I'm an archaeologist who teaches, researches, and writes about precontact archaeology in North America, particularly in the American Southwest and in New England. As of Fall 2026, I will be teaching anthropology at Southern Connecticut State University.

My research focuses on great houses built by Ancestral Puebloans in northern New Mexico and southwest Colorado in the 11th-13th centuries C.E. The sites I study, including the great houses of Aztec Ruins National Monument, were associated with Chaco Canyon's monumental architecture and its broad regional influence. I am primarily specialized as a ceramic analyst, but my work on these rich assemblages has also led me into research on paleoethnobotany, adobe architecture, ornaments, color, and political structure.

My interests also include Indigenous history, cultural heritage, and cultural property law. I have written about topics as diverse as the legal issues surrounding looted art from WWII, the philosophical underpinnings of pseudoarchaeology, and environmental leave-no-trace ethics in the Instagram era.

Beyond my academic pursuits, I've done a lot of other things! I've worked in museums, including a maritime history museum and a museum of archaeology in New England. I was the Managing Editor of Mainsheet, a scholarly journal of maritime studies. I practiced law for a decade before moving into archaeology. I've traveled to many places around the world and lived in eight states and also in Germany, Austria, Canada, and Belgium.