Recent Alumni

Peiyu Chen

Peiyu Chen is interested in investigating early social complexity by studying subsistence economy, craft production, and exchange networks in archaeological contexts. Her goal is to reveal how the lifestyle diachronic change in individual, household, and community life from a bottom-up perspective. After spending the first-half of her career on Neolithic cultures in Taiwan, Peiyu now focuses on the Late Preceramic to Initial Period on the north coast of Peru. She conducted the excavation project in Huaca Negra (5000-3200 BP), Viru Valley, Peru, in 2015-16 for her dissertation research. Long-term occupation in this early fishing community yields evidence of different socioeconomic elements, which will help to examine the evolution of social complexity, enrich our knowledge of early Andean culture, and provide worldwide comparative case study.

Chuen Yan Ng

Chuenyan Ng’s dissertation research will investigate strategies of multi-resource pastoralism used by late prehistoric steppe communities at the Bronze Age settlement of Stepnoye (2100-1500 BC) located in the Southeastern Urals region, Russia. This project will undertake a systematic archaeobotanical and phytogeographical study of subsistence patterns among late prehistoric pastoralist communities during the Middle Bronze Age of north central Eurasia. It will contribute to regional studies of the Sintashta culture and also provide an important comparative case study for understanding key transitions among sedentary pastoralist societies with multi-resource subsistence economies.

Igor Chechushkov

Igor Chechushkov is interested in the development of the early complex societies in Bronze Age Eurasia (2000-1700 BC). His ongoing project evaluates ways of social-political organization of the so-called "Country of Towns" in the southern Urals, Russia (the Sintashta-Petrovka archaeological culture). Specifically, the project seeks the missing part of society: people who substantially contributed to the production of vital resources and building of the fortified settlements, but who had very simple life-style, which is almost invisible archaeologically. To do that, Igor uses the methodology of local-scale survey and excavation, as well as geochemistry and soil morphology.