The Department of of Anthropology is pleased to announce that grad student Emily Milton has been awarded a Sigma Xi Grant in Aid of Research for her MA thesis project.
The goal of the project is to develop a method to approximate the season of death for South American camelids (the wild ancestors of the llama and alpaca) found in archaeological sites. To do this, the work matches the isotopic values captured in single teeth to the environmental values which vary between dry and wet seasons of the year. If successful, the project will provide a way for archaeologists to estimate the season(s) that high-altitude archaeological sites in the Central Andes were occupied. Ultimately, the project will improve how archaeologists understand mobility strategies employed by the first Americans to settle the Andes.
Emily is one of only six anthropology students nationwide to be awarded a Sigma Xi grant on this cycle
More information on her research and the research of the Interdisciplinary Working Group on Early Andean Settlement Dynamics and Adaptation can be found at https://www.paleoandes.com/
