Dr. TR Kidder & the Geoarchaeology Lab Group:

The Geoarchaeology lab group works on issues related to studies of human and environmental processes involved in site formation, the sedimentary context of archaeological remains, soils and sediments relevant to archaeology, the relationship between past settlement and landscape evolution, paleoclimatic reconstruction, and human impacts on the environment. These studies focus on how humans interacted with and were shaped by (and in turn shaped) landscapes. Research questions of this sort inevitably lead to broader questions about how landscapes are socially constructed and ritualized. At present much of our work is exploring how complex hunter gatherers in the lower Mississippi Valley manipulated landscapes through social processes inscribed on the land through mound and earthwork construction.  Guided in part by concepts of historical ecology, we are also pursuing issues of long-term landscape transformation following on the idea as humans may shape the landscape it too shapes us. New work in China is considering how agricultural modifications over very long periods, coupled with significant environmental and climatic change (especially droughts and floods), may have influenced the course of dynastic history.

Dr. Michael Frachetti & the SAIE Lab Group:

The Spatial Analysis, Interpretation, & Exploration research group applies GIS and other digital - spatial tools to analyze the nature and formation of human landscapes in the past and now. Our projects range from modeling medieval Islamic soundscapes in North Africa to reconstructing the ecology and mobility patterns of Bronze Age pastoralists in the grasslands and moutains of Central Asia. In addition to archaeological studies, the SAIE group is also engaged in new research pertaining to global climate change in southeast Asia, where we are studying human response to environmental shifts resulting from the Indian Ocean tsunami. The guiding principle behind our approach in all these regions is that landscapes reflect the cumulative history of regional societies and reflect how those societies change through time; that is essential to understanding change in both the planet and the way we interact with it. However, short-term changes must fit within the long-term trends that we document both archaeologically and geophysically. At the SAIE lab, we are working to spatially analyze human and environmental phenomena as multi-scalar components of a complex matrix of conditions throughout time. This approach enables us to visualize and analyze a more comprehensive array of factors that played a role in the organization and interactions of human socieities.

Dr. Gayle Fritz and the paleoethnobotany Group:

The Paleoethnobotany research group investigates human plant use and the way it shaped cultural landscapes in the past and today across the globe. This research ranges from the the use of wild plants as food among pre-agriculturalists to their myraid transformations into a host of domesticated crops in the southeastern United States, Central Asia, and Mesoamerica. The paleoethnobotany group boasts world leadership in the study of quinoa, corn, millet, and a range of other cultigens, as well as projects which reconstruct the diversity of landscape formations that conditioned the lives of societies such as the Maya, the Mississippians, and many more.

Dr. David Friedel

David Freidel’s research program at El Peru, ancient Waka’, is part of a regional investigation of a historically documented royal road running from the city of Calakmul in Campeche to Cancuen in southern Petén. Using GIS, the road can be projected along a least effort route that takes it through several ancient sites. Historically, the road is documented in hieroglyphic texts found at La Corona, El Peru-Waka’, Zapote Bobal, and Cancuen, all royal capitals of kings who were vassals to the kings of Calakmul. In addition to ground truth exploration, archaeologists from the El Peru-Waka’ and La Corona programs are analyzing remote imagery in collaboration with NASA scientists to search for clues of built features along the royal road route.  Historically the royal road was central to the imperial wars of the seventh and eighth centuries in Petén, during which emperors of the Snake dynasty, especially king Yuknoom Ch’een the Great, attempted to establish hegemony over the southern Maya lowland civilization.  His successor, Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ahk’, was decisively defeated by the king of Tikal, Jasaw Chan K’awiil I, in 695 AD. It is likely that this battle took place on the royal road.  The last battle on or near the royal road occurred in 743 AD, when the son of Jasaw Chan K’awiil, Yik’in Chan Kawiil, defeated the king of El Peru-Waka’ Bahlam Tzam.  This defeat signaled the end of the imperial aspirations of the Snake kings of Calakmul.

Related Faculty Research:

David Browman and his students are interested in the environmental conditions that impact Andean communities now and in the past. Thus, they consider various proxies for environmental reconstructions, such as Andean ice cores, glacial moraine studies, lake cores, rain-shadow impacts, and the like, to reconstruct and address variation in the types of risks and uncertainty that the target populations in our research area needed to address in order to survive and prosper.
Fiona Marshall has focused on survey, excavation and the spatial distribution of African pastoral sites in East African savannas. With her students she has conducted research on the influence of pastoral sites on dung and small mammals on savanna landscapes. She is currently engaged in examination of broader issues of the effect of ancient pastoral settlement on nutrient recyling and the distribution of wild ungulates in African savannas.
John Kelly has studied the cultural landscape at Cahokia. It is my contention that Cahokia’s roots are in the pre-Mississippian, Late Woodland and Emergent Mississippian societies of the region. While others were readily drawn into the region after Cahokia’s founding at the end of the tenth century, the Emergent Mississippian complexes are the antecedents.