Research
In general, the sites and materials with which we are working or have recently been involved with range in age from 30,000 years ago to well into the post-Columbian era in the Americas; geographically they span Peru in South America to Oregon and Alaska in North America.
Some specific recent and ongoing projects and the principal topics of study include the following:
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Late Pleistocene to Middle Holocene sea level history (Mississippi Delta project).
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Late Pleistocene floristic dynamics; American mastodon diet and foraging patterns (Page-Ladson & Latvis-Simpson projects, Aucilla River, Jefferson County, Florida).
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Paleoindian and Archaic Period knowledge and use of biotic resources (Little Salt Springs [Sarasota Co.] & Windover [Indian River Co.] projects, Florida.
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Paleoindian and Archaic foragers as manipulators and domesticators of natural resources (Salt Springs, Marion County, Florida – graduate student Johanna Talcott).
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Plant cultivation and domestication in South Florida prehistory (Key Marco [Collier Co.], Pineland [Lee Co.], and others).
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Phylogenetic investigation of the Chenopodium member of the Eastern Agricultural Complex (graduate student Logan Kistler).
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400-year history of wood resource use in Chinookan households and its impact on local forests (Meier and Cathlapotle sites, Oregon -- graduate student Ann Trieu).
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Emergence of chiefdoms in the Caribbean (Tibes Civic-Ceremonial Center, Ponce, Puerto Rico; Utuado-Caguana Project, Puerto Rico).
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Foodways and the evolution of social complexity in the Caribbean (En Bas Saline, Haiti, and El Chorro de Maíta, Cuba).
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The impact of Middle Sicán pyrotechnology on the dry tropical forests of the La Leche River Valley, Lambayeque, Peru (graduate student David Goldstein, Ph.d. dissertation, 2007, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor).