Century Acadie: Implications for Prehistoric Agropastoralism. Journal of Ethnobiology 42(1):69-85.
Welker, M. H. and E. M. Quintana Morales
2022. Meta-Analysis of the North American Cod Fisheries: The Zooarchaeology of the 16th-19th Century Trans-Atlantic Cod Trade. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology.
Welker, M. H. and J. E. Hughes
2022. Military Provisioning at the Fortress of Louisbourg, Cape Breton, Canada: Animal Bone from the King’s Bastion Barracks. Northeast Historical Archaeology.
Welker, M. H., E. K. Zavodny, S. B. McClure, E. Podrug, J. Jović, N. Triozzi, and D. J. Kennett.
2022. A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Development of Livestock Guarding Dogs on the Adriatic Coast of Croatia. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 42:103380.
Welker, M. H., A. Foster, and E. Tourigny
2021. Pioneering Poultry: A Morphometric Investigation of Domestic Chickens (Gallus gallus) in Seventeenth- to Early Twentieth Century Eastern North America. International Journal of Historical Archaeology.
Welker, M. H., D. A. Byers, and S. B. McClure
2021. “I Wanna Be Your Dog”: Evaluating the Efficacy of Univariate and Multivariate Methods for Differentiating Domestic and Wild Canids in North America. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 31(2):196-206.
Welker, M. H.
2021. Travois Transport and Field Processing: The Role of Dogs in Intermountain and Plains Food Transport. Human Ecology 49:721-733.
Stephens, L., D. Fuller, N. Boivin, […], M. H. Welker [106]
2019. Archaeological Assessment Reveals Earth’s Early Transformation Through Land Use. Science 365(6456):897-902.
Lambert, P.M. and M. H. Welker
2019. Revisiting Traumatic Injury Risk and Agricultural Intensification: Fracture Frequency at Cerro Oreja, Peru. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 169(37):143-151.
Welker, M. H. and R. Dunham
2019. Exploring the Introduction of European Dogs to North America Through Shoulder Height. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 29(2):325-334.
Zavodny, E., S. B. McClure, M. H. Welker, B. J. Culleton, J. Balen, and D. J. Kennett
2019. Stable Isotope Markers of Herd Management and the Development of Transhumance in Bronze-Iron Age Lika. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 23:1055-1065
Welker, M. H. and D. A. Byers
2019. The Birch Creek Canids and Dogs as Transport Labor in the Intermountain West. American Antiquity 84(1):88-106.
Courses Taught
ANTH 472/572
ANTH 326
Research Interests
Human-Environmental Interaction, Domestication, Colonization Events, Animal Translocation, Animal Management, Skeletal Morphometrics, Human Behavioral Ecology