Education

I was born and raised in the foothills of Colorado. I received my undergraduate education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. My undergraduate advisors were Dr. Herbert Covert and Dr. Dena Smith. I graduated with a B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) in 2003 after completing a research internship at the National Museum of National History (Smithsonian). I began graduate school at Arizona State University in 2004. My committee co-chairs are Dr. Curtis Marean and Dr. Kaye Reed, and my committee members are Dr. Lillian Spencer and Dr. Kelly Knudson. My M.A. was completed in 2006 after conducting zooarchaeological analysis of Pleistocene mammals from the Neandertal cave site of Pech de l’Azé IV.  In March of 2009, I defended my PhD proposal and was advanced to PhD candidacy (ABD).

My graduate research focused on the paleoecology and zooarchaeology of Neandertals. I am interested in reconstructing the behaviors of these hominins to test the hypothesis that climate change contributed to their extinction. My dissertation research examined changes over time in the hunting and butchery strategies used by Neandertals and incorporated isotopic data to help reconstruct the environment and ecology of the fauna hunted by our most closely related fossil relatives. This research was conducted on archaeological collections from the sites of Roc de Marsal and Pech de l'Azé IV (Bordes’ excavation) in the Dordogne Valley of France.

I have seven years of experience utilizing zooarcheological methods in Dr. Curtis Marean’s zooarchaeology laboratory at ASU. I have completed numerous blind tests for identification of cut marks, percussion marks and carnivore tooth marks on bones following Blumenschine et al. (1996). In addition, I have experience identifying biogenic and chemical modifications of bone through experience with archaeological collections (Dominguez-Rodrigo and Barba 2006). I have also worked closely with Dr. Kaye Reed on taxonomic identification. I have analyzed fossil collections, both locally and abroad, including fauna from the Iranian site of Yafteh, housed at ASU, and faunal collections from the Middle/Upper Paleolithic site of Sopeña in northern Spain, in France from the sites of Pech IV and RDM, and in Morocco from the site of Grotte de Contrebandiers. I have also completed six years of French language courses, which has facilitated data collection in France and Morocco.

Currently,  I am the co-director of a project excavating Pleistocene sediments from the site of Magura Cave in Bulgaria. This cave is located in the foothills of the Balkan Mountains on the Danubian Plain. Geographically, this region lies at the doorstep of Europe, and would have been a corridor for the dispersal of hominins and other animals into and out of Europe from the Levant and Africa. Thus, far there have been few archaeological investigations of this key region.  Documenting hominin activity in Bulgaria will provide a richer understanding of the behaviors and population movements of the earliest modern human inhabitants of Europe.