Christine Hastorf

Research Bio

Christine Hastorf is a distinguished anthropologist and archaeobotanist whose research explores the complex relationships between plants, culture, and society in ancient civilizations. Best known for her pioneering contributions to paleoethnobotany, she investigates how plant remains reflect agricultural practices, social structures, ritual life, and political organization—especially in the Andean region. Her work has provided new insights into how ancient communities interacted with their environments, including foodways, gender roles, and symbolic uses of plants.

Hastorf directs long-term research initiatives such as the Lake Titicaca Taraco Archaeological Project and has contributed to archaeobotanical work at sites like Çatalhöyük. She also leads the McCown Archaeobotany Laboratory, shaping the scientific practice of archaeobotany through field and lab training.  She has directed the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley these past eight years,

Her accomplishments have been recognized with several major honors, including the 2025 Pomerance Award for Scientific Contributions to Archaeology from the Archaeological Institute of America and the Fryxell Award in the Botanical Sciences from the Society for American Archaeology. She is a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and the Society of Antiquaries. Hastorf earned her Ph.D. from UCLA and has been a Berkeley faculty member since 1994.

She is an expert in using ancient plant remains to understand the social and environmental dynamics of early civilizations.

Research Expertise and Interest

anthropology, archaeology, paleoethnobotany/archaeobotany, ancient plant use, foodways, Andean South America, indigenous ontologies, agriculture

In the News

The Superfoods That Fueled Ancient Andeans Through 2,500 Years of Turmoil

What if Indigenous diets could save our politically and ecologically strained planet? UC Berkeley archaeologists reconstructed the diets of ancient Andeans living around Lake Titicaca, which straddles Bolivia and Peru 12,500 feet above sea level. They found that quinoa, potatoes and llama meat helped fuel the Tiwanaku civilization through 2,500 years of political and climate upheaval.

To recreate ancient recipes, check out the vestiges of clay pots

If you happen to dig up an ancient ceramic cooking pot, don’t clean it. Chances are, it contains the culinary secrets of the past. A research team led by UC Berkeley archaeologists has discovered that unglazed ceramic cookware can retain the residue of not just the last supper cooked, but, potentially, earlier dishes cooked across a pot’s lifetime, opening a window onto the past.

A Taste of Andean History

Of all of the advances people have developed over the millennia, food plants may be the most important. By examining the plant remains on early settlements, Berkeley professor of anthropology Christine Hastorf pieces together how ancient peoples worked, ate, traded and worshiped.

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
October 1, 2020

Studying Clay-Pot Residues Could Help Scientists Recreate Ancient Recipes

ArsTechnica
Jennifer Ouellette
Archaeologists are fascinated by many different aspects of cultures in the distant past, but determining what ancient people cooked and ate can be particularly challenging. A team of researchers spent an entire year analyzing the chemical residues of some 50 meals cooked in ceramic pots and found such cookware retained not just the remnants of the last meal cooked, but also clues as to earlier meals, spanning a pot's lifetime of usage. According to co-author Christine Hastorf, an archaeologist at the University of California, Berkeley, the project has been several years in the making. Hastorf has long been interested in the relationships between people and plants throughout history, particularly as they pertain to what people ate in the past. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.
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