Guatemalan archaeologist Tomás José Barrientos finished his studies at Vanderbilt in 2003 and is currently writing his Ph.D. dissertation on the Royal Palace of Cancuen. He started his studies in archaeology at the Universidad Del Valle de Guatemala in 1990, where he received a B.A. and a Licenciatura degree with the Cum Laude award. His field experience includes several excavations in Guatemala, including the site of Kaminaljuyu, where he studied an important hydraulic canal system, the sites of Piedras Negras and La Pasadita, sites on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala and underwater investigations at Lake Atitlán. Tomás has also worked in the U.S. at a Mississippian site in Alabama. Since 1999 he has served as co-director of the Cancuen Archaeological Project, where he is currently working in this important city that controlled the main trade route between the Lowland and Highland Maya regions and has one of the largest palaces built by the Maya. Tomás has dedicated more than 10 years to teaching in Guatemala at the Universidad Del Valle, Popol Vuh Museum and Tourist Guide training at the Technical Institute INTECAP. Tomás has also participated in a number of publications, including the Historia General de Guatemala, one of the most important encyclopaedias in Guatemala. He also worked as associate researcher for the Popol Vuh Museum and was awarded as a Teaching Assistantship at the Universidad de Alcalá in Spain.

Jeremy is a PhD candidate in the Anthropology department at Vanderbilt with a specialization focus in the archaeology of Mesoamerica. Since he graduated from Boston University, he has worked in the United States, England and Europe. In Mesoamerica, he has worked at the Belizean sites of Cuello and La Milpa with Prof. Norman Hammond. He has also worked at several Guatemalan sites including Cancuen with Prof. Arthur Demarest and more recently Holmul with Prof. Francisco Estrada-Belli. For the past three years he has worked as sub-project director at the site of Cival, a small Preclassic city located within the Holmul Region of the northeastern Petén. He is currently conducting dissertation research on issues relating to the rise of cultural complexity, changing Preclassic ideological systems, prehistoric exchange systems and the fall of Preclassic Maya centers. He enjoys long moonlit walks on the beach, romantic candlelit dinners, squirrels, and duct tape. Jeremy is a Capricorn.

Carrie Anne graduated summa cum laude from the University of Tennessee in 1999 with a BA in anthropology and completed an MA in anthropology at the University of Arkansas in 2001. She has conducted bioarchaeological research in Greece, Jordan, Honduras, Guatemala, Bolivia, and the U.S. and served as osteologist for the Cancuen Archaeological Project in Guatemala for three years. Now ABD, Carrie Anne’s dissertation research is focused on the rise of Tiwanaku political authority in the Southern Titicaca Basin of Bolivia during the Late Formative and Middle Horizon periods. Through combining stable isotopic indicators of diet, standard dental analyses, and analysis of phytoliths from human dental calculus, her research is elucidating changing patterns of trade and dietary resource distribution that accompanied the rise of the archaic state.

Rebecca joined Vanderbilt in 2005 after receiving her BA and MA in Anthropology from Northern Illinois University. She is an Andean archaeologist, with current interests in the north-central highlands of Peru. The majority of her field and research experience has involved work in western Sicily, coastal and highland Ancash Peru, Calchaquí Valley northwest Argentina, northwest Belize, and the Midwest US.
 

Katie Caljean

 Michael Callaghan

Vanderbilt University, 1998, magna cum laud, with “High Honors”. Research interests include the integration of economy and political organization in prehistoric civilizations, the acquisition and deployment of social power among prehistoric elites and non-elites, and the application of ceramic analysis to investigate social, religious, economic, and political aspects of prehistoric civilizations. Callaghan is currently the ceramicist for the Vanderbilt Holmul Archaeological Project and employing ceramic analysis to investigate the political and economic transition from Preclassic to Classic period culture in the ancient Maya lowlands. Prior to his work at Holmul, Callaghan served as ceramicist, Lab Director, and Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Cancuen Regional Archaeological Project in the Pasion River Region of Guatemala. Callaghan has authored and co-authored numerous archaeological reports, papers, and publications in both English and Spanish on his work in Mesoamerica. To request publications or research related information please contact michael.g.callaghan@vanderbilt.edu.

Avery Dickins recently completed her doctoral degree in Anthropology and is living in Nashville. She spent 16 months of dissertation research in the Chisec region of Guatemala. Her dissertation explores the interaction of social and cultural capital in development projects in two small Q’eqchi’ Maya communities. In late 2006, Avery also conducted a small study on the security guard industry in Guatemala, and she participates in the Center for Americas work group that seeks to establish social indicators in the context of sustainable forestry certification programs.

Jennifer is working toward a Ph.D. with a concentration in Mesoamerican Archaeology. She is excavating the site of La Sufricaya, in the Petén of Guatemala, for her dissertation research. La Sufricaya is part of the Holmul region, which is the focus of intensive investigation by the Holmul Archaeological Project, directed by Dr. Francisco Estrada-Belli. Evidence from La Sufricaya suggests interaction between the Maya and Teotihuacan, and part of Jenn’s dissertation will focus on the inter-regional interaction between these two cultures. In addition to La Sufricaya, Jenn has worked at the sites of Cuello and La Milpa in Belize, under the direction of Dr. Norman Hammond, and a Roman site in England. She received her B.A. in Archaeology from Boston University and graduated cum laude.

Teresa Franco is a PhD candidate. Her current work focuses on the study of hunter-gatherers, on the Central Andean coast. Before her studies at Vanderbilt, she worked in Brasil with coastal hunter-gatherers (shellmounds), and with historical archaeology in Paraguay (Missiones Jesuiticas). In Brazil, she also worked with archaeological heritage preservation and with contract archaeology. Her primary interests include power, identity, ideology, cultural complexity, sedentism, maritime archaeology, landscape and andean archaeology. She has a BA in Archaeology, a BA in Biological Sciences, and a Master in Antiquity and Middle History.

During the spring of 2004, Randi graduated with honors (cum laude) from the University of New Mexico with a BS in Anthropology and a minor in Biology in addition to a separate BA in Latin American studies and a minor in Philosophy. She joined Vanderbilt University's Department of Anthropology in the Fall of 2004. Her primary research interests include zooarchaeology (the study of animal remains) and the ritual use of camelids (llamas, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuna) by prehistoric cultural groups in the South American Andes region, in particular the Southern Lake Titicaca Basin of Bolivia. She began working in Peru in 2000 and has participated in several archaeological projects including the Moche Origins Project (Dr. Brian Billman), the Beringa Bioarchaeological Project (Dr. Tiffiny Tung), and Proyecto Archaeologico Jach'a Machaca (Dr. John Janusek). While at the University of New Mexico, she was involved in the curation of archaeological materials excavated during the 1970’s Chaco Project. She also assisted Tom Windes, of the National Park Service, with various archaeological surveys and collection of dendrochronology samples at archaeological and historical sites in northern New Mexico, United States, including Aztec and Chaco Canyon. To learn more information about Randi, visit her website: http://www.people.vanderbilt.edu/~randi.r.gladwell/

BA Anthropology 2004, MA Sociology 2006, both from Middle Tennessee State University. She also attended the Universidade do Ceará to further study Portuguese and Brazilian culture. Currently, her focus is cultural anthropology, concentrating on children and environmental issues in the Brazilian Amazon. Her research thus far has focused on the small Amazon town of Gurupá, Pará, Brazil. Dissertation topics are fluctuating.

Danielle is a third year graduate student concentrating on Andean Bioarchaeology. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 2005 with an AB in Anthropology and Hispanic Studies. Her primary research interests include social memory and identity, cultural modification of the body, ancestor worship and mortuary rituals, and community studies. Her dissertation focuses on pre-Inca human remains from the Andahuaylas region in the south-central Peruvian highlands. She has participated in fieldwork in Virginia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.

Jennifer is a graduate student in Andean studies. She graduated with an Honors B.A. from the University of Texas-Arlington in 2004. In Texas she has participated in field research at Texas historical sites, performed CRM work in Tennessee and has conducted research in various parts of north coastal Peru.  Her dissertation research will focus on "the phenomenology of El Nino", an empirical assessment of the physical and social impact of severe El Nino events on ancient cultures of north coastal Peru . Her areas of interest include environmental archaeology, sociopolitical destabilization and devolution, ritual sacrifice, phenomenology, iconography and semiotics.

Molly Morgan is a PhD Candidate with a specialization in Mesoamerican archaeology. She has experience working at the Classic Maya sites of Holmul and Cancuen in Guatemala, as well as Blue Creek in Belize. Her dissertation topic focuses on early social change at the Formative site of Chiquiuitan, on the Pacific coast of Guatemala.

Arik Ohnstad is a PhD candidate whose current work focuses on the study of ancient landscapes, including applications of geographical information systems. He is also interested in Aztec ethnohistory. He has worked in Guatemala, Bolivia, and Belize.

BA Anthropology, BA History Brigham Young University 2003. Interests (subject to change on nearly a daily basis) include Fremont/Anasazi interaction in southern Utah, Fremont settlement strategies and patterns, Inca southern frontier in Chile, Mapuche settlement strategies and ritual practices, applications of agency in archaeology, and applying GIS in archaeological investigation.

Cognitive anthropology, Mexico.

South American Archaeology

Mike Tidwell works in Chiapas, Mexico, in a town populated mainly by speakers of Tzotzil, a Mayan language. His fieldwork consists of traditional ethnography supplemented by cognitive research methods. He is interested in issues of cognition, ethnicity, religion and cultural models about living things. For his dissertation, he is trying to document and understand both how biology education, particularly about evolution, affects various cultural models, as well as how students interpret evolutionary concepts in terms of said models.

John Tomasic is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology with a focus in mesoamerican archaeology, and is currently conducting dissertation research as a member of the Holmul Archaeological Project.

Jennifer earned a B.A. in Anthropology/Sociology & Spanish from Transylvania University (Lexington, KY) in 2004. Afterwards, she spent a few years teaching English in Japan and traveling about until her feet took her back to academics. Having dipped into issues of indigenous rights in Bolivia during her undergraduate years, Jennifer has found herself ready to dive into research in ethnodevelopment in Latin American indigenous communities.

Anna Catesby Yant is currently living and working in Memphis, TN. Her current research focuses on a Mayan site in the Puuc region of Mexico called Kiuic. She and her collegues are excavating the site in order to create a better understanding of the chronology of the area and are doing comparative research with several sites within the Labna-Kiuic area.

Jennifer graduated summa cum laude from Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA) in 1999 and worked as a CRM archaeologist and teacher of English as a Second Language before coming to Vanderbilt in 2003. She has worked with the Proyecto Jach’a Machaca in Bolivia since 2004 and is currently writing her dissertation based on her excavations at the sites of Pukara de Khonkho and Chaucha de Khula Marka. She is particularly interested in community interaction and identity in the late prehispanic and early Hispanic periods.