Archaeology

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)

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)

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.