Jake Kalodner

Research Interests

Kazakhstan; the Eurasian steppe; Bronze and Iron Age; mobility and migration; human, plant, and animal relations; biomolecular archaeology; landscape archaeology; phenomenology

Jake Kalodner entered Harvard’s Department of Anthropology in 2024 as a Ph.D. student in archaeology with an M.Phil from the University of Cambridge (2024) and a B.A. from Yale University (2021). His research investigates how social, political, and economic relationships among people, animals, and landscapes were negotiated and transformed by the emergence of pastoralism and the movement of new populations across Central and Inner Asia from the late Copper Age through the Bronze and Iron Ages. Methodologically, he is committed to integrating biomolecular approaches—including stable isotope analysis and proteomics—with archaeological theory and practice to generate new insights into ancient economies, cosmologies, and lifeways.

His current work, conducted in close collaboration with archaeologists from the Department of Archaeology, Ethnology, and Museology at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, reevaluates the role of pastoral diets in Eastern Kazakhstan using biomolecular methods. He also seeks to identify new Copper Age archaeological sites in the region using sattelite imagery and GIS approaches. Jake has field experience spanning more than ten years and seven countries, including excavation and survey work in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Peru, Ireland, Spain, Colorado, and New Jersey.

His research is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.