Emma Britton (PhD awared)

My dissertation focuses on the mineralogical and chemical diversity of Casas Grandes polychromes across the Casas Grandes region, which extends through most of Chihuahua, eastern Sonora, and the southern portions of New Mexico and Arizona. I have a background in geology as well as anthropology and approach ceramics from a material science perspective. I intend to remedy breaches in our comprehensive understanding of Casas Grandes polychromes by joining modern conceptions of design analyses with technological analyses, that remain largely underdeveloped. By executing the first comprehensive study of Chihuahuan polychromes, with the goal of identifying and describing the degree and extent of stylistic, mineralogical, and chemical variability, both within and across the traditionally defined polychrome types and both through time and across space, I intend to amend the generally limited and non-compatible nature of previous studies.  

Nasreen Broomandkhoshbacht

I do ancient DNA research. I am mainly focused on ancient human health and the evolutionary histories of human pathogens, but I am also involved in various human population genetics projects. I am interested in the potential of non-traditional aDNA sources, as well as methods development and optimization.

Rebecca Davis

My graduate research at UCSC examines enslaved domestic spaces within plantation landscapes in the former French colony of Saint Domingue (present day Haiti). The time period being researched is just prior to the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 when over 90% of the population was comprised of enslaved individuals. My research focuses on the enslaved use of space, cultural persistence, agency, active resistance and how these elements might present themselves in the landscape.  

Georgie DeAntoni

My graduate research at UC Santa Cruz examines colonialism in California, particularly emphasizing Indigenous survivance and resilience before, during, and following the contact period and missionization. Using paleoethnobotany and the identification of wood charcoal through anthracology, my work will examine traditional landscape management practices as well as environmental changes following colonization. As a researcher, I am interested in Indigenous, collaborative, community-based archaeologies which prioritize the questions and ethics of the descendant communities. Additional emphases in my work are public outreach and the archaeology of hinterland spaces. 

I am an anthropological archaeologist. My research interests range from ethnohistory to historical creole linguistics and lithic analysis to zooarchaeology. In the past, I have worked in several regions of North America and in the Caribbean. I currently work in Hawai`i and I focus on post-contact period archaeology. I am the Student Representative on the Board of Directors for the Society for Hawaiian Archaeology. I am also the O`ahu Army Cultural Resources Program Manager for the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR).

My dissertation examines mobility and herd management strategies of early pastoralists of Kenya’s Central Rift and neighboring plains. Here I use isotopic methods to investigate seasonal and longer-range herd movements across the landscape. I also use zooarchaeological analyses to assess the health and demographics of livestock, with the goal of identifying herding practices in the past and examining the spread of pastoralism throughout East Africa.

Kalina Kassadjikova

My graduate research uses DNA from excavated human remains to recreate ancestral lineages erased by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and examine the genomic effects of colonial slavery among enslaved populations in North America and the Caribbean. Through studying the emergence of new Creole identities, I attempt to better understand how power dynamics and social hierarchy influence processes of individual and group identity-making and social solidarity. Combining biological and anthropological perspectives, I take a multiscalar approach to exploring how these biocultural interactions affect short- and long-term processes of cultural inheritance, endurance, and evolution.

Katie Ligmond

My research focuses on Andean empires, particularly the Wari and Inka. I primarily research textiles, and their role as carriers of ideology. To this end, I also study the role of women in the creation of empire, ideology shifts between center and periphery, and the relationship between textiles and other art forms (including architecture and artwork). I am interested in how and why states form, and what we can glean from the archaeological record to understand growing inequities in society, changes in craft production, and shifts in agricultural practice.

Chester Liwosz  (PhD awarded 2018)

As an anthropological archaeologist, I seek to bridge scientific understanding with indigenous worldviews.  My ongoing doctoral research explores cognition and meaning-making through embodied multisensory experiences connected with precolonial religious practices in the Mojave Desert and Great Basin of western North America.  This ethnographically informed research bridges the materiality of enigmatic rock art within its archaeological landscape context, with oral traditions shared by descendant Native American communities living in the region.  When informed by current and supported neuropsychology theory, we can build phenomenological understandings of subjective divine experiences. In forging new discourses, archaeologists such as myself hope to dispel primitivising narratives of "magical thinking," instead illuminating the common ground of empiricism, and its active role in cultivating non-Western ontologies.

Jacob Stone

My research focuses on the historical archaeology of internment camps and incarceration with my dissertation specifically regarding the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in the United States during World War II. The current project I am working on aims to use material culture to better understand the social and political impacts forced incarceration had on these populations and how communities persist or form before and after internment. This research impacts the lives of many around the world today who find themselves in a situation of forced relocation or removal from their community by way of political, environmental, or social catalysts.

My graduate research at UCSC explores the role of human sacrifice in ancient Maya political and religious practice. Specifically, I am investigating the recruitment of sacrificial victims by attempting to determine whether the individuals sacrificed come from local populations surrounding the cave or if they are captives from farther afield. I am also interested in how the selection for sacrificial victims reflects political and religious ideologies of the time. I am currently working with the Midnight Terror Cave skeletal collection from Belize to examine these issues.

My graduate research at UCSC focuses on broad questions surrounding life history in the Central Amazon in Brazil. Specifically, I am interested in reconstructing past life ways in an attempt understanding the challenges and activities of daily life. My research looks at the interactions of people with other members of their community and more broadly their environment. Through bioarchaeological methods as well as stable isotope analysis I hope to examine the direct impact of daily life activities on an individual level and further draw conclusions about population dynamics.