Robert L. Carneiro

Curator
Anthropology

Education
  • University of Michigan, Ph.D., 1957
  • University of Michigan, M.A., 1952
  • University of Michigan, B.A, 1949
E-mail
carneiro@amnh.org
Phone
212.769.5897
Fax
212.769.5334
Downloads
Carneiro_CV.pdf
Links
Division of Anthropology

Research Interests

Dr. Carneiro's fields of interest in anthropology are threefold: South American ethnology, cultural evolution, and political evolution. He has done field projects on three indigenous tribes inhabiting the Amazon basin: the Kuikuru Indians of central Brazil, the Amahuaca of eastern Peru, and the Yanoramo of southern Venezuela. Currently he is working on a study of manioc, the staple crop of most Amazonian Indians, and is about to start work on a monograph on the Kuikuru. Dr. Carneiro studies the ways in which societies have evolved from simple, autonomous Neolithic villages into ever-larger and more complex polities, passing through various stages of development, including the chiefdom, and culminating in the formation of pre-industrial states and empires, and ascertaining the factors that best account for this transition.

Teaching Experience

  • Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University, 1992-

  • Visiting Professor of Anthropology, Fordham University, Lincoln Center, NY, 1980
  • Visiting Professor of Anthropology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, 1977

  • Visiting Professor of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, 1973

  • Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California at Los Angeles, 1968

  • Lecturer in Anthropology, Columbia University, 1964, 1965

  • Lecturer in Anthropology, Hunter College, 1964, 1965

  • Instructor in Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, 1956-57