| Introducing Environmental Archaeology | ||
| EA History | ||
| Staff & Students | ||
| Staff Publications | ||
| EA In The News | ||
| EA Comparative Databases | ||
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Environmental Archaeology Program Staff
Curator The curator responsible for the Environmental Archaeology Program is Assistant Curator Dr. Kitty F. Emery, an environmental archaeologist who specializes in ancient Mesoamerican peoples and environments. Emery's Emery's research emphasizes the importance of linking archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, and geoarchaeological data to reconstruct ancient human/environment relationships. Emery's publications are listed here or can be downloaded from her research site 
At the Guatemalan site of Motul de San Jose Emery combines analyses of animal and plant remains from archaeological middens, with chemical analyses of soils and archaeological occupation surfaces to reconstruct a complete picture of how the ancient Maya acquired, used, and discarded the natural resources from the rainforests of the Mesoamerican tropics. 
At the Guatemalan site of Motul de San Jose Emery combines analyses of animal and plant remains from archaeological middens, with chemical analyses of soils and archaeological occupation surfaces to reconstruct a complete picture of how the ancient Maya acquired, used, and discarded the natural resources from the rainforests of the Mesoamerican tropics. Emery's technical speciality is zooarchaeology, and her extensive research with animal remains from many Central American sites is allowing her to combine detailed zooarchaeological data with information from iconographic images, ethnohistoric texts, and modern legends and knowledge to create a digital database of information about the ancient Maya and the animals of their world. This project has begun with the compilation of skeletal images from many of the Maya species. Contact Dr. Emery for more information on the availability of this compilation. 
Curator Emeritus Curator Emeritus Dr. Elizabeth S. Wing continues to be active in the Environmental Archaeology Program. She initiated a program of zooarchaeology in 1961 and over the years guided the division through its evolution to the Environmental Archaeology program. Dr. Wing has recently become a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2007). 
Wing continues her research on the human uses of animals in the southeastern North America, the origins and spread of domestic animals in the Andes, and the overexploitation of animals as well as management of captive and domestic animals in the Caribbean. This research requires the collection of specimens of modern animals to use as a reference for identification of the fragmentary remains excavated from the archaeological sites. One of her recent papers deals specifically with ancient overfishing, a parallel to modern problems in the world's oceans: Wing, Stephen. R. and Elizabeth S. Wing 2001 Prehistoric fisheries in the Caribbean. Coral Reefs 20:1-8. More of Wing's publications can be found here. 
Collection Manager The management of the Environmental Archaeology collections is the responsibility of the collection manager, Mr. Irvy Quitmyer, who oversees the use of the collection by visitors, students, and museum employees. The collection manager assists in the establishment of protocols for the care of both the modern zoological and botanical comparative specimens and the zooarchaeological, archaeobotanical, and anthropogenic soils collections. This includes maintenance of a computer database which includes all of the comparative animal collection, all archaeopedological data, and about two thirds of the zooarchaeological data. The computer database for the botanical and archaeobotanical collections are being developed. Zooarchaeologist Irv Quitmyer, collection manager since 2001, works on the animal remains from sites in southeastern North America and the circum-Caribbean region. His research specialty is the study of season of and age at death of animals incorporated into archaeological samples. Many but not all of these studies are based on incremental growth structures of mollusks, particularly bivalves such as the hard clam or quahog. These studies identify the season of death of organisms and therefore also the time of the year they were gathered or fished. They also illustrate the stress on animal populations from human exploitation. Quitmyer's publications can be found here 
Environmental Archaeology Program Archaeobotanist Another pivotal staff member in the Environmental Archaeology Program is the archaeobotanist, Donna Ruhl, who oversees the management of the EAP archaeobotanical collections on a volunteer basis while also conducting a variety of research projects. Her specialty is the study of macrobotanical remains such as seeds and wood excavated from archaeological sites primarily in southeastern North America. She has worked extensively on plant materials collected from Spanish colonial sites across La Florida. 
Her research has generated data on sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth-century Spanish and Native American contexts to glean information about colonial landscape changes and transculturation primarily via plant introductions, exchanges, foodways, and economic strategies. Another research focus is understanding Florida's prehistoric peoples' plant husbandry practices and how these impacted or were impacted by paleoclimatic changes. Ruhl's publications can be found here. 
Environmental Archaeology Program Archaeopedologist Sylvia Scudder, who was the collection manager for over 20 years, is also a soils scientist. She has developed the field of archaeopedology (anthropogenic soils) in this program. 
Studies of archaeopedology provide important information about the geographic extent of archaeological deposits, conditions favorable for preservation of organic remains, and past environmental conditions and landscape changes. The research involves chemical analysis of phosphates, calcium, and other soil constituents, and soil particle characteristics such as grain size and conditions. A paper describing the contributions these studies make to a better understanding of the past is: Scudder, Sylvia, John E. Foss, and Mary E. Collins. 1996. Soil Science and Archaeology, written by Sylvia Scudder, John E. Foss, and Mary E. Collins and published in 1996 in the journal Advances in Agronomy (57:1-75). Other publications by Scudder can be found here. 
Environmental Archaeology Affiliate and Assistant Scientist Karen Jo Walker is a collection manager for the Florida Archaeology Program of the Florida Museum and is also a faculty assistant scientist conducting research with the South Florida Archaeology Program, the Randell Research Center and the Environmental Archaeology Program. 
She has worked extensively on the archaeology and the zooarchaeology of shell midden sites in coastal southwest Florida. She has examined the animal remains, both vertebrates and invertebrates, from many closely dated contexts from a series of prehistoric sites dating from A.D. 0-1700. With these data, combined with geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical information, she is charting storm events, inlet dynamics, sea-level, and climate changes. 
Affiliated Researchers The Environmental Archaeology Program is pleased to count among its number several affiliate researchers whose work provides important contributions to our research program. Two of our most frequent lab visitors and dedicated researchers are Susan deFrance and Elizabeth Reitz. Susan deFrance is an Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Florida. She is continuing work she began as a graduate student specializing in zooarchaeology in the Environmental Archaeology Program. This work involves extensive research on faunal samples from sites excavated on various West Indian islands, including her Masters paper on the animal remains excavated from an early ceramic age site on the north coast of Puerto Rico. Subsequently she did a study of the animal remains associated with Spanish wineries situated along the Moquegua Valley in Peru. She is continuing her research on early coastal Peruvian sites. She contributed along with several other authors to a 1998 paper entitled Early maritime economy and El Niņo events at Quebrada Tacahuay, Peru, published in the journal Science (Volume 281, pages 1833-1835). 
Another such scholar and affiliate curator is Elizabeth Reitz, who until 2002 was the Director of the Georgia Museum of Natural History and now is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. She uses comparative specimens appropriate for the study of Caribbean and Peruvian faunal samples, and her samples are from pre-contact through Colonial sites. The book written by Reitz and Curator Emeritus Wing, is one of the primary zooarchaeological texts available today: (2008) Zooarchaeology. Cambridge Manuals in Archaeology, 2nd Edition. Cambridge University Press, New York. The Environmental Archaeology Program StudentsThe collections and assistance in research are available for scholars both in and outside of the University of Florida. Consequently, a number of undergraduate and graduate students work on individual projects using the collections. Some of these studies are the basis of honors theses, Masters theses, and Ph.D. dissertations. An introductory class in zooarchaeology is taught every other year by Dr. Susan deFrance through the Anthropology Department at the University of Florida. The class acquaints students with research procedures involved in zooarchaeology and gives them an opportunity to analyze a faunal sample from an archaeological site. Drs. deFrance and Emery also offer advanced and specialized zooarchaeology classes. Dr. Emery offers two classes in environmental archaeology, one a lab methods class (Environmental Archaeology) and the other a discussion class (Lessons from Ancient Environments). Some of the EAP Current Graduate Students:
Name: Elyse Anderson 
Name: Nicole Cannarozzi 
Name: Lizzy Hare 
Name: Erol Kavountzis 
Name: Michael Kaye 
Name: Michelle J. LeFebvre 
Name: Ashley E. Sharpe 
Name: Erin Kennedy Thornton
Name: Lisa Tromley
Name: Ryan VanDyke Some Past Environmental Archaeology Graduate Students
Name: Tria Ellison
Name: Sharyn Jones
Name: Tanya Peres |
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