Stephen Chrisomalis (Ph.D., McGill, 2003) is a linguistic anthropologist who specializes in the anthropology of mathematics and the interaction of language, cognition and culture. His book, A Comparative History of Numerical Notation, is a cross-cultural cognitive analysis of systems of written numerals as used over the past 5000 years. His work focuses on the relationship between individual cognition and broader social, political, and economic processes.
In addition to this work, Dr. Chrisomalis publishes and supervises work on cross-cultural methods and theories in anthropology, the relationship between linguistic and archaeological anthropology, the anthropology of literacy and writing systems, and the history of anthropology.
From 2008 to 2010, Dr. Chrisomalis is undertaking linguistic and ethnographic research with the MathCorps at WSU, aiming to understand the social and cognitive processes by which Detroit middle school students acquire and use mathematical concepts. He is also the editor of the Stop: Toutes Directions project, which looks at language ideologies in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada through its stop signs, which are important objects of linguistic and political discourse.
Publications
A Comparative History of Numerical Notation. New York: Cambridge University Press. (2009)
The cognitive and cultural foundations of numbers, in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Mathematics, Eleanor Robson and Jacqueline Stedall, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2008)
The perils of pseudo-Orwellianism. Antiquity 81(311): 204-207. (2007)
Comparing cultures and comparing processes: diachronic comparison in anthropology and archaeology. Cross-Cultural Research 40(3): 1-28. (2006)
Comparative archaeology: an unheralded cross-cultural method, in The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger: Theoretical Empiricism, Ronald Williamson and Michael Bisson, eds, pp. 36-51. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. (2006)
A cognitive typology for numerical notation. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 14(1): 37-52. (2004)
(with Bruce G. Trigger) Reconstructing prehistoric ethnicity: problems and possibilities, in A Passion for the Past: Papers in Honour of James F. Pendergast, James V. Wright and Jean-Luc Pilon, eds., pp. 419-433. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization. (2004)
The Egyptian origin of the Greek alphabetic numerals. Antiquity 77(297): 485-496. (2003).
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