Current graduate student advisees
Lauren Kohut is an archaeologist with research interests in 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 BA 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.
Brendan Weaver 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. in Anthropology, specializing in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. While earning his undergraduate degree, 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, 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.
Current undergraduate honors advisee
Ronald Yim is a junior anthropology major with a variety of interests in the anthropology of space and place, landscape, and ceramic analysis in archaeology. His honors thesis presents contextual evidence of ceramics in domestic and ceremonial/ritual contexts at the terminal prehispanic and early colonial site of Malata (southern highland Peru) to investigate continuity and transformation of domestic and ritual practices during the transition from indigenous to colonial rule in the Andean highlands.
Past Undergraduate Honors Advisees
Kathryn DeTore (Vanderbilt ‘09) Kathryn’s research interests center on everyday practices in domestic contexts, as well as the conceptualization of place, large and small. Kathryn plans to pursue further education in archaeology after graduating in the spring of 2009. During the summer of 2008, through the support of a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduate grant (REU), Kathryn gained her first field season of excavation working in the Colca Valley of Peru, which allowed her to apply first hand her interest in household archaeology. She is currently working on an honors thesis based on that fieldwork, exploring issues of household economy and colonialism.
Travis Williams (Vanderbilt ‘09) Travis’s research interests revolve around issues of colonialism and post-colonialism in historic, indigenous contexts. Travis is especially interested in the transformation and reconstruction of native identities in a colonial framework. His field experiences include one field season at the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation field school in Connecticut, as well as two field seasons in the Colca Valley, Peru. Travis is currently working on an honors thesis based on research he conducted with Professor Wernke this past summer in the Colca Valley. His thesis is based on excavations at an Inka administrative center at the site of Malata, and explores the effects of both the Inka and colonial conquests on the relationship between space and identity of those who inhabited the site. Travis plans to continue his research interests in graduate school, which he will begin in fall, 2009.