Appalachian State University

Faculty Member, Anthropology

Professor

Arts and Sciences

About

Started digging as a teenager with the Gilcreast Museum and Greg Perino.  I received BAs in Anthropology with honors and a thesis on the Aleutian Islands and in Social Work specializing in juvenile deliquents from University of Arkansas in 1975.  Sat in on classes with Michael Schiffer senior year.  Went to field school at Grasshopper in 1975 and on to Harvard for Phd that fall thinking I would specialize in Arctic prehistory and use the Old Norse I had studied as an undergrad.  Instead worked 2 summers in Serbia and Croatia with Ruth Tringham.  I was in charge of the lab and  developed the coding system for the work at Selevac, Serbia. After failing the Old Church Slovonic reading exam and deciding on a New World thesis, I went to work for the State of North Carolina's archaeology branch along with many grads of the MA program at U Arkansas.  Decided on a thesis on shell seasonality from 19 coastal sites in Onslow Ct. NC.  Back to Boston for 2 years to teach and write dissertation and to be the keeper of the Center for Archaeological Research, under the direction of Jonathon Ericson.  He signed my PhD as advisor and says that I was the first graduate in the USA in archaeological science.  Mine definitely was the first entirely computer generated dissertation submitted at Harvard, 1982.  (After conquering succesive page numbering when files maxed out at 20 pages, I  tore  the printer holes off the pages and took it to the binder. Had to make sure the printer had descending y and p and g.) Topic was shell use and shell seasonality.  Left Cambridge for Cincinnati and the Charles Phelps Taft postdoc at Cincinnati. arrived there with new hobby of the freshwater shell button industry.  1983 I was hired by Appalachian State University where I have been since then with two semesters of teaching at Universidad de las Americas in Cholula, Mexico. 1988-1994 excavated at Dogan Point, NY, oldest shell heap on Atlantic of US.  1989-1996 wrote, edited about gender.  1993 published history of the freshwater shell button industry in US.  1996 marked essentially the end of my research interests in things molluscan and since 1990 I have been developing ideas about sacred landscape from 8000 to 4000 years ago in southern Ohio valley.  I have been relying on Mesoamerican cultures for sources of hypotheses, data, interpretations of things Archaic in the US.  Among my research interests now are ritual use of rockshelters and caves, making sacred landscape, indicator plants.  I am spending a goodly amount of time in northern Guerrero, Mexico, Taxco specifically.