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...
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...
Elizabeth completed her graduate work in the McCown Archaeobotany Laboratory and recieved her PhD in Anthropology from UC Berkeley in 2026 is interested in archaeobotanical evidence of human engagements with forested landscapes in particular. She is particularly interested in seed, wood, and starch grain analysis, and in the research potential of archived and heritage archaeobotanical collections and data. Her dissertation explored evidence of Gallina phase social lives with plants and sustainable food, firewood, and building practices in northern New Mexico between about 1100 and 1300 C.E...
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...
