Student Accomplishments
Our students, undergraduate and graduate alike, are successful in many ways. They have been awarded scholarships and fellowships, obtained research grants, and landed their dream jobs. Here are some of the most recent accomplishments. Congratulations to all!
2021
Stephanie Berger (2021 PhD in Anthropology) defended her doctoral dissertation and graduated in May.
Aidan Paul (2021 BA in Archaeology) won the award for best undergraduate Honors Thesis in Archaeology, titled “The Styles and Distributions of Chunkey Stones in the Eastern Woodlands.”
Sierra Roark (doctoral student in Anthropology) featured in Carolina Arts & Sciences Magazine.
2020
Mary Glenn Krause (2020 BA in Archaeology) won the award for best undergraduate Honors Thesis in Archaeology, titled “Faithful unto Death: The Dog Burials of the Gaston Site in Halifax County, North Carolina.”
Steph Berger (doctoral student in Anthropology) received a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation.
Anna Graham (doctoral student in Anthropology) received a one-year fellowship starting in the fall from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Christine Mikeska (doctoral student in Anthropology) was awarded the Society for American Archaeology’s Dienje Kenyon Fellowship for her research project, “Feeding the People, Feeding the Gods: Animal Provisioning at the Bronze Age Hittite Capital of Hattuša.”
Gabrielle Purcell (doctoral student in Anthropology) was awarded a Sequoyah Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate School.
Gracie Riehm (doctoral student in Anthropology) was awarded a Graduate School Summer Research Fellowship for her dissertation research on the 18th-century Natchez polity and a UNC Digital Dissertation Award and the 2020 Charles Hudson Award by the Southeastern Archaeological Conference.
Sierra Roark (doctoral student in Anthropology) won the Middle Atlantic Archaeology Conference student paper competition. She also received a Southern Studies Predissertation Prospectus Fellowship from Wilson Library and the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum Public History Fellowship from UNC’s Initiative for the Public Good to create a digital exhibit based on archival research on the use of herbal medicines by African Americans in the South.
2019
Dr. Elizabeth Berger (2017 PhD in Anthropology) research on Ming Dynasty skeletons reveal secrets of foot-binding.
2018
Sierra Roark (doctoral student in Anthropology) was given the Martha and Julian Williams Award for Best Historical Archaeology [student] Paper at the Archeological Society of Virginia’s annual meeting for her paper “Encountering the Trees of the English New World: A Look at the Benefits of Wood Charcoal Analysis.”
Abigail Gancz (RLA lab assistant) was featured on Sketchfab’s Women on Sketchfab Blog.
Maia Dedrick (doctoral student in Anthropology) received a Mellon Dissertation Fellowship from the Institute for the Study of the Americas at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Dr. David Cranford (2018 PhD in Anthropology) accepted an Assistant State Archaeologist position at the Office of State Archaeology, North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Abigail Gancz (RLA lab assistant) was featured in Women in Science Wednesdays (Endeavors).
Katie Tardio (doctoral student in Classical Archaeology) received the John R. Coleman Traveling Fellowship from the Archaeological Institute of America for dissertation research at Instituto Catalán de Arqueología Clásica in Tarragona, Spain. She will be working on faunal remains from the ancient Roman city of Tarraco and surrounding villas to examine how the Roman conquest impacted animal economies in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula.
2017
Abigail Gancz (RLA lab assistant) was featured in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History’s article, Is 3D Technology the Key to Preserving Indigenous Cultures?
Hannah Holtzman (Archaeology Major) was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most honored college honorary society.
Lacey Hunter (Archaeology Major) was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most honored college honorary society.
Caroline Fowler (Archaeology Major) was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most honored college honorary society.
Sierra Roark (doctoral student in Anthropology) was given the US and Canada Regional Award in Classical Studies and Archaeology by The Undergraduate Awards for her exceptional Honors Thesis at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Drs. Sara Becker (2012 PhD in Anthropology) and Sara Juengst (2015 PhD in Anthropology) co-edited the 2017 Special Issue Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association titled “The Bioarchaeology of Community.”
Dr. Lindsay Bloch (2015 PhD in Anthropology) accepted the Collections Manager position in the Ceramic Technology Laboratory and Florida Archaeology Collections, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida.
Dr. Christopher Rodning (2004 PhD in Anthropology) has been promoted to Full Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University.
Sarah Hilker (doctoral student in Classical Archaeology) received the Emily Townsend Vermeule Fellowship from the the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Janice and Herbert Benario Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South to support dissertation field work on the project, “From Houses to Settlements: A Consideration of Mycenaean Social Structure.”
Maia Dedrick (doctoral student in Anthropology) received a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation.
Maggie Morgan-Smith (doctoral student in Anthropology) received a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Graduate School to finishing writing about socioeconomic relationships between Maya-speaking landowners and laborers in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the impact of those relationships on community abandonment at the site of Rancho Kiuic in Yucatán, México.
Emily Gray (Archaeology Major) received a Platt Excavation Fellowship from the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) to help fund her summer participation in the Omrit Settlement Excavation Project.
Catharine Judson (doctoral student in Classical Archaeology) received a Timothy P. Mooney Fellowship from the Research Laboratories of Archaeology to pursue her dissertation research on settlement development on the island of Crete during the Early Iron Age (12th-8th c. BCE).
Gabby Purcell (doctoral student in Anthropology) received a Timothy P. Mooney Fellowship from the Research Laboratories of Archaeology and a Summer Research Grant from the UNC Center for the Study of the American South to pursue her dissertation research that explores how European-introduced foods were adopted into Cherokee households during the Colonial period (1540-1838), and whether these foods had an impact on traditional foodways and culture.
Christopher LaMack (Archaeology Major) received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) from the UNC Office for Undergraduate Research to create a sitewide 3D model of Town Creek Indian Mound, a North Carolina Historic Site and National Historic Landmark.
Lacey Hunter (Archaeology Minor) received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) from the UNC Office for Undergraduate Research to travel to the National Archives in London, UK, to review documents pertaining to her research on black Loyalists at the close of the American Revolution.
Abigail Gancz (RLA lab assistant) received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) from the UNC Office for Undergraduate Research and a summer internship at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
Cicek Beeby (doctoral student in Classical Archaeology) received a Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to aid field research on the topic, “Spatial Narratives of Mortuary Landscapes in Early Iron Age Greece.”
Dr. Mary Beth Fitts (2016 PhD in Anthropology) had her book “Fit for War: Sustenance and Order in the Mid-Eighteenth-Century Catawba Nation” published by the University of Florida Press. [Read more…]
Dr. Elizabeth Berger (2017 PhD in Anthropology) accepted a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Sara Juengst (2015 PhD in Anthropology) accepted an Assistant Professor of Anthropology position at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Dr. Erin Nelson (2016 PhD in Anthropology) accepted an Assistant Professor of Anthropology position at the University of South Alabama.
Kara Walker (RLA lab assistant) was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most honored college honor society.
Katie Tardio (doctoral student in Classics) received the Dienje Kenyon Memorial Fellowship for a woman engaged in zooarchaeological research from the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) to research changes in animal economies in the Roman provinces of the Iberian peninsula.
Tine Rassalle (doctoral student in Ancient Mediterranean Religions) received the Joseph Callaway Award for best Graduate Paper in Biblical Archaeology from the American Schools of Oriental Research/Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion (ASOR/SECSOR).
Dr. Mary Beth Fitts (2016 PhD in Anthropology) received a 2017 Graduate Education Advancement Board (GEAB) Impact Award for her dissertation research, “Defending and Provisioning the Catawba Nation: An Archaeology of the Mid-Eighteenth-Century Communities at Nation Ford.” [Read more…]
2016, Fall
Dr. Mary Beth Fitts (2016 PhD in Anthropology) accepted an Assistant State Archaeologist position at the Office of State Archaeology, North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Anna Semon (doctoral student in Anthropology) was appointed as Lab Director of the Nels Nelson North American Archaeology Laboratory at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Dr. Barker Farris (2012 PhD in Anthropology) accepted the State Archaeologist position for the island of Maui.
Mallory Melton (2014 BA in Archaeology) was awarded first place in the 2016 Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) Student Paper Competition.
Dr. Daniel Schindler (2017 PhD in Classical Archaeology) received a Timothy P. Mooney Fellowship from the Research Laboratories of Archaeology, the UNC Carolina Center for Jewish Studies Graduate Fellowship, and the Carol and Eric Meyers Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research to complete his dissertation titled “Late Roman and Byzantine Galilee: A Provincial Case Study from the Perspective of the Imported and Common Pottery.”