Lecturer - Archaeology
Senior Research Associate, Cultural Resources Facility

Research:

As a Senior Research Associate for the Cultural Resources Facility, I lead archaeological investigations in California, write technical reports, train students in archaeological field methods, and collaborate with local, state, and federal agencies to manage cultural resources and make assessments for the National Register of Historic Places. Prior to joining the Cultural Resources Facility at Cal Poly Humboldt, I was Project Director for the Kentucky Archaeological Survey in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University, where I led Phase I-III archaeological investigations throughout Kentucky.

I have participated on archaeological field and laboratory projects in Turkey, France, Peru, Italy, Mexico, Germany and the United States. Experiences include pedestrian survey tracing Roman settlement dynamics in the Central Anatolia, cave excavations at a site spanning the transition from Neanderthals to early modern humans in southwestern France, excavations and survey in the capital city of the Andean Casma culture, geophysics at a Roman town in the Veneto, geophysics and pedestrian survey at a Postclassic Mesoamerican city in Veracruz, lab training in analysis of soil micromorphological thin-sections with a petrographic microscope at the University of Tübingen in Germany, excavations at a Paleoindian chert quarry in South Carolina, excavations of complex house construction sequences at Fort Ancient and Mississippian village sites in Kentucky, and investigation of a site where enslaved peoples lived at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Virginia.

My research has been focused on human and ecosystem responses to the warming and drying trends of the Middle Holocene Climatic Optimum 8000 to 5000 years ago and the role of Archaic hunter-gatherers in creating anthropogenic environments with fire between 5000 and 3000 years ago in Eastern North America. I have utilized geoarchaeological methods derived from soil sciences, including magnetic susceptibility, loss-on-ignition analysis and archaeological micromorphology to study landform histories in relation to climatic change and Native lifeways throughout the Holocene. I was awarded the 2021 Dissertation Prize by the Midwest Archaeological Conference/University of Notre Dame Press and am publishing my dissertation as a book in the Midwest Archaeological Perspectives series with the University of Notre Dame Press. I am also co-editor of Falls of the Ohio River: Archaeology of Native American Settlement (2021) published with the University of Florida Press.

Teaching:

Field Archaeology
Introduction to Archaeology
Archaeology: Myths and Controversies
Origins of New World Civilizations
Cultural Diversity in the Modern World
Archaeology Field School

Education:

Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Kentucky
M.A. Anthropology, University of Kentucky
B.S. Anthropology (minor in Archaeology), College of Charleston
B.A. History, College of Charleston