Lab Director and Curator

Miriam Belmaker is an Associate Professor at The University of Tulsa. She is the curator and lab director of the Zooarchaeology and Paleoanthropology Collections, Human Osteology Collections and heads a research group on Surface Metrology and Tribology. 

Dr. Belmaker is a Paleolithic archaeologist and paleoanthropologist. Her research focuses on environmental change primarily in the past 2 million years and how it affected hominid biological and cultural evolution. She analyzes fossil faunal remains obtained from archaeological and paleontological sites to reconstruct ancient environments through space and time and to ask questions about human evolution.

To track climate change through space and time, Belmaker uses both zooarchaeological and paleontological methods. She is currently building a large comparative collection to assist in her research. This includes comparative collection of modern species and fossil casts.

She earned a BA in prehistoric archaeology and ecology from Haifa University, Israel, and an MSc and PhD in Evolution and Ecology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel and has been at TU since 2012.

Belmaker has conducted archaeological fieldwork at Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic sites in Israel, Jordan, Armenia, Caucasus, Central and East Asia. Her professional interests include human evolution, paleoecology, climate and human interactions,  zooarchaeology of vertebrates, and taphonomy.