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I am an anthropological archaeologist who is interested understanding human-environment interactions with a particular focus on how human behaviors and local ecologies influence inequality, dietary change, territoriality, cooperation, and related phenomena. I teach courses on archaeology, sustainability, using statistics to understand human behavior, climate change, and world prehistory and am the advisor to the �Ӱ�Pro University Anthropology Society. For my research, I work in the Central Andes, particularly Perú, and western North America where I apply multiple methods to ethnographic, palaeoecological, and archaeological data. I particularly enjoy working with students across these contexts as they investigate their own questions and interests - especially when we get to combine data, computation, and the past. Related to these interdisciplinary skills, I also teach courses in Data Science, Environmental Studies, and that count towards Museum Studies.

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My Ongoing Projects with Student Opportunities:

1) Human-environment Interactions, Egalitarianism, and Inequality in western North America and the Central Andes

We are exploring how local environments, and variation and change within them, impacts both the trajectory of inequality and inequality’s interaction with other behaviors using ethnographic records, agent-based model simulation, approximate bayesian computation, machine learning, and archaeological household, dietary, and population data. Centered in western North America, we are exploring in particular how climate and population change incentivized adoption of agriculture and its consequences for population growth and the emergence and exacerbation of inequality. 

2) Climate Change, Intensification, and Complexity

We are also exploring how human subsistence economic decisions in response to climate change have altered social organizations, interacted with sociopolitical complexity, and influenced peace and violence. Employing machine learning, paleo-environmental reconstruction, population density estimates, dietary isotope values spanning the past 7,000 years, osteological markers of stress and trauma, and fieldwork we are looking at both coastal and highland patterns of human-environment interactions in the Central Andes.

Ongoing and Recent Grants:

Submitted- National Science Foundation, SAR. “RUI: Salvage archaeolgy and evaluating everyday subsistence: Addressing critical gaps in looted site recovery methods and their contribution to core research”. Kurt M. Wilson (PI), Weston C. McCool (Co-PI), Joan Coltrain (Senior Personnel), Daniel A. Contreras (Senior Personnel), Augusto Bazan Perez (Senior Personnel). ($174,000)

2024-26 Research Incentive Seed Grant Program. University of Utah, Vice President for Research. “Isotopes, Salvage Archaeology, and Complexity (ISAC): Exploring the Human-Environment Interactions of Everyday People During the Rise and Fall of Complex Civilizations on Peru’s North Coast”. Co-PIs: Kurt M. Wilson, Weston C. McCool, Joan Brenner Coltrain

2022-24 National Science Foundation SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (NSF-SMA #2203767). National Science Foundation, Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE). “Socioecological System Dynamics and the Emergence of Inequality: Evaluating the Impacts of Climate Change, Demography, and Privatization”. Kurt M. Wilson (PI), Simon C. Brewer (Co-PI)

Educational Philosophy: Everything has a purpose, a question, a why. And exploring questions drives my teaching, with the foundation of my educational philosophy based on deeply engaged, learner-focused teaching that invites students of all backgrounds to experiment, invest effort, and think critically with the expectation of participatory learning as the norm. My major goals are 1) to prepare students to be analytically savvy, scientifically engaged global citizens and 2) to help students learn transferable skills that benefit them across any future they pursue. To meet my philosophy, my teaching style uses structured, hands on and small group discussion in problem-oriented approaches through student to student, content, and instructor interactions to create safe, inclusive, and accessible learning environments, informed by knowing: i) Learning is all about critical thinking, ii) Learning requires connecting theory, practice, and experience, iii) Learning requires safety to challenge and be challenged all while being accepted as an individual, iv) Learning should promote resiliency, and v) Learning should fun (if hard) work.

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