Investigating Food Preparation Strategies within the Pompeian Home in the 1st Century CE

Between July and September of 2019, I conducted dissertation research supported by a grant from the Stahl Endowment of the Archaeological Research Facility investigating how the inhabitants of 1st-century CE Pompeii (Italy) prepared their daily meals and what factors influenced their choice of cooking techniques.

Marking Ownership on Ainu Objects: Museum Collections in the United States

Ikupasuy (prayer sticks)

In preparation for the upcoming 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan has sought to strengthen representation and scholarship about the Ainu, the Indigenous people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. Part of these arrangements includes the construction of a new Ainu museum, which will draw on collections of Ainu material culture internationally.

Creative Approaches to Engaged Research in Archaeology

Anita Collage

Making My Way Down the Acequia is a hand-made magazine (zine) made by the high-school interns of the Berkeley-Abiquiú Collaborative Archaeology (BACA) project with production assistance by myself and artist Brea Weinreb. The interns brought their own knowledge about their family histories and the high desert landscape together with archaeological skills while collaborating on the 2017 season of archaeological fieldwork surveying el Pueblo de Abiquiú’s historic acequia irrigation ditches.

Community Networks and Endurance Tactics at the Stanford Arboretum Chinese Quarters

Arboretum Chinese Quarters

My 2017 Stahl Award supported the care of artifacts recovered during the completion of excavations at Stanford University’s Arboretum Chinese Quarters (ACQ). Excavations carried out between November 2016 and June 2017, through a combination of Berkeley, Stanford, and local volunteer teams, recovered several thousand artifacts dating to the site’s occupation by Chinese employees of the Stanford family between 1876 and 1925.

Samuel Adams Limekiln Archaeology Project

Samuel Adams Limekiln Archaeology Project

Stahl funds contributed to David’s 2017 dissertation field research at the Samuel Adams Limekilns on Wilder Ranch State Park in Santa Cruz County, California. The goal of this project is to better understand the everyday lives and relations of a diverse set of laborers who lived and worked at the site from 1858 until 1906. Of particular interest are the ways in which broader changes to California, including widespread immigration, industrialization, and transportation advancements affected power dynamics and social relations between different labor groups.

Human-Environment Interaction in Nicaragua: A Historical Ecology Approach

Coring on the banks of Lake Cocibolca, Nicaragua

My research takes an interdisciplinary approach to human-environment interaction, considering individual, community and regional scales in a socially complex landscape. My research area, pre-Hispanic Nicaragua, is an ideal location for this study because of its extensive ecological variation at both local and regional scales, allowing for the study of multiscalar variability across the landscape.

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