Rautman, Alison E.
(Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1990)
(Visiting) Associate Professor, Associate Chair Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA)
rautman@msu.edu

354 Baker Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
(517)355-5149 (office)
(517)432-2363 (fax)

Archaeology, ecology, egalitarian societies, geoarchaeology, ceramic petrography; North America, Southwest

Web site

ALISON E. RAUTMAN, My research addresses issues in economic anthropology and the archaeology of the American Southwest. I am especially interested in the economic and social changes associated with the transition from foraging to farming that occurred from about A.D. 900 to 1350 among people living in what is now central New Mexico. I am examining particularly changes in how people in middle-range societies coped with economic risk, in their use of space within and between households, and in the gendered division of labor during this time of population aggregation and political re-organization.

I am currently studying the development of corporate decision-making groups across the pithouse to pueblo transition. My work has been supported by research grants from the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, The National Geographic Society, the USDA Forest Service, and the American Philosophical Society. The American Association of University Women has also helped fund my research in the form of a postdoctoral fellowship.

I also have a background in geology. I have studied archaeological site formation at various sites in Germany and the USA, and have done a number of technical studies of ceramic petrography from archaeological sites in Bolivia, Israel, Egypt, and India, in collaboration with others.

I serve as Associate Chair in the Department of Anthropology at MSU, and I enjoy teaching general anthropological and archaeological method and theory in introductory anthropology and biocultural evolution courses (ANP 101, ANP 202, ISS 220). I also teach economic anthropology (ANP 424) and cultural ecology (as ISS 310). When the Lord of the Rings movies were popular, I developed a seminar on “The Archaeology of Middle Earth” in which students applied archaeological method and theory to questions of Middle Earth’s (imagined) prehistory. Undergraduate and graduate students have participated in my research primarily in the context of summer archaeological field schools and also as volunteer field workers; students have also pursued individual laboratory research using excavated material.

A few recent publications include:

• (Thomas R. Rocek and Alison E. Rautman) “No Peripheral Vision: A View of the Concepts of Heartland and Hinterland from South-central New Mexico” University of Arizona Press, in press (2006).
• (Rautman, Alison E. and Todd W. Fenton) A Case of Historic Cannibalism in the American West: Implications for Southwestern Archaeology. American Antiquity 70:321-341 (2005)
• (John D. Speth and Alison E. Rautman) Bison Hunting at the Henderson Site. In Life on the Periphery: Economic Change in Late Prehistoric Southeastern New Mexico, edited by John D. Speth, Chapter 4 (pp. 107-206). University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology Memoirs. Ann Arbor, MI. (2004)
• Rautman, Alison E. Population Aggregation, Community Organization, and Plaza Oriented Pueblos in the American Southwest. Journal of Field Archaeology 27: 271-283 (2000).
• Rautman, Alison E. (editor and contributor) Reading the Body: Representations and Remains in the Archaeological Record. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (2000).
• Rautman, Alison E. Hierarchy and Heterarchy in the American Southwest: A Comment on McGuire and Saitta (1996). American Antiquity 63: 325-333 (1998).
• Rautman, Alison E. The Pithouse to Pueblo Transition in the American Southwest: Implications for Gender Roles. In Women in Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica, edited by Cheryl Claassen and Rosemary A. Joyce, pp. 100-118. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia (1997).
• Rautman, Alison E. Resource Variability, Risk, and the Structure of Social Networks: An Example from the Prehistoric Southwest. American Antiquity 58: 403-424 (1993).