As an archaeological anthropologist I am broadly interested in the ways societies shaped, and were shaped by, the landscapes they inhabited. My research is primarily focused on eastern North America, where I use methods that include geophysics, geoarchaeology, and chronological modeling to examine the interconnectedness of pre-Contact Native American landscape modification within the context of social, economic, and political institutions. I have conducted research on Late Archaic period (ca. 3000-1000 B.C.) hunter-gatherers in the Lower Mississippi Valley, Middle Woodland era (200 B.C.-A.D. 500) interaction and ceremonialism in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, as well as on early forms of urbanism at the Mississippian site of Cahokia (ca. A.D. 1050-1350) outside present-day St. Louis, Missouri and in the highland regions of Uzbekistan. My current research examines long-term human/landscape interaction on the Pinson Mounds landscape and the shifting nature of landscape use within the urban context of Cahokia. At CSU, I serve as founder and director of the CRAG (Center for Research in Archaeogeophysics and Geoarchaeology).

Research

Organization and historical trajectories of small-scale societies; Monumentality; Landscapes; Memory and archaeology; Ritual & religion; Human-environment interaction; Archaeology of Eastern North America; Social complexity; Social change; Social theory; Geoarchaeology; Remote sensing; Bayesian chronological modeling