Peter M. Gardner

Peter M. Gardner
Professor Emeritus
Anthropology
Bio

Peter Gardner (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) provides a generalist perspective on several specialties of anthropology. He has offered seminars on recent developments in culture theory, ethnosemantics and cognitive diversity, ethnographic generalization, and foraging adaptations plus lecture courses on history of anthropology (covering the four subfields), culture change, anthropology of knowledge, and Asian ethnography. His research spans a wide intellectual arena: ecology, social organization and cognition of foragers (in South India 1962-64, 1978; in Canadian subarctic 1973, 1974-75); cultural transmission in Hindu India (in general 1967-68, among South Indian sculptors 1978); problems in the study of cognition (1983); and anthropological perspectives on culture theories. Most importantly, he seeks to offer people guidance in effective criticism of their own ideas.