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.



 

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.

Amanda Garrison graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2008 with a BA in Anthropology with a Concentration in Archaeology. She has conducted research in the Bolivian altiplano at the site of Khonkho Wankane and various Chumash sites along the coast of California. She completed a senior honors thesis entitled *Daily and ritual food production at Khonkho Wankane: A spatial analysis of ground stone as an indication of specialized activity areas*. Her research interests include identity, community, landscape, and settlement patterns in Bolivia.

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.

 

Lauren Kohut is a second year graduate student working in the Peruvian Andes. Her research interests include the effects of social change on identity, the relationship between spatial organization, identity and power, and the role of museums in shaping public interpretations of history and anthropology. She graduated cum laude from Bryn Mawr College in 2005 with an AB in Anthropology with a concentration in Hispanic and Hispanic-American Studies and a minor in Spanish Language and Literature. Her undergraduate honors thesis, Weaving Culture: Burial Textiles from Pachacamac, Peru, examined a collection of previously unstudied coca bags from the Uhle collection at the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining Vanderbilt in 2007 Lauren worked as a contract archaeologist and assisted with a large-scale NAGPRA repatriation project. Lauren has conducted archaeological fieldwork at various sites in Peru, Mexico and the United States.

Beth Koontz
Beth is a second year graduate student.  She graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with degrees in Anthropology and Dramatic Art and then earned a J.D. at Franklin Pierce Law Center.  She served the State of North Carolina for two years as an Assistant District Attorney. Her anthropological experience includes archaeological field and lab seasons in Peru and Italy, ethnographic fieldwork and research in Egypt, and a semester long ethnographic project for the Burch Field Research Seminar (UNC-Chapel Hill) in Manteo, NC.  She has worked for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, the New England Innocence Project, the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology, and completed course work in Art and Antiquities Law with the University of San Diego School of Law in Florence, Italy.  Her current research interests include the role of militarism in state formation and collapse, paleopathology, skeletal trauma, physical manifestations of interpersonal conflict in state level societies (violence), Andean and Peruvian archaeology, bioarchaeology, political violence, and legal anthropology (especially cross-cultural laws concerning transgressions and deviant behaviors).
 

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.

 

Caissa Revilla Minaya
Caissa obtained her B.S. (2002) and Licenciatura (2006) degrees in biological sciences from the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina, in Lima, Peru. In September of 2008 she completed her M.Sc. in Ethnobotany at the University of Kent at Canterbury, U.K. Her field research experience has involved projects dealing with botany, ecology and conservation in the Southeastern Peruvian Amazon. She has also conducted research on the ethnobotany, ecology and conservation of climbing plants used by the Yanesha ethnic group in the Selva Central of Peru. Her major research interests are cognitive and environmental anthropology, ethnobiology of indigenous peoples of the Neotropics, and the ecology and taxonomy of tropical lianas. Caissa is a recipient of a scholarship from the Peruvian branch of the Missouri Botanical Garden (2005-2006) and a P.E.O. International Peace Scholarship (2008-2009).

 

Jacob Sauer

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.





 

Jeff Shenton

Jeff is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 2002 with a BA in English and French. After a three-year stint conducting neuroscience research in Penn’s department of Cognitive Neurology, he joined Vanderbilt’s Anthropology department in the fall of 2006. He is interested in the various intersections of knowledge and landscape, specifically as they apply to environmental values and knowledge/behavior change. He has conducted field research in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, focusing on developmental and intra-group variability in folkbiological and spatial cognition among the Tzotzil Maya. He is now conducting research with Kichwa-speaking groups in the changing cultural and geographic landscape of Amazonian Ecuador. Jeff is a Vanderbilt University Graduate Fellow, a Graduate Scholar at Vanderbilt University’s Center for the Americas, and a Topper Award Recipient from Vanderbilt’s Learning Sciences Institute. He has received research funding from the United States Department of Education’s Foreign Language & Area Studies (FLAS) program, the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt University, as well as Vanderbilt’s Center for Ethics. Jeff also works and teaches at Vanderbilt’s Writing Studio.

 

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Hayley E Smith
Hayley graduated cum laude from the University of Mississippi in 2007 with a BA in anthropology. As an undergraduate, she focused on Maya epigraphy, iconography, and cave use, doing fieldwork with the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project. In 2007, Hayley worked as a Student Conservation Association living history interpretation intern at Scotty's Castle in Death Valley National Park. Before coming to Vanderbilt, she also was also an Interpretation Park Ranger and librarian at Lava Beds National Monument. Hayley's primary research focus is on Mesoamerican linguistics; current interests include Maya epigraphy, sociolinguistic aspects of Nahuatl honorific use, Maya-Nahuatl interactions, Academic English, and dialect leveling in internet communities. Hayley is a member of Lambda Alpha Anthropological Honors Society and the Linguistic Society of America. 
 

Hayley is also the Graduate Website Coordinator, so please use the link above to complain.
 

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Kasia Szremski
South American Archaeology

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Michael Tidwell

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.





 

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Matt Velasco

Matt graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University in 2008 with a BA in Anthropological Sciences and completed a Senior Honors Thesis entitled "Understanding Post-Chavin Mortuary Behavior: A Taphonomic Analysis of Human Remains from Chavin de Huantar, Peru." In addition to fieldwork and laboratory research in Peru, he has participated in archaeological investigations at the Paleolithic site of Chez-Pinaud (Jonzac) in southwest France. His research interests include skeletal morphology, ancient health, the peopling of the New World, and secondary burial in the Andes.

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Jennifer Vogt

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.

 

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Brendan J. M. Weaver
Brendan is an historical anthropologist who examines colonialism in the Americas. He is particularly interested in how European, African, and indigenous peoples have engaged in the processes of transculturation, leading to new power relations and political economies, which continue to have a bearing on contemporary ideas of identity. Brendan graduated from Western Michigan University (WMU) in 2005 with a B.A. (magna cum laude) in Anthropology, specializing in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. While earning his B.A., Brendan worked for three field seasons in Barbados studying both British colonialism and the archaeology of the pre-Columbian peoples of the southeastern Caribbean.  In 2008, he received an M.A. in Anthropology with a certificate in Ethnohistory, also from WMU. His master’s thesis titled, Ferro Ingenio: An Archaeological and Ethnohistorical View of Labor and Empire in Colonial Porco and Potosí (DOWNLOAD), concerns two seasons of archaeological fieldwork and ethnohistorical investigation at an early colonial silver mining and processing site in southern Andean Bolivia.  Currently, Brendan is continuing to conduct historical archaeology in the Andes and remains interested in public anthropology and issues concerning labor and power. When Brendan is not researching he can often be found playing his mandolin (MUSIC WEBSITE).
 

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 Anna Catesby Yant
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.

 

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Jennifer Zovar

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.
 

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Jamie Zuehl
After graduating summa cum laude with a B.A. in Anthropology/Sociology and Spanish from Centre College in 2006, Jamie Zuehl spent a year as a volunteer English teacher at Yachana Technical High School for ecotourism and sustainable development in the rain forest of Napo Province, Ecuador. Her current interests as a Vanderbilt graduate student include cultural and medical anthropology with a focus on eating disorders, body image, and the cultural politics of body size and shape among indigenous populations in the developing world. Jamie plans to continue her work in the Ecuadorian Amazon with the lowland Napo Quichua as well as to begin research in the Guatemalan highlands with the K’iche’ Maya.