Rob is a paleoethnobotanist working with a multidisciplinary research team to examine how Native Californians managed landscape resources through fire. This project, located in Ano Nuevo State Reserve, seeks to integrate data sets from archaeology, modern ecology, paleoecology, dendroecology, isotopic analysis, geomorphological analysis, and fire/vegetation/climate modeling to track indigenous landscape management practices during the Late Holocene.
Rob's research interests include: California paleoethnobotany; microbotanical analysis including phytolith, starch...
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...
Karla Saracay earned her B.A. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley in 2021. She worked at the McCown Archaeobotany laboratory from 2018-2022 preparing materials from the Upper Mantaro Archaeological Research Project (UMARP) for accessioning into the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. During her time she also wrote her senior honors thesis, "Daily Activities in Late Intermediate Households at Umpamalca, Peru" based on the data available from the UMARP collection. She will be joining the Taraco Archaeological Project (TAP) for the 2023 field season.