Pam Crabtree is an anthropologically-trained archaeologist who specializes in zooarchaeology and early medieval archaeology. She received her BA from Barnard College (1972) and her MA (1975) and PhD (1982) from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a member of the Anthropology Department at NYU since 1990. Before coming to NYU, she was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University (1985-1990) and a Research Fellow at the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA) from 1982 to 1984.
Crabtree has carried out field and laboratory research at a wide variety of archaeological sites in Europe and the Middle East. Much of her early research focused on the zooarchaeology of a series of Late Roman and Anglo-Saxon sites in eastern England, including Icklingham, West Stow, West Stow West, Brandon, and Ipswich in Suffolk, Wicken Bonhunt in Essex, and St. Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire. She is particularly interested in the social, political, and economic changes that took place in Northwest Europe between the 5th and the 10th centuries CE. She is also a member of an international team exploring the origins of early medieval Antwerp (8th-10th centuries CE). In addition to her research on early medieval Europe, Crabtree is a zooarchaeologst for several ongoing research projects including the Kinik Höyük and Çiftlik-Tepeçik projects in southern Cappadocia, Turkey; the Kyzyltepa project in Uzbekistan; the Amheida project in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis; the Shengavit project in Yerevan, Armenia; and the Dún Ailinne project in County Kildare, Ireland.
In addition to zooarchaeology, Crabtree’s research interests include the origins of urbanism in early medieval Europe, animal domestication, and the history of archaeological theory. During her semester at ISAW Crabtree plans to complete a book on the re-birth of towns in post-Roman Britain. The book examines changes in settlement patterns and subsistence practices in eastern England from the 4th through the 10th centuries CE based on archaeological data, much of which has been collected since the 1970s.