The University of Georgia

Post-Doc, Anthropology

About

My postdoctoral research at UGA involves a comparative study of the formation of large village communities, situated between early village societies and the earliest urban centers. When people come together into larger and more complex social formations what social, political, and economic transformations occur to manage life in these new settlements?

In 2010 I received my Ph.D. from McMaster University. My dissertation documents and theorizes processes behind the movement and structural change of ancestral Huron-Wendat communities. This multi-scalar settlement study reconstructed multiple precontact village relocation sequences in southern Ontario in order to examine changes in the organization of the built environment as communities came together into large, fortified village aggregates.

An important and ongoing part of this work concerns the early 16th century Mantle site, the largest and most complex fully excavated Iroquoian village in the Lower Great Lakes.

My focus on ancestral Huron-Wendat settlement in the Toronto area has now expanded to encompass the Lower Great Lakes region with a particular focus on the relationship between warfare, aggregation, patterns of local and interregional interaction and the formation of the Huron and Iroquois confederacies.

I interested in the development of organizational complexity in Eastern North America and the emergence of corporate vs. hierarchical power structures. I also teach and conduct research on issues related to the archaeology of warfare, heritage (local and global), public archaeology and cultural resource management.

I have accepted the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, commencing January 2013.

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