Emily Milton

  • Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology
  • Environmental Science and Policy Program Fellow

Contact

Research Interests

    environmental, alpine, and desert archaeology; Pleistocene and Holocene archaeology; the Anthropocene; historical ecology; feminist methods and theories; isotope baselines; geospatial and archaeological sciences; museum collections research; activist scholarship

Biographical Info

Emily is a dual-major Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology and the Environmental Science and Policy Program (ESPP) researching early human-environment dynamics of high-elevation and coastal desert landscapes in the Central Andes of Peru. She's interested in various climatic periods from the Terminal Pleistocene to the Anthropocene but generally focuses on seasonal landscape use and change. For her dissertation, Emily is testing how various isotopic methods can reveal new information about forager lifeways using case studies from the lomas and puna ecosystems.

Emily is involved in collaborative team projects studying the Terminal Pleistocene sites, Cuncaicha rock shelter and Quebrada Jaguay 280, and three Early- and Middle-Holocene sites, Lomas-1, Panaulauca, and Pachamachay.

Emily has a cat named TC, who is perfect.

Current Research Projects

Biocultural exploration of the Lomas-1 site, Nazca, Perú
New excavations at Pachamachay and Panaulauca, Junín, Perú
Chronology, seasonality, and inter-zonal connections in a Terminal Pleistocene-Early Holocene settlement system, southern Perú

Publications

2023    Milton, Emily B. P., Jordi A. Rivera Prince, and Melina Seabrook.
Reconciling Identity Narratives: Creating Collaborative Space with Isotopic Baselines. In Press. Invited Commentary. Bioarchaeology International. Edited volume on stable isotopes and identity by Matt Velasco and Sara Juengst.
La versión en español: Reconciliando narrativas de identidad: Creando espacio de colaboración con bases de referencia isotópicas.
 
2023    Meinekat, Sarah, Emily B. P. Milton, Brett Furlotte, Sonia Zarrillo, and Kurt Rademaker.
Fire as High-Elevation Cold Adaptation: An Evaluation of Fuels and Terminal Pleistocene Combustion in the Central Andes. Quaternary Science Reviews 316: 22 pages.
 
2022    Milton, Emily B. P., Nathan Stansell, Hervé Bocherens, Annalis Brownlee, Döbereiner Chala-Aldana, and Kurt Rademaker.
Examining Surface Water δ18O and δ2H Values in the Western Central Andes: A Watershed Moment for Anthropological Mobility Studies. Journal of Archaeological Science 146: 12 pages.
 
2022    Biggs, Jack, Jeff Burnett, Rhian Dunn, Emily B. P. Milton, and Amber Plemons.
Campus Archaeology Program at Michigan State University: Reevaluating our Program During a Pandemic. Invited Article. The SAA Archaeological Record.
Dept. of Anthropology