Luseadra McKerracher

Research Interests:

The evolution of human life history; infant feeding and weaning behaviour in humans, hominins, and nonhuman primates; pregnancy and diet in humans and our fossil relatives; environmental influences on past and present human diet and energetics; hominins in Pleistocene Europe; children and childhood in the archaeological record

PhD Research:  Cooperative Breeding, Energetics, and the Origins of Relatively Early Weaning in Humans

Unlike other living apes, humans begin weaning our infants from breastmilk well before infants are physically or cognitively capable of foraging for, processing, or digesting adult foods without assistance from older children or adults. For my PhD, I am investigating when and why we switched from an ape-like weaning strategy to the relatively early weaning strategy that characterizes all contemporary human populations.

Master's Thesis: An Assessment of the Impact of Population History and Risk on Human Weaning Behaviour

Honours Thesis: Huacas and Panchos: The Spiritual Lives of Inkan Children

Refereed Contributions:

Submitted (McKerracher, L., D. Sellen, P. Nepomnaschy and M. Collard)  A cross-cultural assessment of the impact of extrinsic risk on women’s infant feeding decisions. PLoS ONE, vol??, pp??. Title subject to revision.

Conference Presentations:

2012 (McKerracher, L., D. Sellen, P. Nepomnaschy, and M. Collard). A Cross-Cultural Assessment of the Impact of Extrinsic Risk on Women's Infant Feeding Decisions. Invited Talk at The First Annual Human Evolutionary Studies Program Symposium. Burnaby, British Columbia.

2012 (McKerracher, L., D. Sellen, P. Nepomnaschy and M. Collard). Does “The Extrinsic Risk Hypothesis” explain cross-cultural variation in age at introduction of transitional foods? [Poster Presentation]. Eighty-First Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropology. No. 76, Session 30: Portland, Oregon.

2011 (McKerracher, L., D. Sellen, P. Nepomnaschy and M. Collard) Do human mothers and infants adjust duration of exclusive breastfeeding in response to ecological risks? [Poster Presentation].  Thirty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology. No. 10, Session B: Montreal, Quebec.

2009 (McKerracher, L., D. Sellen, P. Nepomnaschy, and M. Collard) An Assessment of the Impact of Population History and Risk on Weaning Variation [Podium Presentation].  Thirty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology. Vancouver, British Colombia.

Field Shots: