Alec Apodaca is an environmental archaeologist documenting Indigenous landscape stewardship practices in central coastal California. This collaborative research focuses on integrative surveys of cultural landscapes and evaluating archaeobotanical data to help plan for the ecological revitalization goals of Tribes and resource agencies. He has recently co-authored papers in archaeology, such as stable oxygen isotope analysis, ground-penetrating radar, coastal resource sustainability, and integrative landscape ethnobotany using GIS and perspectives from historical ecology. He also has...
Elizabeth is interested in archaeobotanical evidence of human engagements with forested landscapes in particular. She is interested in seed, wood, and starch grain analysis, and is currently working in northern New Mexico on evidence of Gallina period food, firewood, and building practices.
Natasha Fernandez-Preston's major interests are food and colonialism in the Caribbean. Currently, her research is using contemporary archaeological methods to explore the agricultural history, food practices, and cuisine in Puerto Rico and how these relate to colonial and racial capitalism, and how more equitable, just, and food-sovereign futures could be envisioned.
In the late 15th and early 16th centuries CE, the Upper Mantaro Valley in central Peru was the site of massive and rapid political change: communities were colonized first by the Inka, who set a provincial capital there at the site of modern day Jauja, and then mere decades later by the Spanish, who set their own first capital at that same location. This project investigates the impacts of such swift, large-scale change on the daily lives of the region’s inhabitants. Specifically, this work examines two lines of evidence – ceramics and domestic architecture – which were made and used...
Rebekah McKay is a Classical Archaeologist who focuses on the Bronze Age Aegean. She is interested in investigating the management practices associated with common-pool resources and the ways in which these strategies intersect with local economics, production, and group identity.
Milly earned her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Alabama in 2021. She is interested in the emergence of plant domestication in the Andes along with the intersection of land use/management strategies and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Milly is currently working on the analysis of archaeobotanical materials from Chiripa, Bolivia.
Jennifer Salinas’ research involves human-plant relations, foodways, and the origins of plant cultivation in the New World. Her current dissertation research focuses on a hunter-gatherer community at the site of Ubaté (5, 500 B.P.) on the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia. Methodologically, her work rests on the integration of different paleoethnobotanical approaches: macrobotanicals, starch grains, and phytoliths.
Venicia is a paleoethnobotanist working in Latin America and specializes in the identification and interpretation of macrobotanical (seeds, fruits, etc.) and anthracological (wood charcoal) archaeological plant remains. She has conducted research on archaeological excavations and analyzed paleoethnobotanical material from El Salvador, Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Ecuador as well as from Ohio and New Mexico within the United States. Her research interests include household archaeology, historical ecology, and agroecology. She is currently focusing on her dissertation...