Olga Soffer

1944 -

Olga Soffer is a Professor of Anthropology and the Head of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and her Master’s Degree in Anthropology at Hunter College, City University of New York. In 1984 she received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at Graduate Center, City University of New York. She served as an adjunct instructor at Hunter College, Lehman College, and at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee before coming to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1985 as an Assistant Professor.

Dr. Soffer’s professional activities include serving on the Editorial Board of Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology as well as the Editorial Board for the Journal of World Prehistory. Her fields of study include archaeology of the Old World, hunter-gatherer adaptations, anthropological and archaeological theory, paleoanthropology, and archaeozoology. Her main focus is on ancesteral lifeways in the Pleistocene, which includes hunter-gatherer cultural practices during the Late/Upper Paleolithic along with adaptations of the Neanderthals. Her current research deals with technological innovations seen in Upper Paleolithic Moravia. She is also carrying out research on storage economies on the Central East European Plain.

References:

Olga Soffer/Dept. of Anthropology@UIUC

www.anthro.uiuc.edu/Department/OLGA.html" Understanding Stone Age Life

By Matt Stoneberg