Esther Jacobson-Tepfer is Maude I Kerns Professor Emeritus of Asian Art at the University of Oregon, where she taught undergraduate courses in the History of Indian Art, Art of the Silk Road, and Nomadic Art of Eurasia, and undergraduate and graduate courses in Scythian Gold, North Asian Rock Art, and Judaic Art. Dr Jacobson-Tepfer is a past recipient of the Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching, and was the first director of the University’s Center for Asian and Pacific Studies.
Dr Jacobson-Tepfer received her doctoral degree in Chinese art history from the University of Chicago in 1970 following a Masters in Chinese and Central Asian Art History, and a BA in Oriental Languages and Civilizations.
In her early publications, she began to explore the interconnections between Chinese artistic traditions of the Zhou-Han period and those of the early Nomads inhabiting the steppe region to the north of China’s borders. Extended study periods in the former Soviet Union allowed Dr Jacobson-Tepfer to investigate more fully those nomadic traditions and to refocus her research interests on North Asia, the Early Nomads, and their Bronze Age predecessors. In recent years her research has been directed particularly to rock art and surface archaeology of North Asia from the Pre-Bronze Age through the Turkic Period.
Since 1989, Dr Jacobson-Tepfer’s research has been located in the Altay Mountains of North Asia. Between 1994 and 2004, she collaborated with Mongolian and Russian colleagues documenting rock art in the Mongolian Altay and focussed on understanding the cultural ecology of the ancient Altay region.
In 2003, Dr Jacobson-Tepfer was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Institute of Archaeology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Mongolia. In 2007, Dr Jacobson-Tepfer, along with James E. Meacham, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Reference Materials Grant for the Mongolian Altai Inventory Project.
For several years, Dr Jacobson-Tepfer was on the board of the Mongolia Society and is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal, Archaeology, Ethnology, and Anthropology of Eurasia (Novosibirsk, Russia). She has also been a consultant for UNESCO on various initiatives relating to cultural preservation in the Altai Mountains and in north-western Mongolia.
Her current research returns her to an in-depth study of Bronze Age rock art of the Mongolian Altai and to an extensive archiving project of rock art of that region.
