Recent Alumni

Jennifer Farquhar

Jennifer Farquhar studies the evolution of pastoralism in the desert-steppe region of Mongolia. Specifically, her research focuses on changing mobility patterns among foragers and early herders during the Neolithic-Bronze Age Transition (ca. 4500 years ago) to understand the development of social complexity and inequality among later nomadic pastoralists. Her research draws from on-going archaeological and geoarchaeological work carried out at the Ikh Nart Nature Reserve, where she has worked since 2013. Her dissertation research represents the culmination of over 25 years of academic interest and technical experience in prehistoric human-environment interactions, land-use strategies, and technology. Since 1990, she has worked as an archaeologist designing and directing studies for cultural resource management projects throughout California and the Great Basin. During her tenure in resource management, she taught classes in prehistoric lithic technology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and served on the Executive Board of the Society for California Archaeology as Northern Vice President (2008-2010) and President (2010-2013). She is an owner and Principal Archaeologist at Albion Environmental. Inc. in Santa Cruz, California.  She also serves as a researcher for NOMAD Science Mongolia, an international interdisciplinary research organization founded by fellow Pitt graduate student, Dr. Julia Clark.

Publications

Rosen, A, T. Hart, J. Farquhar, J. Schneider, and T. Yadmaa. 2019. Holocene Vegetation Cycles, Land-use, and Human Adaptations to Desertification in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany (2019) https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-018-0710-y.  

Hildebrandt, W., J.M. Farquhar, and M. Hylkema. 2009. Archaeology and History in Año Nuevo State Park. California Department of Parks and Recreation Publications in Cultural Heritage, No. 26. 

Jurich, D.M., J.M. Farquhar, and M.E. Basgall. 2000. Excavations at CA-MNO-680: A Western Stemmed Deposit in the Eastern Sierra. Current Research in the Pleistocene Vol. 17 (2000).

Degrees and Education

MA - Anthropology - California State University, Sacramento (2003)
BA - Anthropology - University of California, Santa Cruz (1989)

Awards

2020 - University of Pittsburgh Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences- Social Science Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship
2019 - National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant
2019 - American Center for Mongolian Studies Research Scholarship
2019 - Rust Family Foundation Archaeology Grant Program
2016 - Melikian Advisory Board Fellowship
2016 - Critical Language Institute Friends Scholarship
2016, 2017, 2018 - University Center for International Studies Travel Grant
2016, 2017 - Predissertation Small Grant Program- Dept. of Anthropology University of Pittsburgh
2015-2019 - National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
2015 - Fulbright Specialist Program (Grantee)
2015 (declined) - University of Pittsburgh Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences- Arts and Sciences Fellowship
2013-2017 - Fulbright Specialist Program (Listed Scholar)

Denis Sharapov

Denis Sharapov is interested in understanding how the development of early complex societies in the grassland steppes of northern Eurasia compared to similar processes in other world regions. His research aims to clear up uncertainties surrounding the demographic and spatial parameters of Middle Bronze Age (MBA) (2100-1700 BC) Sintashta communities of southern Russia. To pursue this matter he is carrying out a multi-scalar investigation of a 40 sq km region that contains one MBA fortified town and its immediate hinterlands. Denis follows up on previous research efforts by Russian archaeologists with systematic shovel probing, surface collection, targeted test-pitting, and geophysical prospection. The project's results will help understand how complex societies emerged in an area that has traditionally been characterized by low demographic densities and high levels of population mobility. PhD 2017!

Degrees and Education

PhD - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2017)

Camilla Sturm

Camilla (Kelsoe) Sturm studies the relationship between economic control and political power in the emergence of complex societies in late Neolithic China. Her research specifically investigates the role that the regulation of access to basic goods, particularly utilitarian pottery, has in the development of social inequality. She uses geochemical techniques to trace changes in pottery distribution networks within, around, and between two walled settlements in the northern Jianghan Plain, Hubei from 3,300 – 2,000 BCE. These findings will be compared to changes in regional settlement patterns documented by fellow graduate student, Dongdong Li, as part of a broader collaborative effort between the Hubei Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Wuhan University, and the University of Pittsburgh to study the evolution of social complexity in communities along the Middle Yangzi River. PhD 2017!

Degrees and Education

PhD - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2017)
AB - Anthropology & Italian - Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY (2010)

Wenjing Wang

Wenjing Wang studies the regional settlement patterns and community structures of early complex societies in late Neolithic China. Her current research focuses on the developmental trajectory of social change in Lingjiatan society (5700-5300 BP) in Chaohu area, Yangzi river, China. Specifically, she is interested in the comparative study of the process leading to social complexity between Lingjiatan society and Hongshan society (in the Northeastern China), and tries to make contribution to understanding the different/similar paths taken by early complex societies in the formation and development of sociopolitical inequality. She uses regional-scale data to reconstruct the scale and nature of human communities; and uses community/household scale data to reconstruct the nature and degree of wealth, prestige, productive and ritual differentiation within local communities. She spent part of her 2012 summer in Kenya excavating sites of Swahili Culture, and part of her 2014 summer in Peru surveying sites in the Leche Valley.

Degrees and Education

PhD - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2018)
BA - Archaeology - Jilin University, China (2011)

Tao Li

Degrees and Education

PhD - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2016)
PhD - Archaeometry - University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China (2010)
MA - Archaeometry - University of Science and Technology of China (2007)
BS - Conservation Science of Cultural Heritage - Northwest University, China (2004)

Dongdong Li

Li Dongdong is interested in relationships between regional settlement patterns, social organization and environment. His current research investigates the process of social complexity in the Jianghan plain of China, and focuses on the emergence of walled towns. Specifically, he uses regional settlement pattern analysis to study social organization at the Taojiahu walled town and its relationship with surrounding areas in the Jianghan plain. In doing so he will further evaluate functions of walled towns and roles played by walled towns in the process of social complexity in the Jianghan plain. His research will provide data for further comparative study on regional settlement patterns, social organization and social complexity. PhD 2016!

Sebastian Fajardo

Sebastian Fajardo is interested in the relationships between well-being, collective action, early community formation and settlement patterns. His current research investigates the nature of the human community in the Sogamoso Valley of the eastern highlands of Colombia. According to Spanish accounts this region provided the environmental context to one of the principal chiefly centers in the northern Muisca area. His study will assess the extent to which a large-scale consolidated regional polity with a major central place emerged. This will make it possible to compare the largest and most impressive chiefly central communities and regional polities of the northern and southern parts of Muisca territory and assess more effectively their degrees of development and the kind of forces that were driving daily interaction during prehispanic and colonial times. PhD 2016!

Patrick Mullins

Patrick Mullins is interested in prehistoric frontiers, coastal-highland interaction, warfare, and fortifications in the Andes. During the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1470 AD), the Chimú Empire had a heavily fortified hinterland that spread from their capital at Chan Chan, on Peru's Pacific coast, to perhaps the upper tributaries of the Moche River. Patrick's research aims at understanding the extent and nature of the fortified Chimú hinterland and the interactions that created the shared frontier between the coastal Chimú, middle/upper valley, and highland settlements. He spent part of summer 2013 surveying Neolithic - Iron Ages sites in Serbia.

John Walden

John Walden is an archaeologist interested in reconstructing ancient political dynamics. His dissertation focuses on examining the agency and political strategies of local village leaders as they transformed into intermediate elites (between commoners and the ruling apical regime), with the rise of the Late Classic (AD 600-900) Maya polity of Lower Dover, Belize. This theme is approached through a comparative focus on three neighborhoods, Tutu Uitz Na, Floral Park and Texas (Barton Ramie). Data is drawn from the intermediate elite centers and a sample of commoner households from each neighborhood. The research focuses on three dimensions of human experience, (1) wealth, wellbeing and status inequalities, (2) economic production and redistribution, (3) and ritual and ceremony. Identification of the ways in which the different neighborhoods and their intermediate elite centers changed following the rise of the polity provides a novel approach to understanding political centralization which is grounded in everyday praxis and relationships between actors on multiple levels of the political hierarchy. His research combines an array of methods including settlement survey, household excavations, excavations of monumental architecture, cave excavations, bioarchaeology, ceramic, lithic and faunal analysis, provenience analysis (p-XRF), dietary and mobility isotopes, archaeo-botany, GIS, epigraphy, radiocarbon (Bayesian modeling), archaeo-astronomy and geo-physics.

Walden has been involved in archaeological fieldwork for over 20 years, having worked in Belize, the UK, Turkey and Peru. He is currently site supervisor at the Maya center of Lower Dover, Belize as part of the Belize Valley Archaeology Reconnaissance (BVAR) project field school. He has mentored and produced research with a number of students, and has taught Introduction to Archaeology and Fantastic Archaeology (pseudo-archaeology, political importance of the past, archaeological theory) as course instructor.

Publications

2020  Walden, John P., Tia B. Watkins, Kyle Shaw-Müller, Claire E. Ebert, Emma Messinger, Rafael A. Guerra, and Jaime J. Awe. "Multiscalar Approaches to Reconstructing Classic Maya Strategies of Ceremonial Inclusion and Exclusion through the Accessibility of Architecture at Lower Dover, Belize". In El paisaje urbano maya: del preclásico al virreinato, edited by Juan Garcia Targa. British Archaeological Reports, Oxford. In Press.

2019  Walden, John P., Claire E. Ebert, Julie A. Hoggarth, Shane Montgomery and Jaime J. Awe. "Modeling Variability in Classic Maya Intermediate Elite Political Strategies through Multivariate Analysis of Settlement Patterns". Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 55:101074.

2017  Walden, John P. and Barbara Voorhies. "Ancient Maya Patolli. In Prehistoric Games of North American Indians: Subarctic to Mesoamerica", edited by Barbara Voorhies, pp.197-218. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

2017  Walden, John P. "Comparative Perspectives on the Cultural Perception and Mediation of Risk and the Collapse of Complex Societies". In Rethinking Comparison in Archaeology, edited by Ana Vale, Joana Alves-Ferreira and Irene Garcia Rovira, pp.157-178. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Degrees and Education

MA - Archaeology – University of Manchester (2011)
BA – Ancient History and Archaeology – University of Manchester (2008)

Awards

Rust Family Foundation Archaeology Grant (2020)
National Science Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (2019)