A Life of Research in Biological Anthropology

Abstract

I much appreciated being invited to write a contribution for this journal, but initially presumed that what was required was a comprehensive review of some major issue in biological anthropology. Indeed I drafted a contribution on the history of the subject during the second part of the twentieth century. I was then firmly told that this was not what was wanted, rather something much more autobiographical. Well that is what you have got: an extremely personal account of my own research career over some 50 years in biological anthropology. I have summarized the results of what I consider the main projects I and my colleagues have undertaken and tried to document successes and failures. I cannot claim any earth-shattering discovery but hope that we have contributed in a substantial way to the further understanding of the nature of human variation, a main concern of biological anthropology in the second half of the twentieth century.