Dr. Ellery Frahm

Dr. Ellery Frahm received his BA (1999) from Grinnell College and his MA (2002) and PhD (2010) from the University of Minnesota, where he was also a Research Associate in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences as well as a Postdoctoral Associate and an Assistant Professor (Temporary) in the Department of Anthropology. He was a Marie Curie Experienced Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield (2012-2014) and a Research Fellow at Harvard University (2015-2016). Currently, he is a Research Scientist (Faculty) in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University, where he has been the Director of the Yale Initiative for the Study of Ancient Pyrotechnology since 2017.

Dr. Frahm has conducted and published research on four continents – Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America – spanning nearly half a million years of human history. A unifying theme of his research is elucidating how human groups made use of natural resources distributed across the landscape, how they responded to challenges within their environments, and how the resulting behaviors influenced connectivity and, in turn, opportunities for the spread of technological innovations and social changes. Since 2010, his work has largely focused on the Caucasus, specifically Armenia and Georgia, although his other projects span from China to Kenya.