Marston, John M.

As an environmental archaeologist, John M. Marston studies the long-term sustainability of agriculture and land use, especially in the Mediterranean and western Asia. His research focuses on how people make decisions about land use within changing economic, social, and environmental settings, and how those decisions affect the environment at local and regional scales. A specialist in paleoethnobotany, the study of archaeological plant remains, Marston’s contributions to the field include novel ways of linking ecological theory with archaeological methods to reconstruct agricultural and land-use strategies from plant and animal remains. Recent interdisciplinary collaborations focus on comparative study of cultural adaptation to environmental and climate change in the past and present. His current field projects include work at three urban centers in Turkey (the Bronze Age site of Kaymakçı, the Iron Age site of Kerkenes, and the Bronze Age-Medieval site of Gordion) and two in Israel (the Bronze Age-Medieval sites of Ashkelon and Tel Shimron). Marston’s recent research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, American Research Institute in Turkey, American Philosophical Society, and Boston University.