Current Students
Emma Angell
Emma is a master’s student in the MAPA program at Binghamton University. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Central Florida and attended a field school studying Taino occupation in Turks and Caicos. She has since done fieldwork in northern Peru studying petroglyphs from the Archaic period, and in Belize surveying and excavating Maya architecture along the Mopan River Valley. Her master’s thesis will focus on analysis of botanical remains from Peru.
Check out her CV here
Alex Haven
Alex is a masters student in the Public Archaeology program at Binghamton University. They’re interested in paleoethnobotany, preservation of ancient farming techniques, and climate change. Originally from North Carolina, Alex received their BA in Archaeology with Second Major in Biology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a Research Labs of Archaeology alum. They attended field school in Charleston, SC to research plantation era properties and early colonization.
Check out their CV here
Taylor Hummel, MLIS
Taylor (Skarù·ręˀ/Tihré·čhaˀks) is a citizen of the Tuscarora Nation, Bear Clan. She is a MA/PhD student at Binghamton University interested in combining the study of archaeological plant remains from ancestral Tuscarora sites, Tuscarora language, and oral tradition to investigate how her ancestors moved into the inner coastal plain region of North Carolina and Virginia and became a major power in the region. She is also interested in issues surrounding Indigenous data sovereignty, Indigenous heritage management, and information organization practices within archaeological archives.
Check out her CV here
Gabriel Lindsay
Gabriel Lindsay is a Masters in Public Archaeology student at Binghamton University studying the Eastern Agricultural Complex in New York. His primary interests include landscape archaeology and the relationship between plant use and economy. He holds a B.A. in Anthropology & Sociology from Warren Wilson College. Prior fieldwork includes excavation of late precontact and early colonial sites in North Carolina.
Bailey R. Raab, MA
Bailey is a Ph.D. student in the anthropology department at Binghamton University. She earned her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and her M.A. from Northern Illinois University, both in anthropology. Bailey has conducted field work across the Midwest, including in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Illinois, but has also worked in North Dakota and Mexico. Her research interests include paleoethnobotany of Fort Ancient village sites in the Ohio River Valley, the intersection of traditional ecological knowledge and paleoethnobotany, collaborative archaeology, and feminist archaeology. Future research of hers will examine human-plant relationships through time in the Ohio River Valley and what that might mean for communities today.
Check out her CV here
Heidi Strawgate
Heidi is a MAPA student at Binghamton University (BU). She earned her Bachelor of Science in Anthropology from BU and returned to enhance her skills and knowledge in paleoethnobotanical research and collaboration with site-affiliated communities. Her goal is to become a CRM field technician. She attended a field school/job position in Saratoga County, NY, where she did fieldwork at the Philip Schuyler Estate. There, she gained insight into the lives of the various populations that had lived there and communicated with the public about the excavation. She digitized The Actuncan Project wall profiles as a volunteer. For her thesis, she wants to compare botanical remains from the Northeast United States and Peru to research distinctions and similarities between the remains and what this says about the diet of the people who lived there, and much more.
Check out her CV here
LAFF Alumni
Cinthia M. Campos
Cinthia, a PhD candidate, came to Binghamton University as a Clark Diversity Fellow. She spent the fall semester 2018 excavating a pre-Hispanic site in Atil, Sonora, Mexico. Her dissertation analyzes paleoethnobotanical remains from this site to detect changes in cultural practices, or patterns of distribution of taxa in domestic spaces and special features. Cinthia’s goal is to become a professor to train the next generation of students and continue her research combining her passions for cave archaeology and paleoethnobotany.
Check out her CV here
Scott Ferrara
Scott completed in his master’s thesis in 2020, which focused on the impact of colonialism through a paleoethnobotanical analysis of the Swart Collection, an assemblage of soils collected from various archaeological sites in the Mohawk Valley, NY, ranging from the Early Woodland to the historic period. Scott is currently pursuing his PhD at CUNY and publishing a book on witchcraft in NY state.
Maureen Folk
Maureen Folk completed her master's thesis in 2020 focused on understanding foodways and agricultural adaptation of a group of Tiwanaku migrants who relocated from the highlands to the coast of Peru around AD 1100. Maureen is currently the Program and Outreach Coordinator at the Chapman Museum in Glenn Falls, NY.
Brooke Maybee
Brooke completed her MA at Binghamton University in 2022. She is used ArcGIS to map Eucalyptus clusters in the north Lake Titicaca Basin, revealing how Spanish Colonialism permeated terraces and other traditional landscapes. She analyzed paleoethnobotanical remains from a colonial mining site in Peru to understand the diets of marginalized laborers under Inka and Spanish rule.
Katharine Nusbaum
Katharine is a PhD student at Binghamton University studying the archaeology and paleoethnobotany of Northeastern North America. She has done prior work in California archaeology studying deep history Native American sites and Indigenous landscape management practices. She is carried out MA thesis research on the intersection of primary education and archaeology. Her current interests include landscape archaeology, heritage conservation, community engagement and collaborative indigenous archaeology.
Check out her CV here
Anna Patchen
Anna Patchen earned her Master's in Public Archaeology from Binghamton University in 2019. Her research focused on plant use in the Archaic Period southeastern United States.
Audria Ruscitti
Audria Ruscitti is a master's student in the MAPA program at Binghamton University using 3D models of archaeological artifacts in public school education. She holds degrees in Journalism and Anthropology, and attended field school in Western Mongolia. In addition, she is certified in forensic facial reconstruction sculpture. Her interests include human osteology, ethnomycology, experimental archaeology, colonial Mexico, and East Asia. Her primary interest lies with foodways and the evolution of cuisine as it moves through time and over distance.