The SAC is made up of student volunteers with different specializations and studying various topics in archaeology.
Chair - Patrick Johnson
Patrick Johnson, a PhD candidate at the College of William and Mary, received his BA from Beloit College and MA from the University of West Florida. His dissertation about eighteenth-century Yamasees of Spanish Florida uses historical documents, pottery, iconography, and objects of adornment to explore the role of rhetoric and material culture in colonial Native American political and daily life. He posts on William and Mary’s graduate student anthropology blog, on Academic.edu and Twitter.
Webmaster - Matthew P. Rooney
Matthew Rooney, a PhD student at University of Florida, received an MA in applied anthropology and BAs in anthropology and history from University of South Florida. He is currently working on projects in northeastern Mississippi and northern Florida during proto-historic and European contact periods. He has a web site, an Academia.edu profile, and a Google Scholar page.
Member at Large - Janene Johnston
Janene Johnston, a current graduate student at the University of West Florida, received her B.A. in Anthropology from Eastern Kentucky University. Her thesis research focuses on Natural Bridge Battlefield, an 1865 Civil War site in Florida’s panhandle. Janene’s field school at James Madison’s Montpelier sparked an interest in public outreach and she has since worked for the Center for American Archeology, the Florida Public Archaeology Network, and Montpelier.
Member at Large - Michelle Rathgaber
Michelle Rathgaber is a PhD candidate at the University of Arkansas. She received her BS in Anthropology and Zoology from the University of Wisconsin and her MSc in Osteoarchaeology from Bournemouth University. Her dissertation work involves the Middle to Late Mississippian period in northeast Arkansas and its association with the timing of the large scale New Madrid seismic zone earthquakes in that area around the AD1400’s-1500’s.
Member at Large - Karen Stevens
Karen Stevens is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kentucky. She graduated from Appalachian State University, with a B.A. in Anthropology and a B.S. in Chemistry. Her current research focuses on Archaic period hunters and gatherers of the Green River Valley of Kentucky. Her dissertation work will examine the impact of paleoenvironmental factors, as seen through isotope signatures in freshwater shell remains, and hunter-gatherer economics and sexual divisions of labor, as contributing factors in the cessation of shellfish accumulation in the Green River Valley.
