PhD 2011
I received my Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 2011, with methodological mentorship from Christine Hastorf, Dolores Piperno, and Linda Perry. The bulk of my paleoethnobotanical research has been carried out in Honduras and Mexico, investigating ancient Maya, Zapotec, and Mixtec communities. As a field archaeologist, I've worked with nineteen field projects spanning three continents and encompassing societies dating from the Late Pleistocene to Historic periods.
My methodological expertise is in macroremains (e.g. seeds) and microremains (e.g. starch grains and phytoliths). Thus far, my published work has addressed transformations in social complexity, gastronomic heritage, social paleoethnobotany, theoretical approaches to human-plant interactions, and human resilience under extreme conditions. I've taught courses at U.C. Berkeley, Colorado College, San Quentin State Prison, and the College of William and Mary. This academic year (2013-2014) I'm teaching several courses at Stanford: Lifeways of the Ancient Maya, Landscape Archaeology and Global Information Systematics, and Peoples and Cultures of Ancient Mesoamerica.
Currently, I'm engaged with five projects addressing ancient Mesoamerican lifeways, including cuisine, plant domestication, ecological shifts, resilience, daily practice, and dynamic aspects of colonial encounters. My broader interests include archaeogastronomy, socioecology, and other strange conglomerate words that relate to ancient foodways and human-plant interactions.