Aside from working on a myriad of projects in western United States,
Mike is involved with field work in China with Shandong
and Yale Universities on the "type locality" Longshan culture (ca. 3000-4000
years old). Much of the work involved the classic geoarchaeological
tasks such as site extent, depth, characteristics, integrity, resources,
landscape and paleoenvironmental modeling. Higher order tasks were conducted
to test the hypothesis that Longshan culture represents a hierarchical
society rather than chiefdom. Testing the hypothesis involved
locating/describing/identifying unique cultural features such as rammed
earth walls (Hon to), activity areas (pottery, farming, etc), burials,
and social stratification (housing). We hope to present a progress report
at the SAA.
Michael
earned his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona Department of Geosciences
in 1994. His dissertation is entitled: Paleoecology and Taphonomy
of Vertebrate Faunas from the Anza-Borrego Desert of California.
He also works as an Assistant Lecturer in the Departments of Zoology and
Physiology at the University of Wyoming and as the Collections Manager,
Departmental Scientific Collections, Department of Geology and Geophysics
at the University of Wyoming. Michael has over 15 years experience and
is well versed in vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology, paleoecology,
taphonomy, stratigtraphy, sedimentation, clastic and carbonate petrology
and basin analysis.
Pictures of a few of our geoarchaeology colleagues!!