The Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology (SCMA) researches the relationship between the marine environment and human societies. The center focuses on understanding the complexity of the past to put the present into context. SCMA is a joint effort between Scripps Institution of Oceanography (Scripps) and the Department of Anthropology at UC San Diego. The center draws on expertise in various fields, including oceanography, acoustics, sedimentology, geomorphology, climate sciences, environmental sciences, anthropology and archaeology. The goal is to develop a greater understanding of maritime culture in its broadest sense.
Studying the evidence of past human societies, ranging from magnetic traces left in artifacts to built structures buried by earth and sea.
Researching how Earth's climate changed in past eras by studying ocean sediment cores, ice cores, and other scientific evidence.
The Human Ecology Lab brings students and researchers to explore the relationships between people and the environment through time. In particular, the lab focuses on understanding social vulnerability related to climate change.
Associate Professor, Anthropology; Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Jade d’Alpoim Guedes' work combines climate science, archaeobotany, computational modeling and agronomy. She aims to understand how humans in high altitude and marginal environments adapt to climate change.
Distinguished Professor, Anthropology; Norma Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Neighboring Lands at UC San Diego
Thomas Levy has emphasized three approaches in his fieldwork in Israel and Greece to explore climate and environmental change in the eastern Mediterranean: shallow marine geophysics, sediment core analyses and underwater excavation.
Assistant Professor, Anthropology; Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Isabel Rivera-Collazo teaches about biological, ecological and human adaptations to climate change and directs the Scripps Human Ecology Laboratory. Rivera-Collazo is native to Borikén, Puerto Rico. Her work combines earth sciences, archaeology and marine ecology to understand social vulnerability to climate and environmental change, particularly through food and habitat security in coastal and marine areas.
ANAR 120. Documenting Climate Change: Past and Present
This course will help familiarize students with the types of methods that people use to document shifting climate in the past and present day, in addition to training on geospatial data sets.
ANAR 186. The Human Era: The Archaeology of the Anthropocene
The course uses a comparative perspective to examine changes in how human societies organized themselves after the end of the last Ice Age across the world and the impact that those changes had on the planet’s natural environment.