A view on the science: Physical anthropology at the millennium

My work has been located primarily at the intersection of physical anthropology, demography, and historical epidemiology. I have an ongoing interest in long term demographic processes in the prehistoric American Southwest using paleodemographic approaches (e.g., Swedlund, 1994). The majority of my research, however, engages historical population data from North America in general and New England in particular (e.g., Swedlund, 1990, Swedlund and Ball, 1998). I was drawn to demography and genetics as a graduate student in part because the recent availability of what we then called “high speed” computers provided new opportunities for handling relatively large data sets and investigating diachronic processes. Microevolutionary studies of the 1960s and 70s had shown great promise for understanding genetic variation in numerically small, indigenous populations. What I and others found lacking was the greater generational time depth necessary to estimate the effects of long term demographic processes on genetic structure. With colleagues and graduate students, I began an undertaking now known as the Connecticut Valley Project. I have not been able to escape it since, but it continues in a form very different from its origins. In the paragraphs below, I will retrace a few steps to show the intentional and sometimes serendipitous turns my research has taken, I will also point to issues and lessons that come from my areas of research but which may have relevance to a broader physical anthropology in the future.