Previous Lab Member

Kelly Ervin works at the Poverty Point World Heritage site in Epps, Louisiana. She studies hunter-gatherer complexity using geoarchaeological techniques and spatial analysis. She also works to understand the changing scales of human-environment interactions during the Holocene through paleo-environmental reconstruction and GIS modeling.

My research explores the material remnants of social, economic, and political institutions among small-scale societies. I am specifically interested in the entanglement of ritual/religious and economic institutions, as well as the transition from complex hunter-gathering to a heavier reliance on domesticated food production.

My research mainly focuses on the process of agricultural intensification from the late Neolithic (3,000 B.C.- 2,000 B.C.) to the Han dynasty (206 B.C. – 220 A.D.) in the Central Plain of China, and the evolution of the environment within this timespan. Various lines of evidence suggest a system of intensive agriculture developed in the Han dynasty.

S. Margaret Spivey is a Ph.D. Candidate here in the Washington University in St. Louis Department of Anthropology under the advisement of professor T.R. Kidder. Her current research examines the composition of households, as well as the intersection between iconography and human-animal interactions, at the Fort Center site (8GL13) in south Florida. Beyond her academic work, Ms. Spivey is an Assistant Chief of the Upper Georgia Tribal Town of the Pee Dee Indian Nation of Beaver Creek.

Regional Expertise: China; Asia
Methodological Expertise: Field Geoarchaeology, Micromorphology
Languages: English, Chinese