California

Peter Nelson (Coast Miwok and tribal citizen of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria) received his PhD in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and is Assistant Professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and Ethnic Studies. Professor Nelson works at the intersection of anthropological archaeology, Indigenous environmental studies, and Native American Studies in collaboration with tribal nations and Indigenous peoples in California and abroad on issues of cultural heritage preservation, settler colonialism, climate change, and Indigenous landscape management.

Bruce Owen is a Research Associate at the Archaeological Research Facility at UC Berkeley and an Archaeologist/Editor at the Anthropological Studies Center (ASC) at Sonoma State University. He has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from UCLA (1993) and taught in the Anthropology department at Sonoma State through 2017.

Research Interests:  My research interests involve prehistoric materials conveyance, the ways in which different modes of acquisition, production and use are reflected in the archaeological record, and the relationship between these material signatures and past social, exchange, and ceremonial systems of different scales. My analytical specialization in x-ray fluorescence spectrometry has been directed toward investigating contrasts and continuities in material acquisition through time in far western North America- California and the Great Basin in particular.

Scott Byram has conducted extensive research on intertidal wood stake fishing weir sites on the Northwest Coast of North America. Byram’s research integrates indigenous archaeology with ethnohistory. Recent articles address the effects of colonization on the Yaquina Tribe, the massive loss of shell mounds to early coastal road construction, and the effects of the 1700 A.D. Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and tsunami on Native communities of the Oregon coast.