Meet The Team

The Spengler Lab conducts international research collaborations in archaeology, ecology, plant biology, and history. Spanning three continents, this diverse team is united by its desire to understand human-plant interactions over time and their implications for our modern world.

Dr. Robert N. Spengler III

Dr. Spengler directs the ERC-funded Fruits of Eurasia Domestication and Dispersal (FEDD) project. He also leads the Domestication and Anthropogenic Evolution Research Group (DAE) and oversees the paleoethnobotany laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. He is the co-PI on the Arcadia Fund project, Mongolian Archaeological Project: Surveying the Steppe (MAPSS).

Following his doctoral studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, Dr. Spengler held research fellowships through the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University and the Volkswagen and Mellon Foundations.

For the past two decades, Dr. Spengler has studied the archaeobotany of Central Asia through projects at over two dozen archaeological sites. His research agenda explores how the Silk Road shaped the foods we eat today and covers the original domestication and dispersal of many of the most important crops in the ancient world.

Dr. Spengler has authored over seventy scholarly articles, many in top peer-reviewed journals. His first book, Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Food We Eat, was published by the University of California Press in 2019 and is available for purchase. His next book, Nature’s Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity, is in press.