Ph.D. Candidate
Areas of Interest
Indian Ocean trade; East & Southeast Asian history; Religious migration; Colonial contact; Landscape archaeology; GIS; 3D visualizations; Archaeoacoustics
Research Interests & Fieldwork
My research focuses on integrating new media applications within an archaeological framework in order to address questions about socio-cultural exchange and sound studies in the Philippines during Spanish contact. For the past two summers I’ve worked in the Ifugao Province of the Philippines. The Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP) is a multi-year research project that explores changes in terrace construction techniques used for taro and rice cultivation over the past 2,000 years. The Ifugao agricultural terraces are recognized by UNESCO as a living cultural landscape of outstanding universal value and aesthetic beauty. Less well understood however is the history of the terraces and how shifts in agricultural strategies in this region affected community organization. IAP has a particular interest in understanding how local communities have managed these terraces over time.
New media tools, including 3D visualization software, provide malleable environments that allow for experimental investigations in landscape change though time. By controlling the physics of 3D environments, which are constructed from survey and excavation data, I am investigating correlations between changes in social organization and urban planning evidenced in the archaeological and historical records that are within the auditory range of Catholic church bells on Luzon and compare those patterns to community organization outside the church bell auditory zone.
Additionally, I am committed to promoting archaeology through web applications. I’m currently the website and database developer for the Syrian Heritage Initiative (SHI), a cooperative agreement between ASOR and the U.S. Department of State that is designed to document, protect, and preserve the cultural heritage of war-torn Syria. Hundreds of significant heritage sites have been damaged since fighting began in 2011.