Department of Anthropology

Penn State University

James W. Wood

Professor of Biological Anthropology and Demography

Faculty Image Office: 517 Carpenter Building
Telephone: (814) 865-1936 Fax: (814) 863-1474
Email:

jww3@psu.edu

Curriculum Vitae
 

EDUCATION:

  • B.A., Columbia University, New York, 1971
  • M.A., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1975
  • Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1980

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND INTERESTS:

Dr. Wood’ research spans several areas of human population biology, including biodemography, historical demography, population ecology, paleodemography, reproductive biology, and infectious disease dynamics.  He has done extensive research on fertility and reproductive physiology, and has conducted fieldwork in Papua New Guinea on birth-spacing patterns, the contraceptive effects of breastfeeding, fecundability, and pregnancy loss.  He is also involved in a long-term prospective study of the endocrinology of menopause in a large cohort of US women.  Dr. Wood’s more recent interests include paleodemography, where he has made important statistical and analytical contributions and has collaborated with several colleagues working on a large collection of medieval Danish skeletons.  He also has a long-standing interest in the demographic effects of infectious diseases, and is currently directing a large multidisciplinary study of the fourteenth-century Black Death.  His other current research interests focus on the historical demography and landscape ecology of the northern Orkney Islands in Scotland.

COURSES TAUGHT:

  • ANTH 21 Introduction to Biological Anthropology
  • ANTH 408 Anthropological Demography
  • ANTH 462 Biometry of Human Reproduction
  • ANTH 509 Research Design
  • ANTH 562 Laboratory Methods
  • ANTH 566 Infectious Diseases
  • ANTH 597 Biological Standard of Living
  • ANTH 497 Paleodemography

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

  • Wood, J.W. 1992. Dynamics of Human Reproduction: Biology, Biometry, Demography. Aldine de Gruyter Publishers, Hawthorne, NY (winner of the W.W. Howells Award for Outstanding Book in Biological Anthropology)
  • Wood, J.W., G.R. Milner, H.C. Harpending, and K.M. Weiss. 1992. The osteological paradox: Problems of inferring prehistoric health from skeletal samples. Current Anthropology 33:343-370.
  • Wood, J.W. 1998. A theory of preindustrial population dynamics: Demography, economy, and well-being in Malthusian systems. Current Anthropology 39:99-135.
  • Wood, J.W., and S.N. DeWitte-Aviña. 2003. Was the Black Death yersinial plague? The Lancet Infectious Diseases 3:327-328.
  • Wood, J.W., R.J. Ferrell, and S.N. DeWitte-Aviña. 2003. The temporal dynamics of the fourteenth-century Black Death: New evidence from ecclesiastical records. Human Biology 75:427-448