Idaho State University

Faculty Member, Anthropology

Assistant Professor and Research Scientist

School of Arts & Letters

About

My pursuits in anthropological archaeology involve long standing concerns with material culture and technology as social facts, while contributing to a new integration of physical methods and social theory in the study of the human past. I received my PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2007. As an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Idaho State University, I teach Archaeological Method and Theory, Material Culture Analysis, Old World Archaeology, and Peoples and Cultures of the Old World. As a Research Scientist at the Center for Archaeology, Materials and Applied Spectroscopy, I supervise the SEM-EDS and engage in research with liquid and laser ablation ICP-MS.

My interests center on material culture, specifically the ways in which social interactions in the past were materialized through objects and practices of production, circulation, consumption, and recycling. I have conducted most of my research on early metallurgy in the Caucasus and Eurasian steppes, examining how new materials and associated technologies were redefined as they were incorporated into local practice and what this may tell archaeologists about material culture, technology, and ancient value systems. Since 2009 I have directed  the South Caucasus Archaeometallurgy Project, a collaboration with my colleagues in the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Dr. Khachatur Meliksetian (Institute of Geological Sciences) and Drs. Aram Gevorkyan and Arsen Bobobokhyan (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography). We will soon launch the Lori Project, which will employ insights from our previous research in an investigation of complex Bronze Age networks in the ore rich Lori region of northern Armenia.

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