University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Adjunct Lecturer & Research Associate, Research Laboratories of Archaeology

Research Associate

Thesis Title: Migration and Mobility in Imperial Rome

About

Academic Background

I earned my Bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia in Latin and Classical Archaeology in 1999, with a thesis project completed at Montpelier, the home of James Madison, under the direction of James Deetz.

In 2002, I completed a Master's degree in Physical Anthropology at East Carolina University under the direction of Dale Hutchinson. My thesis was an analysis of population distance among the Native Americans of the North Carolina coastal plain during the Late Woodland period (800-1600 AD).

In 2005, I completed a Master's degree in Classical Archaeology at UNC under the direction of Nicola Terrenato. My thesis involved a critique of the current practice of bioarchaeology by Roman archaeologists and presented suggestions for how human skeletal remains can help us answer questions about the classical world.

From February through September 2007, I completed my dissertation fieldwork in Rome, Italy, on two collections curated by the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma. This project was supervised by Dale Hutchinson (UNC Anthropology) and Nicola Terrenato (U Mich Classics), and it was funded externally by the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation and internally by UNC's Center for Global Initiatives, Graduate School, and Research Labs of Archaeology. My dissertation, Migration and Mobility in Imperial Rome, is the culmination of a three-year-long project to identify and understand lower-class migrants and slaves in Rome during the Empire (1st-3rd centuries AD).

Areas of Interest

My areas of interest are bioarchaeology, palaeopathology, classical archaeology, biological distance, and stable isotope analysis. I'm specifically interested in theorizing migration in antiquity, including transnational and diasporic approaches, and working on integrating bioarchaeology and transnationalism in Imperial Rome.

Current Projects

As the bioarchaeologist for the Gabii Project, run by Nic Terrenato (U Mich) and Jeffrey Becker (UNC), I am responsible for analysis of the human skeletal remains found at this Rome-area site. 

Contact Information