Meet The Team
The Spengler Lab conducts international research collaborations in archaeology, ecology, plant biology, and history. Spanning three continents, this diverse team is united by their desire to understand human-plant interactions through time and their implications on our modern world.
Dr. Robert N. Spengler III
Dr. Spengler directs the ERC-funded project, Fruits of Eurasia Domestication and Dispersal (FEDD). He also leads the Domestication and Anthropogenic Evolution Research Group (DAE) and oversees the paleoethnobotany laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. He is the co-PI on the Arcadia Fund project, Mongolian Archaeological Project: Surveying the Steppe (MAPSS).
Following his doctoral studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Spengler held research fellowships through the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University and the Volkswagen and Mellon Foundations
For the past two decades, Dr. Spengler has studied the archaeobotany of Central Asia through projects at over two dozen archaeological sites. His research agenda explores how the Silk Road shaped the foods we eat today and covers the original domestication and dispersal of many of the most important crops in the ancient world.
Dr. Spengler has authored over seventy scholarly articles, many in top peer-reviewed journals. His first book, Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Food We Eat, was published by the University of California Press in 2019 and is available for purchase. His next book, Domesticating Earth: The Origins of Agriculture Debates, is in press.
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Dr. Madelynn von Baeyer
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW
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Dr. Christian Leipe
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW
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Dr. Kseniia Boxleitner
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW
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Basira Mir Makhamad
GRADUATE STUDENT
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Li Tang
GRADUATE STUDENT
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Barbara Huber
GRADUATE STUDENT
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Olga Gildeeva Schmitz
GRADUATE STUDENT
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Traci Billings
GRADUATE STUDENT
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Stefanie Schirmer
TECHNICIAN
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Dr. Rita Dal Martello
RESEARCH AFFILIATE
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Barbara Zach
RESEARCH AFFILIATE
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Dr. Logan Kistler
RESEARCH AFFILIATE
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Dr. Thomas Larsen
RESEARCH AFFILIATE
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Dr. Yiming Wang
RESEARCH AFFILIATE