Field Museum

Post-Doc, Anthropology

Regenstein Postdoctoral Fellow

Thesis Title: Warfare and Alliance Building during the Belgian early Neolithic, late sixth millennium BC

About

I am currently Regenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and Regenstein Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at University of Illinois at Chicago.  My research focuses on Neolithic Europe and the Holocene in Melanesia.  Theoretically, I am interested in understanding prehistoric human social networks, exchange, and factors that impact the propensity for violence in prehistory.

My dissertation (University of Illinois at Chicago 2010) research focused on analysis of economic interactions between early Neolithic villages of the Linienbandkeramik (LBK) culture (c. 5650-4900 BC) in the Hesbaye region of eastern Belgium in the context of the intense violence that was present in the later stages of the early Neolithic in this region.

My current research focuses on prehistoric social networks on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea.  This work seeks to relate prehistoric patterns of human interaction to the high level of linguistic and cultural diversity that exists on the coast presently.  Additionally, I am exploring the role of environmentally generated risk on the evolution of prehistoric social networks.

Methodologically, I specialize in the chemical and mineralogical analysis of archaeological material culture.  I have worked at the Field Museum Elemental Analysis Facility (EAF) since 2005, and served as interim laboratory manager during the spring of 2010.  I have extensive experience with ICP-MS, XRF, SEM-EDS and petrographic analysis of ceramics and obsidian.  In addition to my primary research in Europe and Papua New Guinea, I am involved in projects analyzing ceramics from middle-Horizon to Inka contexts in Peru, obsidian from early dynastic Kish, obsidian from Mayan sites in the Belize River valley, and pilot projects examining the potential to source fluorite, pyrite, and oolithic hematite recovered from Paleolithic and Neolithic sites in northwestern Europe.

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