Archaeology

Courtney Besaw

Courtney Besaw is a historical archaeologist who focuses on Latin American archaeology.

She primarily works on the coast of Belize studying the colonial period. She is interested in studying ethnogenesis (the continuation or emergence of new identities) and assimilation of immigrant peoples to northern Belize following the Caste War of Yucatan. Her interests also include “illegal” settlements, household archaeology, and identity.

 

Degrees and Education

BS in Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
BS in Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

Awards

2017-2018 Graduate Fellowship in Latin American Archaeology
2019-2020 Graduate Fellowship in Latin American Archaeology

Juan Carlos Vargas

Juan Carlos Vargas is interested in the relationship between intensive agricultural production and the emergence of leadership in the South American lowlands. To pursue this issue he is carrying out a systematic regional settlement study of some 250 sq km in the municipality of Yopal in the Llanos of Casanare (Colombia) in order to compare the developmental trajectories of these early complex societies with those from the Llanos of Barinas (Venezuela). His aim is to advance understanding of just how these trajectories differed from each other, and how these differences emerged in two parts of the same broad environmental zone in the Orinoco basin. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation and will collaborate with the local Cataruben Foundation to help further its aims of environmental and heritage management and research. The project's results will comprise a heritage inventory for the survey area, which will aid in protecting these cultural resources. PhD 2017!

Degrees and Education

PhD - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2017)

Chao Zhao

My research focuses on transitions in human behavior from the Upper Paleolithic to the Neolithic in North China and is tied to broader research questions about how people respond to the pronounced environment change during this time and what drives people in certain regions towards food production and plant/animal domestication. I focus on the combination of lithic and spatial analyses to explore issues like human mobility, land use strategy, subsistence intensification and cultural transmission.

Degrees and Education

MA - Archaeology - Peking University, Beijing, China (2015)
BA - Archaeology - Jilin University, Changchun, China (2010)

Junyang Cao

My name is Junyang Cao (曹俊阳). I come from Henan, China, and I received my Bachelor’s degrees in Archaeology at Zhengzhou University in 2015. I am interested in hunter-gatherer and environment interactions and the ways in which hunter-gatherers adapt to paleoenvironmental fluctuations in East Asia, with a focus on the subsistence shifts of hunter-gatherers in arid and semi-arid North China during Upper Paleolithic period. I have a passion for lithic micro wear analysis in revealing the function of lithic tools and the evolution of human behavior. And I am also interested in conducting experiments such as flint knapping and plant harvesting to experience hunting-gathering life! Currently I am working with Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ningxia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology in Pigeon Mountain, Ningxia, with a focus on how the evolution of stone toolkits reflect the hunter-gatherer behavior such as mobility and settlement patterns.

Degrees and Education

MA - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2018)
BA - Archaeology - Zhengzhou University, China (2015)

Peter Daniel Ellis

Peter Ellis is interested in the interaction between Russian merchants and the Natives of southwest Alaska in the 18th and 19th centuries. More specifically, he is interested in the ways the Native people organized themselves on the landscape and within communities as they negotiated the new forces created by a Russian presence.  

Degrees and Education

BA - Anthropology - Wake Forest University (2014)

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)

Ryan Smith

Ryan is interested in studying the organization and management of large-scale social and economic interaction networks in non-state societies and how these networks relate to social identity, conflict, subsistence, and shifts in political centralization. His dissertation research will explore a complex system of resource exchange and ritual interaction which connected highlands and lower-lying eastern valleys in the central Andes during late prehispanic periods (AD 1000-1530). One of the major goals of this research is to understand the development of these interaction networks in the Late Intermediate Period, a time marked by political segmentation and internecine conflict ushered by the fall of the Wari and Tiwanaku states around AD 1000 and lasting until the expansion of the Inca empire in the fifteenth century.

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)