Anthony P. Farace (MS Archaeological Science 2019, UCL, London; MA Anthropology, 2018, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale) is working toward a PhD in Anthropology here at UF. His research focuses on Mississippian ceramic production, consumption, and use in the Ohio-Mississippi river confluence region. He looks to implement the use of petrographic thin-section and geochemical analysis to learn more about how crafting knowledge and learning was transmitted in the area during the rise of large influential polities such as the Cahokia and Kincaid sites in the early Mississippian period (approx. 900-1500 AD)

Amanda Hall (MA History, 2016, UNF, Jacksonville) is working toward a PhD in Anthropology with a concentration in Southeastern archaeology here at UF under the tutelage of Dr. Charles Cobb. Her interests are Native American ceramics from the Mississippian, Protocontact, and Contact Periods. Her current project focuses on Lamar-like clay balls (or objects) associated with the mission period that were excavated during the 1950s-1980s from various sites in the Florida panhandle. Research focuses on the manufacture, function, and distribution of the objects and assesses the ways they might have served as part of the Native American sociopolitical landscape.

Ashley M. Rutkoski (MA Anthropology, 2017, Kent State University; BA Anthropology and Classical Studies, University of Akron) is working toward a PhD in Anthropology here at UF. Her research explores the invention and adoption of ceramic technology using material science approaches (e.g., engineering, compositional, and experimental analyses, etc.) More recently, she has been working on understanding the development of the Pensacola Culture and considering the complex process of raw material selection. The Pensacola region’s variability in clay sources and increased access to different types of marine mollusks, which were only available by trade or long-distance acquisition to the interior Mississippian heartland, presents a unique study area to use these approaches for identifying the various factors that lead to the selection of specific tempering agents.

Domenique Sorresso (MS Archaeological Science, 2018, UCL, London) is working toward a PhD in Anthropology with a concentration in Archaeology here at UF. Her research focuses on using ceramic petrography and chemical composition techniques to understand ceramic technology and provenance. Domenique is working with Dr. Charles Cobb to apply these methods to ceramic assemblages dating to the Mississippian period from modern-day Mississippi and Tennessee. (https://florida.academia.edu/DomeniqueSorresso).

Hannah Toombs (BA Anthropology 2016, BA Spanish 2016, Penn State) is working towards a PhD in Anthropology and Latin American Studies here at UF. Her project focuses on contemporary pottery production by the Lenca in western Honduras. In the CTL, Hannah is conducting technofunctional analyses of Lenca pottery alongside archaeological pottery from the Maya site of Cerros in Belize. By comparing archaeological and modern specimens, she is learning how to recognize the characteristic markers of these hand-built wares.

Dr. Lindsay Bloch, Courtesy Faculty
Florida Museum of Natural History
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-7800, USA
E-mail: lbloch@ufl.edu
https://florida.academia.edu/LindsayBloch

Lindsay is former collections manager for the Ceramic Technology Laboratory and Florida Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Her research focuses on craft production, trade, and exchange in historic and prehistoric contexts, examined through the lens of utilitarian ceramics. She has conducted analyses on collections from the southeastern U.S., Great Britain, and the Caribbean using a variety of methods including LA-ICP-MS and XRF to discover new information about these often visually generic artifacts.

Mark C. Donop (PhD Anthropology 2017, UF, Gainesville) completed a dissertation focused on the long-lived Palmetto Mound (8LV2) in Levy County and has included a techno-functional analysis and 3D imaging of the pottery in the large and diverse Decatur Pittman Collection donated to the FLMNH in 1916. Donop’s work at the museum has been combined with fieldwork at the site and research at the South Florida Museum in Bradenton. (https://florida.academia.edu/MarkDonop). Mark was the recipient of the 2017 Bullen Award for student research at the Florida Museum. Mark is the Deputy Director of the Office of Archaeological Research and a Curator of Archaeological Collections at the University of Alabama Museums, Moundville.

C. Trevor Duke (PhD Anthropology, 2022, UF, Gainesville) completed a dissertation focused on ceramic vessel form, function, and provenance of Deptford through Safety Harbor period pottery from Safford Mound (8Pi3), Pillsbury Mound (8Ma30), and other mound sites along the Florida Gulf Coast. His work with Dr. Neill Wallis seeks to assess the ways in which the expansion of religious traditions affected social, political, and ceremonial practices during the middle-to-late Woodland Period. Trevor is now the Curator and Director of the NAGPRA Program at the University of Alabama.

Zack Gilmore (PhD Anthropology 2014, UF, Gainesville), conducted petrographic analysis in the lab of fiber-tempered Orange pottery from the Silver Glen complex (Marion and Lake counties, Florida) and fired clay reference samples from across peninsular Florida for his dissertation project (http://rollins.academia.edu/ZackaryGilmore). From 2015 to 2016, Zack conducted additional petrographic analysis in the lab of Stallings fiber-tempered pottery and associated fired clays from the Savannah River Valley (Georgia and South Carolina) as part of an NSF-funded postdoctoral research project with the UF Department of Anthropology. Zack is currently an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rollins College, Winter Park, FL.

Kristen Hall (BA Anthropology 2013, UF, Gainesville) wrote an undergraduate thesis here at UF (“Reexamining Suwannee Valley Pottery: a Typological and Formal Analysis of Pottery in Feature I at Parnell Mound”) focused on the analysis of Suwannee Valley ceramics. She is currently employed by the Gainesville Police Department.

 

Erin Harris-Parks (BA/BA Anthropology and Geology 2012, UF, Gainesville), conducted petrographic analysis in the lab on Weeden Island pottery from the Palmetto Mound site (8LV2) for her Senior Honor’s Thesis. Erin went on to receive an MS degree in Geosciences from the University of Arizona in 2014 and is currently employed as an exploration geologist in the petroleum industry.

 

Emily Kracht (BA Anthropology, BS Chemistry, and minor in Mass Communications 2021, UF, Gainesville) began volunteering in FLMNH in February 2019 and began working in the CTL in the fall of 2019. Emily is specifically interested in the application of chemistry to archaeological materials, especially in island and coastal environments. She was awarded summa cum laude for her Undergraduate Honor’s Thesis in Anthropology: A Compositional Analysis of Bahamian and Caribbean Ceramics to Determine Provenance and Production Methods. She is currently working to digitize Caribbean pottery collections.

Charly Lollis (BA Anthropology 2015, UF, Gainesville), conducted an experimental replication study of St. John chalky ware pottery in the lab using swamp muck as temper for her Undergraduate Honor’s Thesis at UF.  Charly graduated in 2020 from the Museum Studies MA program at George Washington University in Washington, DC. (http://florida.academia.edu/CharlyLollis)

 

Claudette Jazmine Lopez (BA Anthropology and Classical Studies, Classical Civilizations 2021, UF, Gainesville) began volunteering at the CTL in February 2019. She was awarded summa cum laude for her Undergraduate Honor’s Thesis in Anthropology: Investigating the Relationship of Clay Color and Its Provenance in Florida, which was conducted in the CTL. Claudette is now enrolled in the Archaeological Sciences MA program at Cambridge University.

Casie Fort is a fourth-year undergraduate student at the University of Florida majoring in Anthropology with minors in African Studies and Latin American Studies. She began volunteering at the CTL in Spring of 2022. Her studies focus on East African archaeological ceramics, and she is currently working on an Honors Thesis using pXRF technology to learn about the nature of human occupation at a rockshelter site in southern Somalia by looking at the composition of pottery pastes.

Dr. Gerald (Jerry) Kidder joined the lab as a volunteer in 2013. Jerry is a retired UF Soils Science professor and brought many skills to bear on processing the CTL’s former backlog of unprocessed clay samples. The lab is now all caught up with the backlog. In 2015, Jerry was awarded the Florida Museum’s Volunteer of the Year Award—Collections Division for his efforts in the CTL.

 

Amanda Wagner-Pelkey (BA Art History, minor Anthropology 2019, UF, Gainesville)  has interests in the form, function and history of art of the pre-contact Americas and indigenous arts of the Colonial Americas. She is currently enrolled in the Museum Studies MA program at UF.