Biography
My interest in anthropology started as an undergraduate at Florida State University (BA, 2005). Through this program I took a variety of fascinating classes, spent a semester scuba diving and learning underwater archaeology field methods, conducted osteological research on the well-known Windover archaeological site from Florida, travelled to Hungary to participate in an international and interdisciplinary archaeological field school, and conducted my own research project with the help of geochemists at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. It was a wonderfully rich and diverse experience that gave me the background and tools needed for graduate school at The Ohio State University (MA, 2007; PhD, 2011) and a career in academia. I am currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Quinnipiac University and still collaborating with several colleagues that I met through FSU!
As an anthropological archaeologist, I study the dynamics between subsistence strategy, mobility and social organization in Europe's prehistoric agricultural communities. I am interested in how early farming tribal societies used and defined their landscape from both an economic and cultural perspective, and in turn, how this reflects social organization and development through time. Methodologically, I have expertise in testing models about prehistoric human behavior using both bioarchaeological and biogeochemical approaches to excavated archaeological material. I have worked in Eastern Hungary for many years with the Körös Regional Archaeological Project (KRAP) and am excited to start research with the Bronze Age Körös Off-tell Archaeology (BAKOTA) Project.