Rate My Professor Naomi Cleghorn

Dr. Naomi Cleghorn is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropological Sciences from Stony Brook University in 2006 and her M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin. Her career at UTA includes promotion to Associate Professor in Fall 2016, and service as Associate Chair and Anthropology Program Director from October 2018 to January 2023. Cleghorn received the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Sociology and Anthropology department in 2015 and was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant in 2014 for investigating human adaptations.

Cleghorn's research specializations encompass bioarchaeology, zooarchaeology, human osteology, Old World prehistory and human origins, and the archaeology of Neanderthals and early modern humans within biological anthropology. Her projects focus on the archaeology of early humans and environmental change, notably the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, an integrated model reconstructing a lost ecosystem spanning 85,000 km² off South Africa's southern coast. She co-authored the 2018 Nature paper 'Humans thrived in South Africa through the Toba eruption about 74,000 years ago,' which analyzed glass shards from the Mount Toba supervolcano at Pinnacle Point sites, evidencing human resilience through advanced cognition, cooperation, and resource exploitation during a volcanic winter. Other contributions include guest editor for a special issue of Quaternary Science Reviews (Volume 235, 2020) on the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain and publications such as 'The Destruction of Skeletal Elements by Carnivores' (2007) and work on Neanderthal extinction factors in Current Anthropology (2010). Her interdisciplinary paleosciences research links environmental impacts and human evolution, with ongoing excavations at Knysna to establish chronologies of social adaptation. Cleghorn's scholarship has garnered over 1,000 citations.