I am a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Up until recently, I served as the Lab Supervisor of UMASS Archaeological Services, a contract archaeology firm under the auspices of the University.
My main research focus is in historical archaeology--the archaeological study of the spread European culture, society, and economy throughout the world and the concomitant resistance and accommodation to that process. I am currently working on my dissertation, which examines the material dimensions of scientific and rational farming in western Massachusetts in the early 19th century, and the ways in which race and class were caught up in this movement.
More generally, I am interested in space, power, and popular culture, and the open-source and open-content movements, which I write about on my blog When Elvis Died.
I received my BA in archaeology and music from Boston University in 2002. Since then, I've been studying at UMASS, recieving my MA in 2006, based on research conducted through the department's European Field Studies Program. The department works hard to create a lot of cross-talk between the sub-disciplines of anthropology, and I've relished the opportunity to engage in the discipline holistically. I've taken courses in all four subfields, and taught courses in cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, and archaeology.
I currently reside in Toronto, Canada.
