Past Events

Stefan Brannan, PhD, RPA, PMP, New South Associates, Inc.

Dr. Brannan currently serves as the Director of Archaeology for New South Associates, Inc., a women-owned small business providing cultural resource management services in the southeastern United States and beyond. In his current role, he serves as the administrative manager for the Archaeology Department as well as the project manager and subject matter expert for several ongoing archaeological projects. He has conducted archaeological surveys, testing, data recovery, public outreach, and consultation with and on behalf of private, state, federal, and tribal agencies. He has evaluated numerous archaeological sites for the NRHP under Section 106 and 110 of the NHPA, as well as multiple state registers. His experience encompasses Precontact period and Indigenous residential, monumental, ritual, and mortuary sites; as well as historic domestic, urban, military, and funerary sites. He has conducted projects on behalf of and in consultation with numerous state and federal agencies, including: several state Departments of Transportation, the University of Georgia, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and Georgia Power Company. His active research interests include organizationally complex middle range societies, anthropological and archaeological theory, settlement archaeology, regional survey, and the applications of
project management.

Project management is an extremely important but critically underused body of knowledge in archaeology. Many of the activities that archaeologists engage in fit the definition of a project, but many of us were never introduced to effective project management methods, instead learning through trial and error. The goal of this seminar is to provide an overview of basic project management as an effective tool that can be employed by attendees, including students (e.g., thesis or dissertation objectives, class and independent projects, and publications), private and public sector professionals (e.g., fieldwork, reporting, grant writing, and consultation), and academics (e.g., specific service obligations, publications, student mentorship, and research). Participants should come away with the ability to clarify the role of scope, schedule, and budget in their own projects; identify what makes a project successful; and recognize common pitfalls that contribute to project failure.

1. Define project management and its basic approaches
2. Describe the role of scope, schedule, and budget to individual projects
3. Identify the parameters of project success
4. Outline how to prepare for and avoid common project management pitfalls

Geri Knight-Iske, RPA

Ms. Knight-Iske is an archaeologist and cultural resources specialist at Stell, with over 13 years of professional experience in the field of cultural resources and archaeology. She has performed Phase I-, II-, and III-level archaeological investigations/surveys as Field Director, Crew Chief and Artifact Lead and has performed field and laboratory work on multiple sites of proposed land development areas throughout Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., and West Virginia. She also has experience using ArcGIS for cultural resources, natural resources, and archaeological purposes. Ms. Knight-Iske has worked for and/or collaborated with the Armed Forces Retirement Home, Department o Homeland Security, District of Columbia Historic Preservation Office, General Service Administration, Maryland Historical Trust, West Virginia SHPO, Maryland State Highway Administration, National Park Service, Naval Support Facility at Indian Head, Nebraska State Historical Society, New Jersey State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), Office of Historic Alexandria, Office of Historic Preservation of Arlington County, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), University of Nebraska State Museum, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Washington State Department of Archaeology & Historic Preservation, multiple Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, and national, state, and local avocational and professional organizations.

Urban Archaeology, or archaeology within a highly developed city, presents a number of unique challenges compared to archaeology that happens in open, presently rural areas. Although urban archaeology adds additional requirements for safety and logistic issues, it also presents archaeologists with a large amount of useful information in the form of historical maps, photographs, census data, newspaper articles, etc. that help create a picture of who was living within a project area and when. Historic maps in particular can be used for GIS analysis to determine how much the landscape has changed over time. This can help in decisions about the appropriate survey type to determine if cultural materials are present within a project area. This presentation will focus on the Barry Farm neighborhood in Washington, D.C. as a case study.

1. Discuss how urban archaeology is conducted
2. Bring to light underutilized GIS analyses for use in CRM archaeology
3. Describe how different kinds of historical documents can help build a better site history

Soren Frykholm, University of Michigan

While intermediate levels of social organization—above the household, but below the entire city or polity—are notoriously difficult to pinpoint in archaeological contexts, they nevertheless represent a crucial frontier for archaeological theory building.  Ethnographic research demonstrates that informants recognize these intermediate levels, such as the “neighborhood,” and that they consider them important.  Critical to forming social identity, integrated social communities also have high potential for collaboration.  In Mesoamerica, organizational units such as the Mixtec siqui, Aztec calpulli, and Maya tzukub were recognized in social, economic (tribute), and military systems.  But how do we conceptualize, investigate, and identify these ethnohistorically documented social units archaeologically?

Between 2013 and 2017, archaeologists used GPS units to map Cerro Amole, a Postclassic (AD 800-1521) urban center in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico.  In addition to thousands of terraces, more than 750 structures were recorded along with ancient roads, platforms, patios, and surface artifacts.  In this lecture, I will discuss three GIS-based methods of neighborhood reconstruction at Cerro Amole, including Kernel Density (KD), Least Cost Analysis (LCA), and watersheds.  Rather than prioritizing a single model for its ability to shed light on ancient social organization, I argue that the interpretive ability of these methods is enhanced when considered together. 

The Student Affairs Lecture Series in Archaeology (SALSA) provides an opportunity to hear student members present on their current research as well as a space to discuss and connect with other students.

Katherine Miller Wolf, PhD, RPA, University of West Florida

Dr. Miller Wolf is a bioarchaeologist and UWF Assistant Professor of Anthropology. She specializes in the study of skeletal remains from archaeological sites to answer cultural questions about the past and has extensive experience with conservation and curation of collections at U.S. and Latin American institutions. She was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Honduras (2022) for ongoing research of the largest collection of ancient Maya human skeletal remains yet recovered in Mesoamerica at Copan, Honduras and to teach bioarchaeological field and laboratory methods to students from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras. She was awarded the Conservation and Heritage Management Award (2020) by the Archaeological Institute of America for her decades long conservation project in Honduras and other sites in Latin America. She has also conducted research on skeletal samples from sites in North Africa, Mississippian and Woodland sites in the Lower Illinois River Valley, and historic sites within Florida and Belize.

Carolyn Freiwald, PhD, University of Mississippi

Dr. Carolyn Freiwald earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and focuses on animal use, migration, and diet in Mesoamerica. She is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of Mississippi. Her specialty is biogeochemistry using the chemical composition of osseous remains to reconstruct behaviors in the past. She is also interested in the conservation and care of anthropological materials, and works with museum collections in Wisconsin, Mississippi, and Latin America.

The human skeletal remains curated within archaeological and museum collections belong to those who created the cultures that we seek to understand as archaeologists. Human and faunal remains recovered from archaeological excavations provide a wealth of information about past cultures, but also require the greatest care. The recovery, cleaning, and curation of bone often present one of the great challenges for archaeological projects, as an osteologist may not be on site. What is the best way to transport fragile materials to labs or to export them? How should they be stored until they can be analyzed, or over the long term? Should they be cleaned? Field labs, museums, and universities in remote locations are often only periodically monitored, can have extreme humidity or heat, be infested by insects or animals, lack financial support for collection maintenance, and/or be at risk due to natural disasters like earthquakes or hurricanes. This seminar will describe techniques that osteologists have employed to address these problems as they have worked to curate and house skeletal collections from prehistory through the contemporary era in various sites. The examples will focus on Central America and the ethical and cultural considerations of modern populations.

1. Review best practices for excavation, transport, sampling, and cleaning human skeletal remains drawing from real world examples
2. Describe best practices for long-term conservation and curation of skeletal remains drawing from real world examples
3. Discuss the importance of long-term conservation strategies for collections and our
   ethical obligations as archaeologists

Terry Ozbun, MA, RPA

Terry Lee Ozbun, AINW Senior Archaeologist, studied lithic technology under Dr. Jeffrey
Flenniken and was awarded the Crabtree Memorial Scholarship in Lithic Technology during graduate studies at Washington State University. Terry has published articles and taught classes in lithic technological studies for over 30 years.

Meghan Johnson, MA, RPA

Meghan Johnson is a flintknapper and lithic analyst at AINW. Meghan has taught classes on lithic technological studies for seven years. Meghan’s research aims to identify lithic reduction strategies employed in the Pacific Northwest through technological analysis and experimental replication. Her current research interest focuses on cobble chopper production and use.

Kelley Prince Martinez, MS, RPA

Kelley Prince Martinez is a lithic specialist in technological ground stone analyses in the
Pacific Northwest. Martinez is experienced in conducting macroscopic and microscopic ground stone analyses, combined with experimental replication and use wear studies, to understand raw material selection, ground stone tool manufacture, use, and recycling strategies.

Nick Hlatky, MA, RPA

Nicholas Hlatky has studied lithic technology in the U.S. Southwest, Micronesia, and the
U.S. Pacific Northwest. Nicholas has examined a diverse range of lithic assemblages across these regions, including Clovis, Folsom, and early Archaic period assemblages. He focuses on understanding technological organization through debitage assemblages.

This seminar will provide insight into stone tool production and lithic attribute analysis methods. It will be organized around specific flake attributes and their interpretive power for understanding the processes and techniques used by ancient (and modern) people to make and use stone tools. The course will cover key concepts in interpreting past lithic technological behavior and aims to enhance participants' skills in identification and description of diagnostic lithic artifact attributes.

Key attributes such as remnant ventral surfaces and the characteristics of platforms, compression rings, and radial striations are qualitative more than quantitative and therefore better “read” than measured. Diagnostic attributes vary by technology and their identification allows for reconstruction or modeling of reduction sequences. Reduction sequences (aka chaîne opératoire) represent patterns of learned human behavior and can be evaluated for accuracy through experimental replication. Reading ancient artifacts allows us to discover technologies from the clues left by ancient practitioners of those technologies.

This course is designed for professional archaeologists, students of archaeology, and non-professionals interested in lithic technological analysis.

1. Develop skills in recognizing technological attributes of stone tools and technologically diagnostic debitage
2. Enhance ability to differentiate between natural and human-created flakes
3. Connect attributes to specific reduction technologies and the relationships between individual artifacts and the larger technological systems of which they are a part.