Affiliation: Florida State University
Dr. Jessi Halligan is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University, and a B.A. (2000) from Harvard University in Anthropology with a specialization in Archaeology. Her research specializes in the in hunter-gatherer societies, geoarchaeology, sea level rise and submerged landscape studies, including underwater field methods, which she uses to study submerged Paleoindian sites in Florida.
Perhaps most people think of shipwrecks when underwater archaeology is mentioned, but numerous formerly-terrestrial sites have survived drowning in our freshwater lakes and rivers and on our continental shelves. These sites can even be better preserved than their dry counterparts, and in some cases they can help us answer some of the most pressing questions about people in the past. Thousands of Pleistocene artifacts have been discovered in Florida’s rivers and springs, along with some of the best preserved early sites in the Americas. These sites are challenging archaeological models for the peopling of the Americas, and are providing us with information about the lifeways of early Indigenous peoples in the New World.
