Pam J. Crabtree is an archaeologist and Professor of Anthropology at New York University where she has taught since 1990. She served as the Anthropology Department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2018 to 2023. Crabtree received her BA (Magna cum Laude) in Art History and Economics from Barnard College in 1972 and her MA (1975) and PhD (1982) in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. She was an Overseas Visiting Scholar at the Archaeology Department of the University of Southampton (UK) from 1977 to 1979.
Crabtree is a zooarchaeologist who uses archaeologically-recovered animal bones to study animal husbandry practices, hunting patterns, ancient diets, animal domestication, and the ritual use of animals. She is particularly interested in the archaeology of Early Medieval northwestern Europe, including the transition from the Roman to the post-Roman world and the origins of towns in the early medieval period. She is the author of Early Medieval Britain: The Rebirth of Towns in the Post-Roman West (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
Crabtree has served as a zooarchaeologist for many sites in Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, including the ISAW-sponsored excavations at Amheida in Egypt and Kinik Höyük in Turkey. She also served as the Co-Director of the excavations at the Iron Age site of Dún Ailinne in Ireland from 2016-2022, and she is currently a member of the New Pastures project that is studying animal husbandry and agriculture in Iron Age Ireland. Crabtree plans to use her fellowship year at ISAW to write a book on method and theory in zooarchaeology.