Meet the 2018 CAP Fellows
The 2018-2019 school year has begun! Dr. Stacey Camp has taken over as director of the program, following Dr. Lynne Goldstein’s retirement from MSU. We will be continuing to work on several ongoing projects, as well as begin several new ones. Please meet our 2018-2019 CAP group!
CAMPUS ARCHAEOLOGY PROGRAM DIRECTOR:
Dr. Stacey Camp: I’m Dr. Stacey Camp, the new Director of the MSU Campus Archaeology Program. I’m excited to take over for Dr. Lynne Goldstein and am looking forward to working with our new and seasoned CAP Fellows. We have a good deal planned for this year, including focusing on publishing our research, training in social media, and working with our robust archaeological collections. We will also continue to do our favorite outreach events, including Apparitions and Archaeology, Michigan Archaeology Day, partnering with the MSU Food Truck, and MSU Science Fest. We will be having a Campus Archaeology Program field school next summer, which we will post about on our social media. I am excited to see where this year takes us!
Campus Archaeologist
Autumn Painter: Autumn is a fourth year Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology. This May, Autumn began her first term as the Campus Archaeologist. Her research focuses on prehistoric foodways and social interaction through the analysis of animal bones in the Midwestern United States. This year Autumn will be working with other fellows on their projects, promoting our new social media campaign, and working to complete reports from past excavations.
Campus archaeology program fellows:
Mari Isa: Mari is a fifth year Ph.D. student in Anthropology. For her dissertation research, she studies the effect of biological and mechanical factors on skeletal fracture patterns. Mari is also involved in a bioarchaeology project investigating the potential social and biological impacts of malaria in Early Medieval Tuscany. Mari is excited to be returning for her third year as a CAP fellow. She hopes to work on various projects including developing new outreach activities that will allow CAP to engage people of all ages with archaeology and with our research on MSU’s campus.
Jeff Burnett: Jeff is a first year Anthropology PhD. student and a half-time CAP fellow. His past studies have focused on the archaeology of the African Diaspora in North America, with an interest in the process of freedom and how social constructs effect lived experiences. He is also interested in the production of historical knowledge and the utility of collaborative archaeology to diversify this production. Jeff is excited to join the Campus Archaeology Program, hoping to learn from their tradition of public archaeology and outreach in their community.
Jack Biggs: Jack is a fifth year Anthropology Ph.D. student and a returning CAP fellow. His research is focused on growth and development of the ancient Maya of Central America and how social identity and childhood affect an individual’s biology. He is also a big proponent of using 3D modeling (via photogrammetry) as a teaching and curation method and will be creating models of artifacts from CAP excavations so that they can be digitally preserved.
Jeff Painter: Jeff Painter is a fifth year Ph.D. student at Michigan State University who is returning for his third year as a Campus Archaeology Fellow. He is a prehistoric archaeologist focused on foodways, ceramics, and migration in the late prehistoric Midwest. This year, his CAP research project will focus on the historic sawmill/sugar house on MSU’s campus.
Amber Plemons: Amber is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology, focusing in Biological Anthropology. Her research focuses on understanding the causative forces of human variation in craniofacial morphology, specifically the impacts of climate and genetics. This year, Amber will be working to build a database for artifacts recovered across Michigan State University. This database will allow information of all previously recovered material to be housed in a central location with their temporal and geographic location information, artifact type, and images, making future research more readily available.
Susan Kooiman: Susan is returning for her final semester as both a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology and a CAP fellow. Her dissertation research focuses on pottery use, cooking practices, and diet of precontact Indigenous groups in the Upper Great Lakes of North America. This year, she will be finishing up the Campus Foodways project, a collaborative investigation (with Autumn Painter) into the archaeology and history of food at MSU. This includes expansion of collaborations with the MSU Food Truck and MSU Student Organic Farm, and disseminating the results of the project through publication, conference presentations, and other outreach opportunities.