Department of Anthropology

  • MSU Department of Anthropology holds Human Remains Excavation Course for Michigan State Police

    By Katie Nicpon

    Caption: The MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab facilitated a training session in Lansing for members of the Michigan State Police force. The training involved how to properly excavate and handle remains. The skeletons used for the training were made of plastic. Photo credit: Jacqueline Hawthorne, MSU College of Social Science photographer. 

    In September, the MSU Department of Anthropology offered their four-day, Human Remains Excavation Course for Michigan State Police officers and laboratory personnel. 

    “This training is important for us to expand our skillset and provide the best and highest quality response for the community,” Christina Rasmussen said. She works for the Michigan State Police in the Lansing Forensic Lab and was one of 17 participants in the training. 

    This training provides an overview of how forensic anthropology can contribute to investigating deaths, and the appropriate methods investigators should follow when they are searching for and recovering actual human remains (although the skeletons used for training are made of plastic). 

    “This training is important, as service to the community is a pillar of our practice,” Dr. Carolyn Isaac said. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology in the College of Social Science, and the director of the MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory (MSUFAL). She collaborated with Anthropology Associate Professor Joe Hefner, PhD., on the training, in addition to receiving help from graduate students including Rhian Dunn, Micayla Spiros, Clara Devota, and Holly Long.

    “We often partner with law enforcement to aid in the search and recovery of human remains and it is essential that we all understand the appropriate techniques to ensure all of the skeletal remains and evidence at the scene are collected. We also want to create relationships with our law enforcement colleagues so they know they can call us to assist in such recoveries.” 

    The training includes a combination of lectures and hands-on experience. Lectures feature topics such as how to assess sex, age, ancestry, and stature from skeletal remains; identifications using comparative radiography, skeletal trauma analysis; and forensic archaeology. 

    The department also provides a hands-on osteology (bone) laboratory so participants can try to identify the various features of the biological profile in the skeletal remains. 

    One afternoon is dedicated to forensic entomology (how the study of insects can contribute to the death investigation) and a field demonstration of decomposition and the collection of insects of interest. Ryan Kimbirauskas, PhD, a board-certified forensic entomologist and MSU faculty in the Center for Integrative Studies in General Science hosted this part of the training. 

    “On the third day (excavation day) teams search for, systematically excavate, recover, and document simulated clandestine burials (plastic skeletons that we buried back in May),” Dr. Isaac said. “From this exercise, they prepare presentations on their excavations and present them on the last day.” 

    Caption: The MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab facilitated a training session in Lansing for members of the Michigan State Police force. The training involved how to properly excavate and handle remains. The skeletons used for the training were made of plastic. Photo credit: Jacqueline Hawthorne, MSU College of Social Science photographer. 

    On excavation day, participants are divided into a number of teams to perform line searches and probing to detect where the simulated clandestine burials are located. Once the burial locations have been determined, they begin the systematic excavation, ensuring thorough mapping and photography of the process are completed. 

    “The goal is to expose the skeleton to understand the position of the remains and any associated evidence when they were placed into the ground,” Dr. Isaac explained. “During this process they learn how to detect clandestine graves or soil disturbances, utilize soil probes to determine the outline of the burial, set up a grid over the burial for mapping, carefully remove  soil from above the remains to ensure they are not disturbed, screen soil to find any small portions of bones or evidence, pedestal the bones (i.e. removing enough soil to expose the bones but not too much where they will fall out of place), and how to take coordinates of the skeletal remains to produce a map for documentation purposes.” 

    For Rasmussen, one key takeaway was the need to approach each scene differently but collaboratively. 

    “I learned the importance of being creative and innovative since each scene is different,” she said. “Working together as a team is the only way to effectively process a scene.”

    The Human Remains Excavation course has a rich and long history that spans several decades. The training course was established by Dr. Norm Sauer, founder of the MSU Forensic Anthropology Laboratory, back in the 1990s, and it continued when Dr. Todd Fenton took over the directorship of the lab in 2012. 

    “The MSUFAL relationship with the MSP has been around for a long time and represents years of working together on complex forensic recoveries, death investigations ranging from suspicious deaths to multiple homicides, and everything in between,” Dr. Hefner said. “We are fortunate to have such a strong bond with the state law enforcement, and these courses provide us an opportunity to give back to the community outside of our normal academic duties.” To learn more about the MSU Forensic Anthropology Lab, visit anthropology.msu.edu.

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  • MSU Anthropology professor and undergraduate participate in Smithsonian global oyster study


    Small “pit feature” or accumulation of oyster, other shellfish, animal bone and artifacts in Rhode Island dated to 100-500 years ago. Sites like this show the full range of sites used in the study, with this representing the smaller end of accumulation of oysters. Photo courtesy of Kevin McBride.

    Dr. Sanchez, MSU Department of Anthropology assistant professor, and his colleague Dr. Michael Grone, California Department of Parks and Recreation, contributed to the global study of Indigenous oyster fisheries, which synthesized over a century of archaeological findings from the San Francisco Bay Area. The synthesis of these data was supported by MSU Anthropology major Emily Westfall. 

    “I participated in the research to contribute to reimagining Indigenous-environmental relationships, specifically Indigenous fisheries, within archaeological, biological, and ecological literature,” Dr. Sanchez said. “So often, Indigenous relationships with culturally important species, such as oysters, are often minimized. I believe it is critical to center long-term Indigenous relationships with species, ecosystems, and landscapes within the academy and beyond.”

    Their research was a part of a global study co-led by Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History anthropologist Torben Rick and Temple University anthropologist Leslie Reeder-Myers. The study, published May 3 in Nature Communications, shows that oyster fisheries were hugely productive and sustainably managed on a massive scale over hundreds and even thousands of years of intensive harvest.

    Drs. Sanchez and Grone summarized the findings from over 30 San Francisco Bay Area archaeological sites. The study includes the earliest known archaeological site within the San Francisco Bay Area that provides evidence of human-oyster relationships that span the last 6,000 years, known as the West Berkeley (CA-ALA-307) site. Sanchez and Grone recently reanalyzed the West Berkeley site with several colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley, including Professor Kent Lightfoot, with the support of the National Science Foundation.       

    Westfall joined the project at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year and conducted literature searches of all of the archaeological sites of interest to find historical data regarding the presence of oyster use by humans to support current data.

    “The research was important to me because even though I could not practice the hands-on methods due to the pandemic, it allowed me to gain insight into the other side of archaeology: the side involving writing articles and the background research,” Westfall said. “It was an invaluable experience as an anthropology major to be able to experience the whole process of archaeology research during my three semesters working with Dr. Sanchez.”

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  • MSU alum named Executive Director of the Hispanic Latino Commission of Michigan

    In September 2021, the Hispanic/Latino Commission of Michigan (HLCOM) named MSU alumna Dr. Isabel Montemayor-Vazquez the executive director, and she began her role  that same month. Dr. Montemayor-Vazquez received both her master’s and doctorate’s degrees from the MSU Department of Anthropology. 

     “I was interested in this position because it marries my political science background and applied activist driven anthropology background perfectly,” Dr. Montemayor-Vazquez said. “In this position, I can advocate for the needs of the community, work with non-profit organizations serving the Latinx community, train different state agencies on structural and systemic inequities, and most importantly, contribute to policy change.”

    According to their website, the commission exists to advocate for the well-being of the Hispanic/Latino population with the vision of achieving an environment of social justice and economic parity for the Hispanic/Latino population. As executive director of the commission, Dr. Montemayor-Vazquez is charged with organizing the activities of the commission and working directly with the commissioners to serve as a bridge between state government and the communities of constituents they serve. 

    “It’s an incredible and humbling leadership role, where I am able to amplify the voices of the community through various grants, partnerships, and programs we have established. Working for the state of Michigan as a civil servant, there are few Latinas in positions of leadership, and so it’s an exceptional opportunity to serve as a mentor for young first-generation Latinas who have a similar background and family history .”

    As executive director, her first goals were to hold individual listening sessions with each of the commissioners to better understand how they see their role as commissioner. Another immediate goal was to recruit a legislative intern to assist in producing a legislative report in Spanish and English that follows legislative bills and their impact on the Latinx community. Increasing job opportunities and improving economic prosperity for the Latinx community are priorities found in the mission and vision of the commission, so a third goal was to create a Latinx job fair for recent college graduates.

    “I am proud to say that all three ofthese immediate goals along with improving the on-boarding process for our new commissioners have come to fruition.”

    Dr. Montemayor-Vazquez received both her master’s and doctorate degrees at MSU in cultural anthropology. During her time at MSU, she felt the most meaningful opportunity she experienced was being able to teach. Her teaching experience at MSU prepared her for accepting a professorship at UTA Arlington where she taught Sociology and Anthropology for six years. As executive director, she still has opportunities to teach on many of the topics that were interesting to her as a student and are pertinent to the Latinx community of Michigan. 

    Another meaningful experience during her time at MSU was when the department funded her and several other graduate students to present their research at the Society for Applied Anthropology conference in Merida, Yucatan. 

    “My research was centered around Michoacan and I had never ventured as far as Merida. It was such a unique experience to travel with fellow anthropology students to present in such an accepting environment, on a panel together, and also learn about the indigenous history of Yucatan together.” 

    Dr. Montemayor-Vazquez looks back on receiving her advanced degree in anthropology as a wonderful and useful tool in being able to give back to her community. 

    “I never could have imagined I would be able to use my degree in the community where I grew up and make a difference in so many people’s lives. The Hispanic/Latino Commission does a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure the Latinx community has the necessary platforms to voice their concerns. Additionally, the commission strives to provide ample opportunities for the Latinx community to thrive in the state of Michigan. It’s a privilege to work in this capacity and serve my community.” 

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  • MSU Anthropology alum finds success in the business world

    “Rarely is there another person in any meeting room that I’m in that has the background that I have,” MIchigan State University alumnus Jeffrey Bennish laughed good-naturedly. Bennish is the Vice President of QuVA Pharma Inc., a 503B pharmacy drug manufacturer, who graduated with a degree in anthropology. 

    “I think you can use a lot of the skills from an applied anthropology standpoint that translate incredibly well into business environments, and find yourself with a unique skill set amongst your peers and those business environments that make you stand out,” he said. 

    Bennish attributes his success to his early training in anthropology from MSU. 

    “I actually found that the skills that I learned, in particular, the skills of ethnography (the scientific description of the customs of individual peoples and cultures) and the ethnographic toolkit that you pick up translates incredibly well into the world of business, especially on the sales side, where you’re really trying to build relationships with people that don’t know you, and create a pathway in that relationship for business to occur,” Bennish said. 

    Bennish knew he wanted to study anthropology in high school because he was drawn toward a major that focused on other cultures.  

    “In high school, I was most interested in my humanities courses, and multidisciplinary courses:  about that intersection of different cultures and geographies and histories,” he said. “And really, just the opportunity to expand on that with the undergraduate degree in anthropology, Michigan State was just a perfect fit for what I was interested in in life.”

    Bennish values the training he received, although his path isn’t quite what he imagined when he first began as an anthropology major at MSU. During his senior year, Bennish realized that he would have to attend graduate school if he wanted to continue on to a career in anthropology academia. Because he wanted to graduate after four years and begin his career, he decided to try working in medical sales, and never left. 

    “To graduate with a degree in anthropology, you really have to learn how to be a writer,” he said. “And so that translates incredibly well into business in terms of developing business plans, developing proformas and focusing on other people’s voices. Because really, when you write an ethnography, you are trying to emphasize other people’s voices, not your own. You learn how to write from other’s perspectives, and that is a very unique skill.”

    To further his education, he received a graduate degree in Medical Anthropology from the University of Colorado. Throughout his career, he increasingly took on leadership roles and felt that his skills transferred to each new position. 

    “In anthropology, there’s a lot of focus put on agency and the emotional attachment that people have with with different interests, and I think it sets you up incredibly well for acting as a leader in a complex organization, because you can definitely use your skills to help make sure that you’re connecting with people at different levels and different layers based on what they’re looking for out of their careers.”

    Bennish realizes he has taken a unique path, and is often surrounded by peers with more traditional degrees in his career field. 

    “When I compare my skills to people who had more traditional business degrees or marketing degrees – not that you can’t learn a lot in those disciplines – but as it pertains to business development and in the world of sales within business, you have those cultural skills that you that you pick up through anthropology that really allows you to see a lot of nuances in people’s behaviors,” he said. “What you learn is how people emotionally attach themselves to certain perspectives and experiences. And you learn how to deconstruct those meanings. So that you can find ways to create connections there.”

    Bennish is hoping to attract more graduating anthropology majors to his field. 

    “I talk to people in our human resources department about wanting to find incredible sales talent, I always tell them they should be looking in the anthropology departments of the undergraduate programs,” he said. 

    His advice for current anthropology undergraduates or high school students considering anthropology as a major. 

    “I wouldn’t shy away from a career in business if you decide you’re not going to work in academia or continue on to grad school,” he said. “I think you can use a lot of the skills from an applied anthropology standpoint that translate incredibly well into business environments. You’ll find yourself with a unique skill set amongst your peers and those business environments that make you stand out.”

    To learn more about the MSU Department of Anthropology, visit https://anthropology.msu.edu/.

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  • Dr. Hourani Receives Multiple Grants for International Research

    man in front of painting
    Dr. Najib Hourani

    Najib Hourani, Assistant Professor in both Anthropology and Global Urban Studies, received a Fulbright Fellowship and a Council of American Overseas Research Centers Senior Scholar Fellowship for his new research project working with Syrian refugees in Jordan. His project seeks to understand their needs and aspirations for the reconstruction of their neighborhoods, towns, and cities. The project, entitled Toward a Positive Peace?: Urban Reconstruction in Syria, will have him conducting research in Jordan from August 2019-August 2020, with funded follow up work the summer of 2021.

    Congratulations to Dr. Hourani!

    To read the full newsletter, click here.

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  • Featured Faculty, Dr. Kurt Rademaker

    Featured Faculty, Dr. Kurt Rademaker
    man in hat
    Dr. Kurt Rademaker

    Dr. Kurt Rademaker started with MSU Anthropology in Fall of 2018. His research focuses on human biogeographic expansion into the Andes mountains and adds to our understanding of the timing and routes of initial human settlement of the Americas and the role of ecological variability in driving human adaptations and in understanding the relationships between humans and their environments. Learning about the human past is essential for understanding the history and evolution of the environments we inhabit.

    Dr. Rademaker’s current projects include excavations of archaeological sites from the Pacific Coast to the high Andes, as well as surveys in remote, unexplored areas to discover new sites. Archaeological sites indicate that people were connected over large areas, his research seeks to understand when and how those connections formed, how they functioned and were sustained over time. His work collaborates with physical anthropologists, paleogeneticists and earth scientists to study what past environments were like and how these have changed over time. It is thrilling to think about the first groups of people moving into new and uninhabited continents.

    Kurt’s team has discovered that ice age environments in the Andes were not as hostile as people used to think and that early Americans could settle these high mountain environments at the end of the last ice age. His work has been featured in popular media outlets such as National Geographic, the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Smithsonian, Sapiens, and many others. He feels it is important to share these discoveries with the global public. His work examines long-term Andean environmental change and its impact on past humans. He hopes what he learns will prove useful for current and future Andean people as they cope with climatic change.

    Rademaker’s Team at Cuncaicha Rockshelter

    Currently, Dr. Rademaker is expanding beyond southern Peru to build transects of archaeological sites and paleoenvironmental records along the Andes. This work will allow them to explore variability in environmental change and human adaptive patterns. He is excited to be a part of a strong Anthropology department with excellent, supportive faculty and a vibrant community of graduate and undergraduate students. One of his favorite things about his work is that every day has the potential of discovering something new that no one has ever learned before. This is true both in the field and the lab.

    Dr. Rademaker became interested in anthropology when he took an intro class as an undergraduate student at the University of Kentucky. By the time he took his second class, Introduction to Archaeology, he was hooked. That initial interest just deepened with time, after a field school and working in cultural resource management, leading him to pursue his PhD from the University of Maine in 2012. Outside of his work, Kurt loves exploring the outdoors with his wife Erica and their dog Cowboy and are glad to live in a state with lots of nature and opportunities for canoeing, hiking, camping. In the Andes and elsewhere he loves climbing high mountains and some of his other hobbies include motorcycles and gardening.

    Kurt has two new publications in preparation on the site formation of Cuncaicha rockshelter and the digital cranial reconstruction of a 9000-year-old Andean highlander referred to as the Lady of Cuncaicha. We welcome Dr. Rademaker and look forward to more exciting research. For more information about his work, check out his working group’s website: www.paleoandes.com

    To read the full newsletter, click here.

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  • Dr. Ethan Watrall Receives DEADDA Grant

    The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Ethan Watrall is part of a team recently awarded a European Cooperation of Science & Technology grant for the Saving European Archaeology from the Digital Dark Age (SEADDA) Project. The project is based on the premise that making archaeological data open and freely accessible is a priority across Europe because the digital realm lacks appropriate, persistent repositories. The result is that, due to the fragility of digital data and non-repeatable nature of most archaeological research, we are poised to lose a generation of research to a “digital dark age.”  Mitigating this crisis will bring archaeologists and data management specialists together to share expertise and create resources allowing them to address problems in the most appropriate way within their own countries. While important international standards exist, there is no single way to build a repository. To be successful, archaeologists must be at the decision-making heart of how their data is archived to ensure re-use is possible.

    The SEADDA Project, based at the University of York (UK) and made up of scholars from 26 countries, will address these challenges by establishing a priority research area in the archiving, dissemination, and open access re-use of archaeological data. It brings together an interdisciplinary network of archaeologists and computer scientists; experts in archaeological data management and open data dissemination and re-use. The project will create publications and materials, setting state of the art standards for archaeological archiving across Europe. The project will also organize meetings and training, allowing archaeologists from countries with archiving expertise to work with archaeologists with few or no available options, so they may share knowledge and create dialogue within their countries and move forward to address the crisis.

    To read the full newsletter, click here.

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  • Andean Girl Returns Home

    man and woman at Bolivian embassy
    Dr. Bill Lovis and Dr. Allison Davis, U.S. Department of State, celebrate
    Ñusta’s return to Bolvian soil

    Dr. William Lovis, Professor Emeritus of anthropology, Curator Emeritus of anthropology, editor of Midwest Archaeological Perspectives and research affiliate for Lithic Microwear Research Laboratory completed the repatriation to Bolivia of the 500-year old mummy of a young Andean girl. Her arrival at the Washington, D.C., Embassy of the Plurinational State of Bolivia marked the beginning of his retirement after a 45-year career at MSU.

    The mummy, nicknamed Ñusta, a Quechua word for “Princess,” had a long MSU history. MSU Museum records revealed she was donated to the MSU Museum in 1890 by then U.S. Consul to Chile and MSU Board of Trustees member Hon. William B. McCreery. She came from south of LaPaz, Bolivia, and was originally placed in a stone tomb, along with a variety of accoutrements including pouches, bags, a small clay jar, sandals, beads, feathers and several types of plants including maize, beans, grasses, kapok and coca. The burial was reputed to be “Pre Columbian” and “Inca,” so the maize from her pouch was radiocarbon dated, which revealed it was as old as the second half of the 15th century, indicating her burial likely predated Columbus’s arrival — and the Spanish conquest of the Inca.

    Museum documents also revealed that throughout the first half of the 20th century she was prominently displayed in early iterations of the MSU Museum, all over campus through the 1970s. As societal sentiments toward the display of human remains in the U.S. changed, Lovis became part of a group of museum curators who successfully recommended she be taken off display. Bill initiated discussions with then acting MSU Museum director Lora Helou about repatriating the mummy and her associated burial objects to Bolivia. Helou agreed, catalyzing an effort starting in 2016 that took him through his consulting year and into retirement.

    Surmounting multiple national and institutional bureaucracies, MSU administrative changes, language differences, documentation protocols and working through ethical and legal issues presented an ongoing series of daunting challenges — only accomplished with the assistance of colleagues Jose Capriles, Allison Davis and David Trigo. As the repatriation efforts came to closure, Dr. Lovis attended the October 26, 2018 MSU Board of Trustees meeting, where they deaccessioned Ñusta and her funerary paraphernalia. Ñusta was no longer an MSU possession but officially become the property of Bolivia.

    Arrangements were made for U.S. Art to package and transport Ñusta to Washington D.C. and deliver her to the Bolivian Embassy on January 22, 2019, where Lovis witnessed her arrival on Bolivian soil in the United States. Her arrival coincided with the annual anniversary celebration of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, which included a reception with the young lady in prominent view, an indigenous Aymara ceremony, members of the Bolivian delegation, including Deputy Charge d’Affairs Alejandro Bilbao La Vieja Ruiz and a group from MSU — including Dr. Lovis. After 129 years, on the anniversary of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, MSU’s “Bolivian mummy” has been repatriated to her home nation and people. We thank Dr. Lovis for his tireless dedication to the MSU community.

    To read the full newsletter, click here.

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  • 3rd Annual Endowed Alumni & Friends of Archaeology Lecture

    Greg Hare in the Yukon
    Dr. Greg Hare

    Greg Hare, the former Yukon Archaeologist and Senior Projects Archaeologist with the Government of Yukon, Canada, recently retired after 30 years of service, visited MSU from March 11-15th, 2019 as the 3rd Annual Alumni and Friends of Archaeology Endowed Lecture Series. While here, Dr. Hare gave a department talk entitled, “Global Warming and Melting Ice Looking into the Past – Preparing for the Future” where he discussed how increasing global temperatures have created both serious challenges and unique opportunities for archaeology in the circumpolar north. He also gave a public talk entitled, “The Yukon Ice Patch Project Ancient Artifacts Melting from Alpine Ice.” This talk provided an overview of the Yukon Ice Patch Project and explored the collaborative working relationship with indigenous communities and implications for heritage management. His talk reviewed the challenges posed by environmental change, the newly developing field of glacial archaeology and possible implications for international research agendas.

    Dr. Hare is an editor of the Journal of Glacial Archaeology, Sheffield, U.K. and in 2012 he was program chair for Frozen Pasts – the 3rd International Glacial Archaeology Conference, in Whitehorse Yukon. He studied anthropology and archaeology at the University of Victoria and University of Alberta, Canada and lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada.

    To read the full newsletter, click here.

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  • Dr. Goldstein Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

    Dr. Lynne Goldstein Receives Society for American Archaeology Lifetime Achievement Award

    The Department of Anthropology is pleased to announce Dr. Lynne Goldstein (Professor Emerita of Anthropology and Founding Director of the Campus Archaeology Program) received the Society for American Archaeology Lifetime Achievement Award at the 84th Annual Meeting in Albuquerque New Mexico on April 12, 2019. This prestigious award is in recognition of her pivotal theoretical and empirical contributions to the field, in the areas of mortuary archaeology, Midwestern prehistory, historical archaeology, archaeological ethics and repatriation, public engagement, as well as professional and institutional leadership.

    Lynne Goldstein earned her BA degree in Anthropology from Beloit College in 1971 and her MA and PhD from Northwestern University (in 1973 and 1976, respectively). Her commitment to archaeology began even earlier, in her high school days through volunteer work at the Field Museum of Natural History and participation in the Kampsville Project. Over the course of her career, she taught at both the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (1976-1996) and Michigan State University (1996-2018) and chaired both departments. She retired from MSU in August 2018 and now holds emerita status.

    Over the 48-year period of her career (and more than 65 publications and 200 conference papers), she has made fundamental theoretical and empirical contributions to archaeology. One of the hallmarks of Goldstein’s career has been her intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm about taking on new projects and exploring a range of different research questions. This curiosity, when coupled with her advocacy for public engagement with archaeology and her passion for communicating archaeological knowledge to diverse audiences, has driven her involvement in an array of projects.

    Her service to the SAA has been recognized by five Presidential Recognition Awards. Her service, both on the SAA Task Force on Repatriation and as an advisor, from 1990-2010 made important contributions to the form and implementation of NAGPRA legislation. She also served on the Smithsonian Repatriation Committee for many years. Lynne served as Secretary of the SAA (1988-1991), editor of American Antiquity (1996-2000), as co-Chair with Barbara Mills on the Task Force on Gender and Research Grants Submission (2013-2019), and currently chairs the SAA Publication Committee (2018-2021). She was similarly active in the American Anthropological Association, serving as Publication Director for the Archaeology Section (2013-2017), Liaison to the Register of Professional Archaeologists (2016-2018), and on additional committees. This does not even touch upon her leadership in the Midwest Archaeological Conference, Wisconsin Archaeological Survey, Florida Public Archaeology Network, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and other national and regional organizations. Dr. Goldstein has chaired 18 dissertation committees, served on dozens more, and mentored graduate (and undergraduate) students in programs around the US, in the United Kingdom, and beyond. We thank her for her service and look forward to keeping up with her retirement.

    To read the full newsletter, click here.

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