Skip to main content

Jade d'Alpoim Guedes

Assistant Professor

Jade d'Alpoim Guedes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Dr. D’Alpoim Guedes is an environmental archaeologist and ethnobiologist who employs an interdisciplinary research program to understand how humans adapted their foraging practices and agricultural strategies to new environments and have developed resilience in the face of climatic and social change. She employs a variety of different methodologies in her research including archaeobotany, paleoclimate reconstruction and computational modeling. Dr. d’Alpoim Guedes’ primary region of focus is Asia, where she has worked extensively in China, but also has interests in Nepal, Thailand and Pakistan. Dr. d’Alpoim Guedes also works closely with crop scientists to examine the potential of landraces of traditional crops such as millet, wheat, barley and buckwheat for modern agricultural systems.


Education

Ph.D in Anthropological Archaelogy, Harvard University (2013)

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Harvard University (2013-2014)

High Altitude Archaeology in the Jiuzhaigou National Park, Sichuan Province China

Understanding how humans have managed to maintain food security while dealing with climatic change is crucial in a rapidly changing world. However, human adaptive responses to periodic fluctuations in local environment over the long term are poorly understood. Even more crucial is understanding how humans responded to climatic change, not in the few optimal areas of the world, but rather in key marginal loci where the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers and pastoralists are at stake. Archaeology is uniquely poised to answer questions such as: Why are certain types of system resilient to climate change while others fall apart? What types of strategy are adaptive not just over the short term but for millennia?

Understanding the spread and development of agriculture across Asia

Dr d’Alpoim Guedes is a paleoethnobotanist who has served as an analyst for a wide range of sites throughout Asia. For her dissertation, she analyzed material from a wide range of sites in Southwest China that contributed to understanding how farming spread into the Chengdu Plain and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. In Tibet, she published some of the first archaeobotanical research on the Plateau. Along with Steven Weber (Washington State University, Vancouver) and students she is currently analyzing materials from the Indus civilization sites of Harappa and Balakot.

Articles

2016 21st Century Approaches to Ancient Problems: Climate and Society. Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, R. Kyle Bocinsky, Stefani Crabtree & Timothy Kohler Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.

2016 A 5500 year model of changing crop niches on the Tibetan Plateau.J ade d'Alpoim Guedes, Sturt Manning, R. Kyle Bocinsky Current Anthropology 57(4): 517-522.

2016 Ceramic Production and Society in the Late Majiayao Culture of Northwest China. Alan Greene and Charles Hartley (eds.) Renewing the 'Search for Structure' - New Frameworks and Techniques in Instrumental Ceramics Analysis. Michele Koons & Jade d’Alpoim Guedes. Equinox Publishing, UK.

2016Changing Sea Level during Meltwater Pulse 1A and lost foraging opportunities for East Asian Hunter-Gatherers Geoarchaeology. Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, Jacqueline Austermann, Jerry Mitrovica.

2016 Model Building, Model Testing, and the Spread of Agriculture to the Tibetan Plateau. Archaeological Research in Asia 5:16-23.

2016 Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum) and its potential cultivation for the Pacific Northwest. Cedric Habiyaremye, Girish Ganjyal, Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, Kevin M. Murphy. Frontiers in Plant Science.

2015 Early Agriculture on the Tibetan Plateau. Jade d'Alpoim Guedes, Hongliang Lu, Yongxian Li, Robert Spengler, Wu Xiaohong, Mark Aldenderfer. Nanfang Minzu Kaogu (Southern Archaeology and Ethnography) Volume XI: 91-114 (In Chinese).

2015 The Archaeobotany of the Guiyuanqiao Site. Jade d’Alpoim Guedes & Wan Jiao Sichuan Wenwu 183(5): 81-94 (In Chinese).

2015 The Impact of Climate on the Spread of Rice Agriculture to North-Eastern China: An Example from Shandong. Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, Jin Guiyun, Kyle Bocinsky.

Books

2014 Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany. John Mac Marston, Jade d'Alpoim Guedes & Christina Warinner (eds). University Press of Colorado, Boulder.