Upcoming Events

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

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

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

Charles A. Speer, PhD, RPA, Idaho State University, Idaho Museum of Natural History

Dr. Speer is an Associate Professor at Idaho State University and the Curator of Anthropology at the Idaho Museum of Natural History. He has developed several experimental archaeology focused projects, with most centered around hunter-gatherer technology. These include the use of porcelain as a proxy for knappable materials in understanding the chaîne opératoire of fluted projectile points, recreating the damage on bison bone created by organic projectile points, and investigating variables associated with
heat treatment of chert. Dr. Speer has been an avid flintknapper for over 20 years and regularly teaches knapping to students.

Dr. Speer earned his PhD at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His research focuses on geochemical analysis of knappable stone to determine mobility patterns of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. His other research areas focus on interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the Peopling of the Western Hemisphere, lithic technology, ancient craftmanship, and GIS predictive modeling. A cross-cutting critical feature of Dr. Speer’s research is engaging Native American perspectives as they relate to indigenous knowledge of ecological resources and archaeological findings.

Experimental archaeology is a useful approach to investigate phenomena observed in the archaeological record by carrying out controlled experiments to link static artifacts with dynamic human behavior and the environments of the past. A key point of experimental archaeology in making these connections is replicability and possibility. As with anything created by humans, there are multiple pathways to arrive at the same artifact. Experimental archaeology investigates the issue of equifinality by using scientific methods to test those pathways and determine if they are legitimate and practical possibilities. Ideally, given the same material and ecological conditions available in prehistory, archaeologists can gain insight into those parts of the behavioral spectrum of the past which are invisible to us today. The methods presented here and a series of examples illustrate how that unseen fragment of the archaeological record can be approximated to reveal things like energy inputs, material constraints, effects on the human body, and the interconnectedness with and effects on other artifacts.

1. Review the field of experimental archaeology, what it is, how it operates, and how it is
   useful
2. Discuss the importance of experimental archaeology and how it has transformed and
   contributed to important questions in archaeology
3. Describe how to construct an experimental archaeology project and what it would look like with several examples

Alanna Ossa, PhD, RPA, SUNY Oswego, Department of Anthropology

Dr. Ossa has over 22 years of experience in archaeology including 11 years in a Cultural Resource Management setting. Before joining SUNY Oswego as tenure-track faculty, she worked for ACS (Archaeological Consulting Services, Ltd.), the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Comparative Archaeology, the Department of Anthropology at Arizona State University, the Office of Cultural Resource Management at Arizona State University, and the Cultural Resource Management Program at the Gila River Indian Community. To date, she continues to do consulting work through Logan Simpson Design for the Gila River Indian Community. From 2001 to 2008, she worked as an archaeological database consultant for the Cultural Resource Management Program at the Gila River Indian Community. Prior to that, she taught an intensive course in SQL (Structured Query Language) to IT professionals. For the purposes of the course, she wrote a brief SQL Tutorial and introduction. As ACS’ Senior Ceramic Analyst, and lab manager prior to joining the faculty at SUNY Oswego, she analyzed ceramic materials and wrote the reports on ceramic materials from testing, data recovery, and monitoring projects, and was responsible for curation from beginning to end. She has experience with collections from central Arizona, central New Mexico, the Northeast (Iroquois), and several locations in Mexico including the Gulf coast (Veracruz), central Highlands, and the West coast.

This class is designed for both beginners and experienced users of archaeological data or collections focused databases. In this class you will learn how to treat your database creation as a component of research design based on common units in archaeology analysis and collections. You will learn the basic archaeological database and collections database architecture and apply these to relational database design. By the end of the class, you should be able to recognize basic principles of effective database organization and be able to avoid common pitfalls in database organization and curation practice. We will practice and identify guidelines for effective data fields, analysis forms, and practice how to deal with database changes (and analysis changes) using an example database. Participants in this course will be encouraged to come with their own data questions and structures to practice with during the practicum portion.

1. Describe how database creation is an important component of research design in archaeology
2. Identify basic archaeological database architecture using common examples from real-life databases
3. Demonstrate how to apply relational database structures to common archaeological organizational challenges using museum and research project examples
4. Outline strategies to handle database changes by creating flexible data structures as applied to archaeological data with practical examples