Deborah M. Pearsall is Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri, having retired in 2013 after 35 years. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MA and PhD from the University of Illinois, all of which are in the subject of Anthropology. Her interests within this discipline center on South American archaeology and paleoethnobotany: the study of plant-people interrelationships through the archaeological record. She has conducted paleoethnobotanical research in numerous locations in the Americas. Her research has two broad themes: the origins and spread of agriculture in the lowland Neotropics, and methods and approaches in paleoethnobotany. She is the author of three books: Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures; Plants and People in Ancient Ecuador: The Ethnobotany of the Jama River Valley; and, with D. R. Piperno, The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics. She was also the general editor of Academic Press's 2008 Encyclopedia of Archaeology and has published in numerous professional journals and edited collections.

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