Kaye Reed

Kaye Reed (born April 1951) is a biological anthropologis t focused on discovering evidence of early hominins and interpreting their paleoenvironment. She is presently concentrating her research on the lower Awash Valley in Ethiopia, as well as the South African Pleistocene, in order to study behavioral ecology. Kaye Reed is currently working at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, AZ, where she is the Director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (SHESC). She has been a full professor since 2012 within SHESC (with the designation of President's Professor since 2014), as well as a Research Associate within the Institute of Human Origins (IHO). From 2002 to 2012, Reed held the role of associate professor at the newly formed SHESC. Reed was associate director of SHESC from 2006 to 2008, and again from 2014 to 2016. In 2016 she was appointed to her current position as Director of SHESC. Reed won the Outstanding Faculty Member Award from the Faculty Women's Association at ASU in 2013. In 2014, Reed was named a President's Professor at ASU. In 2023 Reed was awarded Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Research

Reed is especially interested in mammalian and primate diversity and biogeography. Reed uses large comparative data sets to interpret the community structure of fossils mammals from various Plio-Pleistocene sites. Reed concluded that Au. africanus was not able to tolerate more arid and open habitats and suggested that a longer dry season eventually caused the extinction of the species.

Outside of South Africa, Reed traveled to the Bouri Peninsula in Eritrea in 1997, and she worked at the Contrebandiers Cave in Morocco from 2006 until 2008.

In addition to her research in Africa, Reed has conducted field work in the Crazy Mountain Basin in Montana in 1990, in Cabeza Blanca, Chubut, Argentina in 1993, and in the Sopeña Cave in Asturias, Spain from 2004 to 2006.