Research

My Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the application of phylogenetic analysis to explore the Paleoindian projectile point traditions in eastern North America. This work involves the digitization of multiple landmarks on fluted and non-fluted Paleoindian bifaces and the use of cladistics analysis to resolve phylogenies. Updates of this project have been presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in 2011, 2012, and 2014. We recently published a paper in Journal of Anthropological Archaeology that was based in part on our 2012 SAA talk.

Since 2006, I have been digitizing and curating the records from the archaeometry program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), headed by I. Perlman and F. Asaro. The main goals of this work are to ensure long-term stability and accessibility, transcribe paper records to create a digital database, and arrange for the public distribution of LBNL data.

• Read more about the Berkeley archives project

• View the project Web site

• Access LBL data at the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR)

My Masters thesis involved the analysis of ceramic artifacts from a fortified village site in the Connecticut River Valley of southwestern New Hampshire. The site, Fort Hill, was occupied for ca. 8 mos. between A.D. 1663 and 1664. My analyses involved traditional ceramic attributes, petrographic analysis, and geochemistry. The findings of this study found a diversity in ceramic manufacturing practice that was unanticipated given the short occupation of the site by what has typically been viewed as a single ethnic group. I explain my findings through the use of a model that emphasizes social and cultural fluidity among Native American groups and their responses to European colonization. The petrographic component of this study is in press at Anthropological and Archaeological Sciences.

Efforts to determine geological sources of stone tools in New England are confounded by exceptionally complex geological histories, a general absence of surveys for quarries, and poor communication across modern political borders. Since 2004 I have been compiling geochemical data on Native American archaeological chert, quartzite, rhyolite, and other types of rock used to make stone tools throughout prehistory. A recent publication relating to this research involves the analysis of Wyandotte chert from Indiana, and its reported presence at a Paleoindian site in Ohio.