Who's Who in Anthropology at Texas A&M University

Michael Alvard (Associate Professor)

Dr. Alvard is a socio-cultural anthropologist who uses evolutionary theory to learn about human behavior. He has worked in Amazonian Peru with Piro and Machiguenga Indians, with Wana blowgun hunters and trappers in central Sulawesi, Indonesia, and recently with the Lamalera whale hunters of Lembata, Indonesia. Work with the Piro focused on the relationship of hunters to their prey. He tested the idea that traditional hunters are natural conservationists. His work with the Wana was done in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy and examined the impact of Wana hunters on the prey within Morowali Nature Reserve, Sulawesi. His recent work in Lamalera focuses on the problems associated with cooperation in the context of big game hunting. He is also involved in a Macarthur foundation funded cross culture study of the human preference for reciprocal fairness.

Interests:  The margins of cultural and biological anthropology, evolutionary ethnology, behavioral and evolutionary ecology, cooperation, hunting, hunters and gatherers, Amazonia, Southeast Asia.

Phone: (979) 862-3492
Office: 223 Anthropology
Email: alvard@tamu.edu

Sheela Athreya (Assistant Professor)

Dr. Athreya's research focuses on the evolution of Middle Pleistocene Homo and the role of these populations in modern human origins. Looking at morphological features of the skull, she asks questions of phylogeny and systematics--that is, who was related to whom in the Pleistocene? She is also interested in the use of quantitative methods in physical anthropology, including a critical examination of how different analytical approaches can lead to differing scientific conclusions. She has excavated at Lower and Upper Paleolithic sites in France, as well as a Harappan site in western India. She has also conducted research in museums throughout Europe, Asia and Africa looking at the original fossils of most Middle Pleistocene specimens. Dr. Athreya is currently organizing a field project to search for Pleistocene hominin remains in Central India.

Interests: Middle Pleistocene hominin evolution and systematics, quantitative methods, craniofacial biology, modern human variation, history of physical anthropology

Phone: (979)845-4785
Office: 316E Anthropology
Email: athreya@tamu.edu

Vaughn M. Bryant, Jr. (Professor)

Dr. Bryant's professional interests include palynology (the study of pollen grains) and paleoethnobotany (the study of how past cultures used plants). He is also the Director of the Texas A&M Palynology Laboratory. Dr. Bryant has an active research program that includes the reconstruction of past environments, pollen studies from underwater shipwrecks, searches for the origins of agriculture, the reconstruction of prehistoric diets, and studies of the cultural uses of plants from pollen evidence recovered in the soils in archaeological sites. Most graduate students working under his direction conduct research focused around data recovered from the collection of pollen, phytoliths (plant crystals), seeds, fibers, and wood from terrestrial and underwater sites. Graduate students from other departments work with Dr. Bryant in research areas that include forensics (pollen found at crime scenes), melissopalynology (pollen in honey), entomopalynology (insects and pollen), and studies of fossil pollen recovered from Tertiary sediments. Dr. Bryant teaches courses in a number of undergraduate and graduate fields, and he is listed in the Community of Science Expertise Directory.

Interests: Palynology, Paleoethnobotany, Coprolite Analysis, Quaternary Studies; Middle East, South America, North America

Phone: (979) 845-5255
Office: 308F Anthropology
Email: vbryant@tamu.edu

David L. Carlson (Associate Professor)

Dr. Carlson is currently involved in research on early Holocene adaptations in North America. His present research is centered around hunter-gatherer populations and the application of quantitative methods to the analysis of prehistoric and historic archaeological sites. Dr. Carlson teaches undergraduate courses in North American archaeology and graduate level courses in archaeological methods, computer applications in archaeology and cultural resource management.

Interests: Archaeology, Quantitative Analysis, Hunters and Gatherers, Ecological Anthropology, Historical Archaeology; North America

Phone: (979) 847-9248
Office: 234AA Anthropology
Email: dcarlson@tamu.edu

Deborah N. Carlson (Assistant Professor)

Dr. Carlson is a Classical Archaeologist specializing in trade and seafaring in the ancient world. She has assisted in the direction of both terrestrial and underwater excavations in Italy, Greece, and Turkey and is the 2003-04 recipient of the Archaeological Institute of America's Olivia James Traveling Fellowship. Her current research concerns the amphora cargo of a Greek merchant ship wrecked off the coast of Turkey in the third quarter of the fifth century B.C. Deborah teaches courses in Greek and Roman Archaeology and Classical Seafaring. You can find out more regarding Dr. Carlson's research on the Tektas Burnu website http://ina.tamu.edu/tektasburnu/tektasburnu.htm.

Interest: Her interests include Greek and Roman amphoras and pottery, the construction and operation of ancient harbors, Latin epigraphy, and Augustan poetry.

Phone: (979) 845-5242
Office: 107B Anthropology
Email: dnc@tamu.edu

Luis Filipe Vieira de Castro (Assistant Professor)

Dr. Vieira de Castro has conducted most of his research in Portugal where he started his collaboration with the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia as an amateur in 1992. As a manager, he was part of the team who in 1997 created the Portuguese state agency for nautical archaeology, the Centro Nacional de Arqueologia Náutica e Subaquática. Since then he has directed or participated in the underwater investigation of several wrecks, mostly from the period of European maritime expansion. Dr. Castro is currently working on a book about the Pepper Wreck, a Portuguese Indiaman lost at the mouth of the Tagus River, presumed to be the ship Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, lost in September of 1606. He is also conducting a number of archaeological surveys in Portugal, and is co-director of the archaeological excavations of two vessels - at this stage presumed to be late medieval and post-medieval - in the mouth of the Arade River in Portugal.

Interests: Ship Construction; Ship Treatises from the 16th and 17th Century; Iberian Shipbuilding and Seafaring; and Post-Medieval Maritime History and Archaeology

Phone: (979) 845-6220
Office: 105A Anthropology
Email: filipe@tamu.edu

Kevin Crisman (Associate Professor, Nautical Archaeology Program Coordinator)

Dr. Crisman, the Nautical Archaeology Faculty Fellow, specializes in Western hemisphere seafaring from 1500 to the present. His related areas of interest are ship construction; lake, river and canal water craft; seafaring communities and shipboard life; the maritime history of the Great Lakes; and historical archaeology. He has directed or participated in the underwater investigation of numerous wrecks, including sailing merchant craft, naval ships, steamers, and canal boats. He has completed and published studies of two War of 1812, 20-Gun Brigs, and is currently directing the excavation of an early-19th century horse-powered ferry boat sunk in Lake Champlain. Dr. Crisman teaches courses in new world seafaring, post-Medieval European seafaring and historical archaeology.

Interests: Western Hemisphere Seafaring Since 1500, Ship Construction, Nautical Archaeology; Great Lakes

Phone: (979) 845-6696
Office: 131B Anthropology
Email: kcrisman@tamu.edu

Norbert Dannhaeuser (Professor)

Dr. Dannhaeuser is a socio-cultural anthropologist specializing in development issues of complex societies. He has conducted extensive field work in market towns of the Philippines, India, and Germany where he has researched the cultural impact of developing trade networks. He has also done work on the cultural ecology of aquaculture and the dynamics of land reform in Southeast Asia. Dr. Dannhaeuser's teaching interests include socio-cultural anthropology, peasant societies, development and change, applied anthropology, cultural ecology, and anthropological theory.

Interests: Socio-cultural Anthropology, Economic Anthropology and Development, Cultural Ecology, Urban Anthropology, Peasant Communities, South and Southeast Asia, Central Europe.

Phone: (979) 845-5254
Office: 235B Anthropology
Email: ndann@tamu.edu

Darryl de Ruiter (Assistant Professor)

Dr. de Ruiter is a paleoanthropologist specializing in the early hominins of South Africa. He has excavated fossils from several sites in South Africa such as Swartkrans, Kromdraai, Makapansgat and Coopers, as well as from the Koro Toro and Kossum Bogoudi regions of Chad. His research focuses on the taphonomy of the hominins and their associated faunal assemblages. The goal of this work is to examine the ecology and environments of the hominins through zooarchaeological analysis of the faunal remains, isotopic analysis of both fossil and modern animal communities, and spatial analysis of the fossil caves utilizing GIS. He has recovered numerous hominin fossils, including cranial, dental and post-cranial remains of both Paranthropus and early Homo. His current research interests include excavations at the sites of Swartkrans, Coopers and Plovers Lake, as well as the description and analysis of new hominin material from several Plio-Pleistocene and Middle Pleistocene localities in South Africa.

Interests: cranio-dental and post-cranial anatomy of early hominins, zooarchaeology, taphonomy, the interactions of fossil hominins in South Africa with their surrounding animal communities, isotope ecology of modern and ancient African ecosystems

Phone: (979) 845-54940
Office: 310F Anthropology
Email: deruiter@tamu.edu

D. Bruce Dickson (Professor)

Dr. Dickson is an archaeologist specializing in the prehistory and archaeology of North America and the Paleolithic period of the Old World. Until 1989, his fieldwork has been concentrated in Central America, the American Southwest and Southeast. However, since that time he has been conducting site reconnaissance and excavation work in Middle and Later Stone Age sites in Kenya, East Africa. Dickson teaches the prehistory of the Old World and North America, as well as courses in archaeological method and theory, primitive religion, the rise of civilization and World Systems Theory. He has received two Distinguished Teaching Awards from the TAMU Association of Former Students, the most recent in 1998. He has served as President of the Council of Texas Archaeologists and currently a trustee of the Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History and is an Executive Director of the Human Relations Area Files, Inc., an anthropological research corporation.

Interests: Paleolithic adaptations in Europe and Africa, anthropogenic environmental destruction in prehistory, primitive warfare, and "cognitive archaeology" or the reconstruction of ancient ideology and religion by archaeological means.

Phone: (979) 845-5247
Office: 226/306 Anthropology
Email: dickson@tamu.edu

Suzanne Eckert (Assistant Professor)

Dr. Eckert is an archaeologist specializing in ceramic decorative and technological analysis and the archaeology of the American Southwest. She has directed field projects in Arizona and New Mexico, most recently at the 14^th century site of Hummingbird Pueblo. She has also been involved in numerous ceramic projects focused on museum collections. Her specific research questions concern migration, group identity, religious practice, and the transfer of technological knowledge among late prehistoric Pueblo (Anasazi) Indians. Dr. Eckert teaches courses in American Southwest Archaeology, Quantitative Analysis, and Ceramic Methods.

Interests: Archaeology, Ceramic Method and Theory, North America (especially American Southwest), Quantitative Methods, Compositional Analysis, Migration and Social Identity.

Phone: (979) 862-4839
Office: 308D Anthropology
Email: sleckert@tamu.edu

Ted Goebel (Associate Professor)

Dr. Goebel is the Associate Director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans. He is known for his expertise in First American studies and lithic analysis. Goebel has worked on numerous First American sites in Russia, Alaska, and the United States. He is currently excavating at Bonneville Estates Rockshelter, Nevada. He is planning future research in the Great Basin, Alaska, and Siberia. Dr. Goebel has authored or co-authored numerous journal articles and book chapters dealing with the peopling of the Americas.

Interests: First Americans, Lithic Analysis, Alaska, Russia

Phone: (979) 845-4046
Office: 210 Anthropology
Email: goebel@tamu.edu

Thomas A. Green (Associate Professor)

Dr. Green specializes in folklore. His research has examined symbolic systems, culture change, traditional dramatic events, play, legend, Native Americans, and martial arts. Current research focuses on cultural functions of the martial arts, invented traditions, and symbolic dimensions of play. Dr. Green teaches undergraduate courses in folklore and cultural anthropology, as well as graduate level courses in folklore genres and folklore method and theory.

Interests: Folklore, Martial Arts as Cultural Phenomena

Phone: (979) 845-9916
Office: 309E Anthropology
Email: t-green@tamu.edu

Sylvia Grider (Associate Professor)

Dr. Grider is a folklorist with extensive training and field experience in classical archaeology, including work at Franchthi Cave in Greece. Her current research interests focus on the traditions and cultures of the American Southwest, especially colonial Texas. She specializes in the study of narrative, especially legend, popular culture, and the folklore of children. She has conducted research into the supernatural belief network of American children as expressed through their so-called "ghost stories." She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in folklore and cultural anthropology, including courses in Texas Cultural History, Folklife and Material Culture, and Folk Narrative.

Interests: Folklore, popular culture, cultural anthropology; Texas, Southwest

Phone: (979) 845-5415
Office: 227 Anthropology
Email: grider@tamu.edu

Sharon Gursky (Associate Professor)

Dr. Gursky is a physical anthropologist specializing in the behavioral ecology and conservation of the non-human primates. She has conducted research on the spectral tarsier (Tarsius spectrum), a small nocturnal primate found exclusively on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Her earlier research focuses on the unusual infant caretaking behaviors exhibited by this primate, as well as the relationship between behavior and lunar cycles. Her most recent research project involves the relationship between group living and ecological pressures such as predation and the temporal distribution of resources.

Interests: behavioral ecology, conservation, predation, primates, mammals, nocturnality, lunar cycles

Phone: (979) 862 8462
Office: 225 Anthropology
Email: gursky@tamu.edu

Donny L. Hamilton (Professor, Associate Department Head, President of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, Department Head)

Dr. Hamilton, the Fredrick R. Mayer Nautical Archaeology Faculty Fellow, specializes in underwater archaeology, the conservation and restoration of archaeological artifacts, and North American historic and prehistoric archaeology. He has pioneered many of the techniques now being utilized in the conservation of artifacts and has gained an international reputation for his work in this field. His past and present research includes the conservation of artifacts recovered from the shipwreck of the 1554 Spanish Fleet, excavated off the coast of Padre Island in the Gulf of Mexico; the excavation and conservation of the material from the sunken, 17th-century English town of Port Royal in Jamaica; and the excavation and analysis of archaeological materials from Ganado Cave in West Texas. Dr. Hamilton teaches courses in historical archaeology and conservation techniques.

Interests: Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, Nautical Archaeology, Artifact Conservation; North America, Caribbean

Phone: (979) 845-6355
Office: 102B Anthropology
Email: dlhamilton@tamu.edu

Cemal Pulak (Associate Professor)

Dr. Pulak holds the Frederick R. Mayer Chair in Nautical Archaeology.  He is also the Vice-President for the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) in Turkey.  Dr. Pulak specializes in Bronze Age seafaring, maritime trade, and technology, and is currently involved with the research and publication of his latest shipwreck excavation, the Late Bronze Age shipwreck at Uluburn, Turkey.  His related areas of interest are ship construction, seafaring, and nautical archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean from prehistory to post-medieval times.  Since entering the field of nautical archaeology in 1975, Dr. Pulak has excavated three shipwreck sites, ranging in date from the Late Bronze Age through the sixteenth century A.D., and participated in the excavation and underwater investigation of many other shipwrecks.  He has been directing INA's annual shipwreck surveys in Turkey since 1982, and has conducted extensive research in the Mediterranean and the Aegean.  The results of his research have been published widely in professional and popular publications.  His teaching interests include undergraduate and graduate courses in nautical archaeology.

Interests: Late Bronze Age Maritime Trade, Technology, Seafaring, and Nautical Archaeology of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean.

Phone: (979) 845-6697
Office: 128B Anthropology
Email: pulak@tamu.edu

C. Wayne Smith (Associate Professor)

Dr. Smith is an underwater archaeologist and archaeological conservator who specializes in the preservation of organic material culture using silicon polymers and resins.  He is the driving force behind the Archaeological Preservation Research Laboratory (APRL).  Through APRL, he works closely with the Texas A&M Conservation Research Laboratory and Dow Corning Corporation in Midland, Michigan.  His research has included the conservation of artifacts from Port Royal, Jamaica; the La Belle Shipwreck, Galveston, Texas; the Uluburn Project, Turkey; and the Tantura Project, Israel.  Dr. Smith will be teaching an introductory course in underwater archaeology.

Interests: Archaeology, Historic Archaeology, Nautical Archaeology, Artifact Conservation, Caribbean Archaeology and Culture Studies

Phone: (979) 845-6692
Office: 311A Anthropology
Email: silicone@tamu.edu

Alston V. Thoms (Associate Professor)

Prior to joining the full-time faculty in 2001, Dr. Thoms spent 25 years directing archaeological projects in the Pacific Northwest, Plains, Southwest, and Southeast.  He recently completed an award-winning field study at Camp Ford, a Confederate POW encampment in east Texas and a NAGPRA study at Mission San Juan Capistrano, San Antonio, Texas.  Currently, he and his students are investigating long-term changes in hunter-gatherer land-use patterns in the Northern Rocky Mountains and on the Gulf Coastal Plain. This research focuses on the roles of  wild root foods and cook-stone technology in land-use intensification, as well as on natural site-formation processes that disarticulate archaeological features.  His research has been published in Lithic Technology, Current Research in the Pleistocene, Bulletin of the Texas Archaeological Society, Scientific American: Discovering Archaeology, and  Archaeology of Prehistoric North America: An Encyclopedia.  He teaches Indians of North America, Introduction to Archaeology, Cultural Resources Management, and special topics, e.g., Human Ecology of Northwest North America.

Interests: Hunter-gatherers of North America and temperate environments, geoarchaeology and archaeoecology, heritage resources management, cooperative-research with American Indians

Phone: (979) 862-8541
Office: 204 Anthropology
Email: a-thoms@tamu.edu

Shelley Wachsmann (Associate Professor)

Dr. Wachsmann is currently the Meadows Associate Professor of Biblical Archaeology. Before coming to Texas A&M, he served as the Inspector of Underwater Antiquities for Israel's Department of Antiquities and Museums from 1976 to 1990. As their resident nautical archaeologist, he was responsible for discovering, recording and protecting Israel's nautical heritage. He has conducted extensive research in the Mediterranean Sea, the Sea of Galilee, and the Red Sea. He is the author of two books and numerous scientific and popular articles and teaches courses in Classical and Biblical Archaeology.

Interests: Nautical Archaeology, Biblical Archaeology, Archery; Near East

Phone: (979) 847-9257
Office: 119 Anthropology
Email: wachsmann@tamu.edu

Michael R. Waters (Professor, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans)

Dr. Waters, holder of the Center for the Study of the First Americans Professorship in Liberal Arts, specializes in geoarchaeology (the application of the geosciences to archaeological research), Late Quaternary geology, and Paleoindian archaeology.  Dr. Waters holds a joint appointment with the Department of Geography. He is also interested in the landscape setting of prehistoric agricultural communities. Dr. Waters teaches courses in introductory archaeology, Paleoindian studies, geoarchaeology, introductory physical geography, and Late Quaternary geology.

Interests: Geoarchaeology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, Paleoindian studies; North America, Northeast America

Phone: (979) 845-5246
Office: 309J Anthropology
Email: mwaters@tamu.edu

Cynthia Werner (Associate Professor)

Dr. Werner is a socio-cultural anthropologist who specializes in economic anthropology. Her research is focused on the economic and political transition in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. In particular, she has examined the relationship between gift exchange, feasting, and social networking; women traders and the rise of small-scale trade; and the privatization of agriculture.  Her current recent research projects involve the practice of bride kidnapping in southern Kazakhstan, the perception of risk from nuclear testing in northern Kazakhstan, and the development of international tourism in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Her teaching interests include socio-cultural anthropology, economic anthropology, applied anthropology, kinship and marriage, and the anthropology of tourism. She is also the Society for Economic Anthropology Webmaster.

Interests:  Economic Anthropology; Central Asia/Kazakhstan; Gift Exchange; Social Networks; Development; Kinship and Marriage; Risk and Risk Perceptions

Phone: (979) 847-9254
Office: 224 Anthropology
Email: werner@tamu.edu

Lori E. Wright (Associate Professor)

Dr. Wright specializes in the bioarchaeology of the Ancient Maya. Her current research is focused on social inequality in Maya diet and health through paleopathology and stable isotopic analysis of human skeletons at Tikal, Guatemala. Her previous research projects examined topics such as the human biological evidence for the collapse of the Pasion region of Guatemala, and childhood feeding patterns in highland Guatemala. She also conducts research on Maya burial patterns and has worked with several archaeological projects in both Belize and Guatemala. She teaches courses in introductory anthropology, physical anthropology, bioarchaeology, paleonutrition and mortuary archaeology.

Interests: bioarchaeology, paleodiet, paleopathology, Mesoamerica, mortuary archaeology, inequality

Phone: (979) 862-7665
Office: 316E Anthropology
Email: lwright@tamu.edu