Biography

My area of specialization is archaeology. Within this broad subfield, my research and expertise are in environmental archaeology, zooarchaeology, and human-animal relationships. Working primarily with ancestral Unangax̂ sites, I am most interested in questions having to do the interplay of culture and climate change and with how humans engaged with both their physical and metaphysical environments . My recent projects have focused on identifying avian bone pathology in archaeological assemblages from the eastern Aleutian Islands. Other projects include the use of scanning electron microscopy to identify avian eggshell from a sub-elite neighborhood in Pompeii, Italy and using experimental archaeological studies to understand human taphonomic impacts on archaeological assemblages. My dissertation research examined the impact of environmental and cultural changes on the relationship between the ancestral inhabitants of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, the Unangax̂, and birds. This study has been featured in a chapter published in Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Complexity in North America with the University Press of Florida (2023). I am also currently working on a single authored manual for archaeological bird bone and egg identification. 

Teaching Responsibilities

Undergraduate Courses:

• ANTH A200 Natives of Alaska
• ANTH A202 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• ANTH A250 Rise of Civilization
• ANTH A415 Applied Anthropology
• ANTH A455 Medical Anthropology
• ANTH A490 Contemporary Arctic Studies

Graduate Courses:

• ANTH A602 Cultural Anthropology Proseminar
• ANTH A615 Advanced Applied Anthropology
• ANTH A655 Advanced Medical Anthropology

Research Interests

• Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Ethno-ornithology
• Landscape archaeology
• Paleopathology

Publications

For a current list of publications and research, see my ResearchGate site.