My research interests include the relationship between ethnogenesis, gender, craft production, and long-distance exchange in the contexts of culture contact scenarios, with a focus on Cahokia and its northern hinterland. I am also interested in the religious practices and iconography of Mississippian cultural groups and the implications that variations in these practices have for understanding social and cultural relationships within and between groups. I employ a rigorous set of laboratory and statistical analyses for generating cross cultural comparative data patterns. When these patterns are interpreted through theoretical frameworks of entanglement, materiality, and practice theory, we link data to lived experience to paint a picture of how different communities fit within these largescale cultural phenomena. My methodological skills include archaeosurveying, topographical and spatial analysis, magnetic (gradiometry) and soil resistivity surveys, X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry in shell sourcing, Reflectance Transformation Imaging for analysis of ceramic design motifs, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

My current research investigates changing identities and ideologies during the Woodland to Mississippian transition in the Midsouth and Midwest through a comparative stylistic and iconographic analysis of decorated pottery vessels from Cahokia and its northern hinterlands. I have also worked on many projects on St. Catherines Island, GA with the Nels Nelson North American Archaeology Lab at the American Museum of Natural History from 2006 - 2011.