Anthropology undergraduate student Allison Thomson has been awarded a Dean’s Assistantship from the MSU College of Social Science. The project is titled “Utilizing GIS to Visualize Bioarchaeological Data,” and funding will take place over the 2024-25 academic year.

This project aims to improve accessibility and visualization of archaeological data by using Microsoft Access to build a database comprising burial data from excavation records and past skeletal analyses from the Maya site of Chau Hiix, Belize. The data will be linked to a variety of contextual information, including specific geo-referenced locations at the site. This complex dataset eventually will be incorporated into a Geographic Information System (GIS), which will serve as a searchable digital database for researchers and facilitate comparative analyses.

For more information on the Dean’s Assistantship and other awards offered by the MSU College of Social Science, see this link.