People

My work explores the long-term Indigenous histories of eastern North America, with particular attention to institutions of governance and social networks. I draw on a range of quantitative tools including social network analysis, Bayesian chronological modeling, archaeological geophysics, GIS, and scientific approaches to ceramic analysis to investigate the emergence, structure, and maintenance of collective institutions,institutional arrangements, and the network foundations of governance. Leveraging interdisciplinary frameworks on governance, institutions, and collective action,my work addresses the tension between emergent forms of sociopolitical/socioeconomic inequality and its mediation by the formation of collective institutions and democratic mechanisms in non-state, non-Western societies.By way of explicit collaboration with descendant communities, my work also aims to link these political histories to the contemporary traditions, practices, and politics of Indigenous Nations who have been historically excluded from the practice and process of archaeological narrative building.