Erik Otárola-Castillo

Evolution, ecology and diversity of behavior in prehistoric and modern populations of hunter-gatherers; effects that climatic change, variation of food-availability and-distribution had on the diet of some of the first North American native populations.

“What do people eat and why?”

Dr. Otárola-Castillo is an archaeologist, human evolutionary biologist and biostatistician, and “What do people eat and why?” is the "big" question driving his research. To answer it he studies the evolution, ecology and diversity of behavior in prehistoric and modern populations of hunter-gatherers. Currently,he is interested in the effects that climatic change, variation of food-availability and-distribution had on the diet of some of the first North American native populations. As a biostatistician and computational anthropologist he develops quantitative tools to answer questions in the context of the major dimensions of archaeological research: space, time and form. To this end he develops and implements quantitative models of the human diet, 3D-morphometrics software, statistical software for zooarchaeologists, models of spatio-temporal statistics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

**Dr. Otárola-Castillo directs the Laboratory for Computational Anthropology and Anthroinformatics (LCA). He is currently accepting qualified graduate students and undergraduate interns. Interested students should contact by e-mail (eoc@purdue.edu) and visit the LCA website to learn more.**