Paul Szpak
Paul Szpak's research uses stable isotope analysis to better understand how humans have interacted with and impacted their environment, with a particular emphasis on the analysis of archaeological materials. His graduate students are working on projects related to paleoecology of the Arctic, Andean agropastoral systems, and methodological aspects of stable isotope analysis as applied in archaeological contexts.
Lisa Janz
Lisa Janz co-directs a Mongolian-Canadian field project, Gobi-Steppe Neolithic, based in eastern Mongolia and the Gobi Desert. Her work investigates how climate change and resulting societal changes influenced diet, land-use, and the adoption of domesticates. Her ongoing projects include “Diet Breadth and Landscape Ecology”, which investigates shifts in Pleistocene-Holocene ecology and how it influenced diet choice through Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age; “Frontiers in Sedentism and Domestication”, focused on excavation of the only known sedentary Neolithic site in Mongolia and using geoarchaeology, aDna and stable isotopes to explore the possibility of wild cattle management, and “Expanding Frontier and Building the Sphere”, studying the role of trade in the rise of Bronze Age pastoralism in East Asia.
Helen Haines
Helen Haines was first introduced to the Ka’kabish archaeological site in 1995 when she participated in a survey of the site as part of the Maya Research Program. She completed a three year Post-Doctoral Research at The Field Museum in Chicago and returned to Belize in 2004. After assessing the many logistics of working at the site, she founded the Ka’kabish Archaeological Research Project (KARP) in 2007. The project has grown exponentially over the years and currently supports an undergraduate field school with both MA and doctoral research. Date generated from this project contributes to numerous subsidiary research projects.
Gyles Iannone
Gyles Iannone is currently the Director of the Socio-ecological Entanglement in Tropical Societies (SETS) project, and the Integrated Socio-Ecological History of Residential Patterning, Agricultural Practices and Water Management at the “Classical” Burmese (Bama) Capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th-14th Century CE) Project (IRAW@ Bagan).