FACULTY

As an interdisciplinary program, the faculty is composed of six archaeology faculty members from the anthropology and art departments (see below). In addition, other faculty from architecture, history, religious studies, environmental science, and chemistry offer courses which complement the major. Faculty sponsored field research in archaeology is currently being conducted in the Southwestern United States, Virginia, the Near East, Africa, and Italy.

Liz Arkush, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology (on leave, 2009-2010)
(ena2b@virginia.edu)
My research centers on the interplay of warfare, political power, social identity, and ritual in the prehispanic Andes. I am particularly interested in the potential of regional approaches, including GIS analysis, to illuminate these social processes in space. My doctoral research focused on the later part of the prehispanic sequence after about A.D. 1000, when many small polities throughout the Andes were apparently engaged in cycles of endemic warfare. Fieldwork on a suite of fortified hilltop sites in the northern Lake Titicaca basin in Peru investigated the regional patterns that emerged from conflictual and cooperative social relationships. This study also examined the chronology of fortification to question current interpretations of the causes of intergroup violence at the time.
Other field projects have also relied on spatial approaches, but in the service of different questions. My master's research focused on regional patterns of ceremonial site construction in the southwest Titicaca Basin as a field of interaction and negotiation between imperial Inca administrators and provincial subjects. My most recent fieldwork involves the detailed mapping and intra-site spatial analysis of several large fortified sites with complex surface architecture. This initial stage will be followed up by excavations intended to examine social hierarchy, economic organization, and community dynamics at one large, well-preserved fortified center.
As archaeologists come to a better understanding of the prevalence of warfare in the prehistoric past, I continue to be fascinated by questions about its causes, uses, and consequences. I prefer to think of warfare as neither an extraordinary crisis nor a normal state of affairs, but a multifaceted social institution which, as it ravaged lives, families, and communities, also generated power relationships, defined and maintained social boundaries, informed gender identities, and supplied a rich source of images and narratives to be interwoven with belief and expressed in material culture.

Malcolm Bell, Professor, Department of Art
(mb2s@virginia.edu)
Professor Bell began his career at the University of Virginia in 1971, teaching courses on the history of Greek art and archaeology. Mr. Bell also serves as co-director (with Carla Antonaccio, Wesleyan University) of the Morgantina excavations in Sicily. Aside from publications of the results of that on-going project, in particular a book-length study of the Hellenistic agora, he is interested in the artistic conventions and cultural contexts of archaic Greek art. He is also working on a study of the origins and form of the eighteenth century plan of Savannah, Georgia. Prof. Bell is a recipient of the prestigious Andrew W. Mellon Professorship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art.

John Dobbins, Professor, Department of Art
(jjd5t@virginia.edu)
Professor John Dobbins received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan. Shortly thereafter he joined the Department of Art to teach courses on Roman art and archaeology. Since 1994, he has been the Director of the Pompeii Forum Project (http://pompeii.virginia.edu), for which he received a three year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. As a result of his interest in technology and teaching he has been both a University of Virginia Teaching + Technology Fellow, and a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, also at the University of Virginia.

Jeffrey L. Hantman, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
Director of the Undergraduate Program in Archaeology
(jlh3x@virginia.edu)
My research in anthropological archaeology revolves around the interests I have in culture change and the writing of history. In the years that I was introduced to anthropology, archaeology was the more historical part of the field and I was impressed with the potential of archaeology to write long-term and more inclusive histories. I was drawn as well to the processual questions which dominated the field in the 1960s and 1970s. How and why did complex political organization develop? In regional systems, what factors account for change over time in the formation and maintenance of economic and social boundaries? Many of my publications are concerned with these issues in the context of Pueblo prehistory. Today, I continue to ask some of these same questions in the ethnographic and historic context of the Middle Atlantic region of the Eastern United States. Although drawn to archaeology because of an interest in the interplay of cultural perspectives and historic events, I became frustrated with the absence of both in adaptationist and processual studies. My research over the last decade has continued the emphasis on regional systems and political organization, but situates those patterns in the unique and specific cultures and events of the late prehistoric and early historic era in North America. I am particularly concerned with identifying the varied responses of indigenous people to colonialism and I have focused on the Monacan and Powhatan cultures of Virginia and the nature of their interaction with European colonists. Over the past few years I have worked closely with the Monacan Indian Tribal Association. My theoretical interests have also led me to become involved in several other projects relating to cultural identity and history in nineteenth-century Virginia.

Adria LaViolette, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
(ajl4h@virginia.edu)
My primary research interests are in eastern African archaeology, particularly that of later medium-range and large-scale societies, and the interface between archaeology, ethnology, and history. Throughout the last 2,000 years, the eastern African coast and its hinterland has been a mosaic of hunting/gathering, pastoralist, mixed farming and urban societies, interacting in the context of migrations, long-distance trade, technological transformations, religious conversions, alliances and hostility, internationalism, and colonialism. The variety of middle-range (or chiefdom) societies and urban forms in Africa has become central to later African archaeological research, and it is Swahili urbanism where my current research lies.
I am directing a long-term, NSF-funded research project on the development of Swahili regional systems, focusing on political economy in the context of an indigenous African urban tradition. This research is located on Pemba Island, Tanzania. Pemba was a central area within Swahili civilization at the height of its economic prosperity, immediately prior to the onslaught of European and Arab colonialism, and home to numerous town-based regional systems. In the Early Iron Age of eastern Africa-the first millennium A.D.-a society took shape based on farming, fishing, and trade that eventually occupied 3,500 kms of the that coastline. From the 11th-14th centuries some of these coastal villages became economic and political centers, growing in scale from their village beginnings, and expanding their long-distance trade relationships with polities in the African interior and along much of the Indian Ocean rim. These centers, called stonetowns, have formed the basis of reconstructions of Swahili society. As important as stonetowns were to framing Swahili life, this perspective ignores the majority of Swahili living in towns and villages, who were an integral and dynamic component of Swahili society but most of whom probably were not engaged in long-distance trade. My current project targets the local/regional economy-subsistence, manufacturing, provision of services, local and regional movement of domestic goods-in the day-to-day life of people in the regional polity, and an underestimated source of local political and economic power, both within stonetowns and beyond. The project focuses on one of these polities-Chwaka-and its countryside components on Pemba.
The above project builds on research I developed while teaching archaeology at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in the late 1980s. After working with students on coastal village sites, I began research at Pujini, a 15th-16th-century palatial Swahili settlement on Pemba. My vantage point from that political center led to my looking at Pemba as a series of interlocking regional systems. In 1997 I thus began excavating the large 8th-18th-century Swahili stonetown of Chwaka, linked to Pujini in extensive oral traditions on the island, focusing on the internal organization of the town itself.
I continue to maintain an interest in African urbanisms generally. Inspired by questions about the organization of early towns in West Africa, I conducted an ethnoarchaeological study of craft producers in Mali which recently appeared as a monograph. I am currently publishing the Pujini research and preliminary research from Chwaka, as well as a review of early African urbanism. I am committed to working closely with colleagues and students in Tanzania on issues of representation of Swahili culture. I engage in public-minded archaeology in Tanzania through the production of interpretive museum displays and teaching materials, making presentations in municipal and local forums, and maintaining a lively dialogue with the Swahili communities in which I conduct research.

Rachel Most, Professor and Assistant Dean, Department of Anthropology
(rm5f@virginia.edu)
My primary research interests are concerned with the study of change over time in prehistoric economic and settlement systems. I am particularly concerned with the study of spatial and technological organization of prehistoric foraging societies, the impact of the adoption of agricultural strategies by foraging societies, and the role of hunting in emergent complex societies. My avenue into the study of these processes has been the systematic study of stone tool procurement, production, and use. My field research has been primarily in the Southwestern United States, where I worked in the Mogollon Rim (Pinedale/Snowflake) and southern desert areas of Arizona. Prior to my research in Arizona, I was involved in historic and prehistoric archaeological research in the northeastern United States, and spent one year on the staff of the South Carolina Institute for anthropology and Archaeology. Since coming to Virginia I have also become involved in historical archaeology, serving as a statistical and computer consultant to the archaeological program at Monticello, and compiling and editing two books on historic archaeology. I am presently an assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and teach one to two archaeology courses each year.

Fraser Neiman, Lecturer, Department of Anthropology and Director of Archaeology, Monticello
(fn9r@virginia.edu)
My current research focuses on the archaeology of the greater Chesapeake region, from its initial settlement by Europeans and Africans to the Civil War. Since 1995 I have been Director of Archaeology at Monticello, where my department is in the midst of several long-term research projects. Among them is the Monticello Plantation Archaeological Survey, a multidisciplinary initiative designed to reveal trajectories of change in settlement and land use on Thomas Jefferson's Albemarle County plantation, along with their ecological, economic, and social causes and consequences. Monticello's Department of Archaeology is also home to the Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery, a four-year, grant-funded experiment in the use of the Web to leverage new forms of research collaboration among archaeologists.
Among the topics I'm pursuing in my Chesapeake research are the implications of changing demography and labor processes for social relationships among enslaved people and slave owners. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, local ecology and the slave-based Atlantic economy pulled many Chesapeake slave owners toward economic diversification and agricultural intensification. These shifts in turn provided new possibilities for and imposed new constraints on enslaved plantation workers, affecting access to material and social resources. Patterns of change in slave housing and settlement document the strategies they invented to take advantage of the possibilities and cope with the constraints.
Evolutionary approaches to human learning, cognition, and behavior provide the theoretical inspiration for much of my empirical work. Theoretical topics of particular interest include style, consumption, and cooperation. I'm also interested in quantitative techniques, particularly multivariate and spatial data analysis.

Stephen Plog, Professor and Associate Dean, Department of Anthropology (on leave fall 2009)
(sep6n@virginia.edu)
My research focuses on understanding culture change in the prehistoric American Southwest. I particularly am interested in the changing nature of ritual, social organization, exchange and demography from approximately A.D. 1000 to the historic period. Answering questions about such issues requires emphasis on several related topics beyond the prehistoric record of the Southwest. Ethnographic and archaeology theory and data on comparable societies provide a comparative perspective and explanatory models. I find the most provocative and productive models to be ones that incorporate methodological rigor and testable propositions with a holistic perspective on the interrelationship of ritual, social organization, and economy.
My recent fieldwork in the Chevelon region of east central Arizona examines changing patterns of ritual, social relationships, and exchange ties during the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. Evidence for significant social conflict in the 11th and 12th centuries appears a century or more before similar patterns become common in the northern Southwest and has been a particular focus of our fieldwork. Continued surveys and excavations in the Chevelon region are planned for the next several years.

Tyler Jo Smith, Assistant Professor, Department of Art
(tjs6e@virginia.edu)
I returned to the University of Virginia to teach classical art and archaeology as a permanent part-time faculty member. I first taught in the Department of Art from 1998-2000, while Prof. Malcolm Bell was on leave. I earned my Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and have since become one of the leading American experts on the subject of Greek vase painting. Myinterests also include Greek drama, Greek pottery and religious festivals. I havedone archaeological survey in Lycia and excavated at Knossos and at Kato Phano on the island of Chios in Greece. Currently I am in the process of preparing a manuscript on black-figure Komasts, and my recent publications include a number of articles on this topic. I teach courses on Greek art, in particular vase painting and its relationship to festivals and ritual.

Patricia Wattenmaker, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
(paw3u@virginia.edu)
My research focuses on the archaeology of complex societies, particularly those in the ancient Near East. I am currently involved in a long-term archaeological project in southeast Turkey, examining the formation and organizational dynamics of complex societies in Upper Mesopotamia from 5500- 2000 B.C. One component of my research in Turkey involved excavating at a town site. I was particularly interested in how and why non-elite households altered their patterns of production and consumption as state society formed. I considered how elite values, consumption patterns, and tributary demands impacted non-elite production and consumption. Building on this study of rural households, I am now conducting excavations at the urban site of Kazane to examine the long-term interaction between households and polities. Current research at the site focuses on the period of urbanism to determine why urban societies formed in north Mesopotamia ca. 2500 B.C. Future research will investigate the antecedents of urban society. In addition to research in Turkey, I have investigated complex societies in Syria (looking at urbanism through regional survey) and North Africa (Egypt and Morocco, where I utilized both historical records and faunal remains to examine the impact of broad political and economic changes on households). Some of my recent papers include an analysis of collapsed state societies in Upper Mesopotamia, a critique of world systems theory as applied to ancient Mesopotamia, and consideration of the relationship between political structure and gender relations in Greater Mesopotamia.

Last updated November 2009