Lambda Alpha Officers

President: Dolores Navarro

Vice-President: Melissa Miller

Secretary: Emily Caselman

Treasurer: Kim Ivy

Webmaster: Katie Williams

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Danielle Macdonald

Graduate Students

Colleen Bell

Colleen is a Doctoral Candidate in Archaeology and has conducted field work in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, New Hampshire and Armenia. She recieved her MA from the University of Tulsa and is currently perusing her PhD. While her areas of interest are use-wear, lithic and debitage analysis, flint knapping, experimental archaeology, cognitive evolution, early language, and brain imaging, her current research is in cognitive evolution. Working with the Visual Neuroscience Lab at the University of Oklahoma, Colleen is using EEG to map brain activity associated with stone tool production and testing the hypothesis that language and technological elaboration developed along parallel trends.

Emily Caselman

Emily is a second year MA student in the Anthropology department at the University of Tulsa. Her area of focus is Mesoamerican Archaeology. She is currently studying the diversity of the Mesoamerican ballgame and tracking the changes spatially and temporally. She is interested in the various cultures of Mesoamerica, and the significance of museum collections to current archaeological studies.

Angela Cooper

Angela is a second year PhD student in the Anthropology program. She graduated from the University of Tulsa with a Master of Arts in Anthropology in 2012. Most of her research and field experience is related to the cultural development at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site and surrounding sites in the uplands of the American Bottom. Angela is interested in how the use of public outreach in archaeology can help unite and preserve the history of communities. Currently, Angela is researching how museums(mainstream, tribal, moundsite) perpetuate or combat Native American stereotypes in interpretation of collections, exhibition development, and visitor education and experience.

Bobi Deere

Bobi enrolled into the Ph.D. program in Archaeology at TU in 2013, and is currently studying Cultural Transmission in the MIIS (Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere) by following Busycon Whelk shell as it moved throughout the hypothesized trade corridors in the Southeastern US, ca. 900 – 1650 A.D. Bobi’s research interests include GIS (Geographical Information Systems), Iconography, and elemental analysis using the PXRF (handheld x-ray fluorescence instrument).

Marco Martinez Galicia

Marco is a Masters student in Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. He is interested in the archaeology of Casas Grandes in Northwest Mexico. Over the past few years he was involved in multiple projects throughout Mexico, ranging from human geography to governmental contract archaeology. He is currently studying the plainware manufacture at Casas Grandes during the Medio Period.

James Hartley

Jim is currently a PhD. student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. His research focuses on Paleoindians and Pleistocene megafauna in the New World. He is interested in Paleoindian subsistence and the nature of the Pleistocene extinctions, using megafauna fossils as a proxy for environmental changes in the Late Pleistocene. Jim’s graduate research focused on Clovis-age and pre-Clovis-age megafauna fossils (from both archaeological and paleontological sites) in the American Southwest.

Kim Ivey

Kim Ivey is a master’s student in cultural anthropology at the University of Tulsa, where she received her BA in Anthropology. Her studies focus on medical and psychological anthropology, examining how physical and mental healthcare is approached by various cultures. The working title of her thesis is, “Attitudes and Beliefs about Schizophrenia in the Rural Midwest.” Kim hopes her research will shed light on the unique mental healthcare needs in rural areas.

Melissa Miller

Melissa is a doctoral student in archaeology and paleoanthropology. She is interested in lithics, tool use in human evolution, and the origins of laterality. She has conducted fieldwork in Oklahoma, Mexico, and Kenya.

Veronica Mraz

Veronica is currently a PhD. candidate in anthropology focusing on archaeology. Her main research is in the Great Plains and focuses on lithic technology. She is also interested in Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction, and medieval archaeology. Her dissertation work focuses on understanding and quantifying the effects of thermal alteration on chert in relation to flint knapping processes and how we can quantitatively identify heat treated materials in the archaeological record.

Dolores Dávalos Navarro

Dolores recieved her BA from Univesidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí and her MA from the University of Tulsa. Her thesis was on the Architecture of the late Pueblo in southern Southwest and Northwest Mexico. She is now a first year PhD. student.

Alicia Odewale

Alicia is a PhD. Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. She specializes in African Diaspora archaeology in the Caribbean and Southeastern United States with a theoretical focus in human behavioral ecology. Her dissertation entitled “Living among Presidents and Kings: Enslaved Africans Coping with Risk in Service to the Elite” compares the material culture of royal slaves in the Danish West Indies (modern day Virgin Islands) and presidential slaves in Virginia. She examines the natural and social environments affecting enslaved communities in both regions. This research also analyzes different strategies used by these groups to overcome the challenges they faced in service to the most elite factions of society, namely Presidents and Kings.

Kathryn Ragan

Kathryn is a second year Master's student focusing on a local collection of Clovis Points in collaboration with the Gilcrease Museum. Her research interests include Paleoindians, lithics, cultural evolution, technological evolution, sourcing, settlement patterns and subsistence.

Emily Schumacher

Emily is a second year M.A. student in archaeology. Her primary area of interest is military and historical archaeology. Her current thesis research is centered on the educational and scientific value of historical artifacts recovered from the Danish West India-Guinea Company Warehouse at Christiansted National Historic Site, Christiansted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands.

Katie Williams

Katie received her B.A and M.A. in history from the University of West Georgia and is currently in the third year of her PhD. in archaeology at TU. Katie has conducted field work in Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma and Armenia. Katie's current research focuses on human adaptations to social and environmental change and variability, specifically shifts in political power and organization. Katie’s dissertation work, titled “Coalition: Risk Theory and the Creation of the Creek Nation,” focuses on why the Creek people coalesced into a nation in the mid-eighteenth century.

Undergraduates

coming soon

Upcoming Events

  • Surface Metrology Group

    Our next meeting, Thursday, March 3rd, at 12:30pm. This time we will be discussing chewing in study and experiment. All are welcome! If you would like to join or check out the readings, please contact either Dr. Danielle MacDonald or Dr. Miriam Belmaker.

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  • Beyond Subsistence

    Lambda Alpha Weclomes Dr. Lauren Norman from the University of Kansas, presenting her work on "Interpretations of Past Animal and Human Lifeways from Arctic Arcgaeofauna." Lunch provided, in the siminar room at 12pm.

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  • Unstoppable Machines and Unrelenting Thoughts

    The University of Tulsa's Department of Anthropology and SSIG welcome Dr. Harold Odden, “Unstoppable machines and unrelenting thoughts: Cultural conceptions and management of insomnia in the U.S.”

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