Teaching and Research Interests :

            -- Bioarchaeology, dental anthropology, mortuary analysis

            -- Forensic anthropology and forensic taphonomy 

            -- Prehistoric and Historic Andean South America; organization of complex societies

            -- Health, violence, identity, and ethnogenesis

            -- Theory and methods in bioarchaeology

Coming to Utah Valley University in 2008, my teaching and research interests involve the bioarchaeology of the north coast of Peru. I teach sections of Anthropology 1020 (Biological Anthropology) and 1030 (World Prehistory) upper-division courses on human skeletal and dental anatomy, bioarchaeology, Andean prehistory, forensic anthropology, mortuary archaeology, and human evolution. I also direct UVU's annual Study Abroad program in Peru, which is a student-centered research experience in archaeology and bioarchaeology.  

The human skeleton may well be the single most information-dense source of knowledge about the past. Human biology is a product of our underlying genes, but is actually shaped most directly by environments, social patterns, and economics. Since its inception in 2003, I have directed the Lambayeque Valley Biohistory Project, a sustained 30-year, international, multidisciplinary, and regional field bioarchaeology program on the desert north coast of Peru. Using the human skeleton as a “datum point,” my students, colleagues, and I excavate archaeological sites and mortuary contexts. We seek to learn how over an 8,000 year period, developments of socioeconomic inequality, violence, statecraft, adaptations to hostile desert environments, and foreign conquests shaped cultural and biological diversity in a single coastal Peruvian valley from the earliest Holocene inhabitants to its modern peoples.

The current 15 year-long research phase involves the study of the late pre-Hispanic period (A.D. 900-1532) and biocultural impacts of Spanish colonialism from A.D. 1532-1750 in Lambayeque (you can learn more here). Our current phase of work form 2009-2011 involves the excavation and analysis of the ruins and burials of the Colonial native town of Eten. This is a particularly special site as we think the people may have "escaped" the many negative cultural and biological effects of European conquest. Parallel projects involve collaborative work with Japanese, Canadian, American, and Peruvian scholars regarding health and genetic structure among Moche and Sicán royal families (see Steve Bourget's weblecture here),  excavation and analysis of high-status Middle Sicán funerary contexts with the Museo Nacional Sicán, (the Museum's website here), and human sacrifice and ritual violence (National Geographic clip here)

This project is based in biohistorical approach. We examine a very wide range of data from human skeletal remains, including infection, chronic biological stress, biomechanically-related forms of osteoarthritis, growth and growth retardation, ancient demography, diet, violence, and the reconstruction of genetic interaction patterns. These data are directly integrated with cultural information, often proceeding from symbolically-rich burials, associated archaeological sites, and even historic documents in the attempt to produce a holisitc and humanized understanding of past peoples.        

Education

Ph.D., Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University, 2008.

Dissertation: Out of Light Came Darkness: Bioarchaeology of Mortuary Ritual, Health, and Ethnogenesis in the Lambayeque Valley Complex, North Coast of Peru (AD 900-1750). 864. pp. 

Available for download here (24 mb)

M.A., Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, 2003.

Thesis: Life and Death at Huaca Sialupe: Mortuary Archaeology of a Middle Sicán Community, AD 900-1150. 

B.A., Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Plattsburgh, 2000.

Major in anthropology and double minor in archaeology and studio art. Advanced Honors Project: The Stone Forge: Reconstructing a 19^th Century Ironworks. Senior Thesis in Anthropology: Paleopathology of Treponemal Disease and Syphilis in a Colonial Maya Population.