Meet Our Lecturers - Archaeological Institute of America

Meet Our Lecturers

J. M. Adovasio received his undergraduate degree in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1965 and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Utah in 1970. Since that time, he has served as a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution (1972 - 1973) and as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh (1973 - 1990). In 1990, Dr. Adovasio moved to Erie, Pennsylvania to assume the positions of Chairman of the Department of Anthropology/Archaeology and Director of Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute. He has since been appointed Provost, Senior Counselor to the President, and Dean of the Zurn School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
Though probably best known for his state-of-the-art excavations at Meadowcroft Rockshelter, southwestern Pennsylvania, and his attendant contributions to the highly controversial Pre-Clovis/Clovis debate, Adovasio is generally considered to be the world’s leading authority in the arena of perishable artifact analysis. Since 1970, he has published more than 400 books, or book chapters, manuscripts, and technical papers. These notably include The First Americans (with Jake Page) and the Invisible Sex (with Olga Soffer and Jake Page). Most recently he has served as the co-principal investigator of a multi-year NOAA sponsored project to locate and excavate submerged Paleoindian sites on the inundated continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico.

Read our interview with James Adovasio

James Aimers

James Aimers is with the State University of New York at Geneseo, and holds his degrees from Tulane University (Ph.D.) and Trent University. His research interests are Maya archaeology, especially ceramics and architecture, and anthropological approaches to material culture, religion, technology and gender. He has published and presented his work widely, and is currently the Ceramicist for the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project, the Ka’kabish Archaeological Project, and the Lamanai Archaeological Project.

Susan Heuck Allen

Susan Heuck Allen is Visiting Scholar in the Department of Classics at Brown University. She received her Ph.D. in Classics and Classical Archaeology from Brown University, after earning degrees from the University of Cincinnati and Smith College. Her areas of expertise - Troy and the history of archaeology - were combined in her book, Finding the Walls of Troy: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik (University of California Press -- Berkley, 1999). She is also the author of Excavating Our Past: Perspectives on the History of the Archaeological Institute of America, which is a part of the 2002 AIA Monograph Series, and recently published Classical Spies: American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece (University of Michigan Press, 2011). Dr. Allen has held positions at Smith College, and Clark and Yale Universities, and has done fieldwork in Cyprus, Israel, and Knossos. She was named a Mellon Fellow in 2008, and has held a number of other fellowships.

Bettina Arnold

Bettina Arnold obtained her BA in Archaeology from Yale University and her MA and PhD degrees in Anthropology from Harvard University. She is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she served as the Co-Director of the Center for Celtic Studies from 2000-2009 and Coordinator of the Museum Studies Graduate Program from 1996-2012. She is the Editor of the on-line peer-reviewed journal e-Keltoi. Her area of expertise is the pre-Roman European Iron Age, but in the course of her career she has participated in archaeological projects ranging from the Middle Bronze Age through the early medieval period in western Europe. Since 1999 she has co-directed a research project in southwest-Germany focused on the burial record of the early Iron Age Heuneburg hillfort and its environs; two burial mounds associated with this site were excavated by the Landscape of Ancestors project between 1999 and 2002. Finds from those excavations were featured in Die Welt der Kelten: Zentren der Macht - Kostbarkeiten der Kunst, a major exhibition in Stuttgart in 2012-2013. Her research has focused on the archaeological interpretation and analysis of complex societies, particularly as reflected in mortuary contexts; material culture as a symbolic system and a means of communicating social relationships; the archaeological interpretation of prehistoric gender configurations in burial contexts; and the socio-political history of archaeology and museum collecting, especially their involvement in identity construction in 19th and 20th century nationalist and ethnic movements in Europe and the United States. Recent publications include: Bettina Arnold (2012) The lake dwelling diaspora and natural history museums: identity, collecting and ethics, in Francesco Menotti and Aidan O'Sullivan (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Wetland Archaeology and Beyond, pp. 865-881. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Bettina Arnold (2012) The Vix Princess redux: a retrospective on European Iron Age gender and mortuary studies, in Lourdes Prados Torreira (ed.) La Arqueología funeraria desde una perspectiva de género, pp. 215-232. Madrid: UA Ediciones; Derek B. Counts and Bettina Arnold (eds) (2010) The Master of Animals in Old World Iconography (Budapest: Archaeolingua).

Amy Barron

Amy Barron is an independent scholar and Curator at the Scugog Shores Museum in Ontario. She holds her degrees from the University of Toronto (Ph.D.) and the University of Guelph. Her areas of specialization are Late Assyria, particularly Assyrian arms and armor, palaces and propaganda of the Neo-Assyrian kings, and the history of archaeology. She has done fieldwork at Tel Tuneinir in Syria, as well as at Tel Jezreel in Israel and Newark Castle in England.

Featured Lecturer

Morag Kersel is with the Department of Anthropology at DePaul University, and holds her degrees from Cambridge University (Ph.D.), the University of Georgia (M.H.P.), the University of Toronto (M.A... Read More