Amy Kowal

Biography

Hailing from Buffalo, New York, Amy Kowal, Ph.D. attended the University of Buffalo and spent a semester as an undergraduate enrolled in courses whose descriptions appealed to her from the course catalog; one among them was Great Sites and Romantic Archaeology. Her major changed, and she spent her junior and senior years in the anthropology department developing an interest in the real story behind human history.

Florida's warmth and multicultural contact brought her to the anthropology department at Florida State University. Here, she explored the history of the Southeastern United States from the Paleoindian period to the present day. Native Americans, minority populations, and contact situations are the subjects she still finds most interesting. American history has always been of interest; now she researches the other side's point of view.

Kowal's research and teaching interests include community and cultural heritage, museum studies, sport and culture, historical archaeology, bioarchaeology, race and ethnicity. Her doctoral dissertation research focused on the exhibition of agency of the African American Population at Snee Farm, South Carolina seen through an analysis of the ceramic assemblage of the farm's main house, outbuildings and slave village. She coauthored The Archaeological Report of the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site with Bennie Keel, a continuation of her dissertation research.

Kowal's primary responsibility is as a professor and adviser to undergraduate students here at Florida State University. Trained as a four-field anthropologist at FSU, she teaches courses in each subdiscipline, emphasizing the cooperative nature of anthropology as a humanistic science.

Academic Career: Ph.D. and M.A. in anthropology from the Florida State University; B.A. in anthropology from the State University of New York at Buffalo

Field of Study – Archaeology, Cultural Anthropology, and Biological Anthropology with interest in:

• Museum Studies
• Historical Archaeology
• Sport and Culture
• Cultural Heritage and Community Studies
• African American Archaeology
• Race and Ethnicity
• FSU International Programs Study Abroad