I am a Southeastern archaeologist with over 50 years of fieldwork experience in the Lower Mississippi Valley and the Gulf Coastal Plain. Over the years my students and I have conducted major projects in the Natchez Bluffs and Yazoo Bluffs of Mississippi, in Louisiana, and in southeast Alabama. I have traveled the world studying the role of salt in prehistory and history.

I grew up in Guilderland, New York just outside of Albany, and was educated at Harvard College (B.A. 1973) and Brown University (M.A. 1975, Ph.D. 1979). In the 1990s I taught at Harvard and also served as Assistant Director at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. I was the curator of the permanent exhibition in the Peabody’s Hall of the North American Indian, which is now in its 32nd year, and I also helped create the Museum Studies Program in Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education.

​When I came to the University of Alabama in 1991 I served a stint as Director of the Alabama Museum of Natural History and continue to be the museum’s Curator of Gulf Coast Archaeology. In 1993 I became a Full Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Alabama and for many years served as Director of Graduate Studies in the department, advisor for the Anthropology Club, and Chair of the department. I have had numerous teaching honors over the years, including a College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Commitment to Students Award (2000), a Distinguished Teaching Fellowship (2004-07), and a National Alumni Association, Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award (2008).

I was President of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference between1992-94 and served three terms as Chair of the Society for American Archaeology National Historic Landmark Committee. I also was a member of the National Historic Landmarks Committee of the National Park System Advisory Board between 1999 and 2005 and both Vice President (2008-09) and President (2009-13) of the Association for Gravestone Studies. In 2002 I started “The Marking Graves Project”, a long-term study of the historic and modern cemeteries of Tuscaloosa County in Alabama, a project that has involved a multitude of graduate and undergraduate students.