I am an archaeologist with specialties in the Archaic and Woodland periods of the American Southeast, technological change, and community patterning. I spent most of the 1990s conducting field research in the middle Savannah River valley of Georgia and South Carolina. Since arriving in Florida in 1998, I have spent most summers in the middle St. Johns River valley of northeast Florida, where field schools have been directed toward the study of the region’s oldest shell mounds and associated sites. In 2009 I launched the Lower Suwannee Archaeological Survey on the northern Gulf coast of Florida to investigate a record of maritime living that continues to be diminished by rising seas. Relating the experiences of indigenous coastal dwellers over the past 4000 years to contemporary challenges of sea-level rise is among the project’s chief goals.
Archaeology to me is a unique blend of science and humanities. A systematic, empirical approach to research is necessary to wrest information from the faint residues of ancient times, but it takes imagination and a deep understanding of cultural variation to render this information relevant. I am committed to strengthening the integration of archaeology and anthropology, as I view the former as long-term ethnography and draw inspiration from theory that enables me to explore the relationship between the structural components of culture and the real human experiences that reproduce and transform structure.