Anthropology at the University of Michigan in the Late 1950s

By 1958, the Anthropology Department at the University of Michigan had emerged as a major center in the discipline. Its excellence derived from a strong faculty, commitment to an integrated view of the field, and broader support from a rising national tide of scholarship. While many new intellectual currents developed, among the strongest was biological-behavioral theory—somewhat ironically flourishing in a biological anthropology program that viewed itself as a nexus of population genetics. The biological anthropology faculty thought like anthropologists. From this environment, Frank Livingstone not only drew intellectual support, but also became a key player in demonstrating the importance of historical and cultural factors to shaping biological patterns. A biocultural perspective is evident in Michigan research to this day.