Elizabeth Straub is a PhD student at the University of Kentucky. She received her MS in anthropology and BS in anthropology and archaeology at the University of Indianapolis. Her current research focuses on indigenous ceramics, identity, and interaction during the Late Precontact and Spanish Mission Periods on the Georgia coast. Her other archaeological interests include teaching, ethics, and public outreach.

Autumn Melby, a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, received her BS in anthropology from Appalachian State University. Her dissertation research examines how households within the southern periphery of influence of the Cahokia site in the American Bottom region responded to the presumed 'collapse' of the center during the 13th century A.D. Her other research interests include ceramic technology, paleoethnobotany, museum studies, and public archaeology.

Tara Skipton, an MA student at Florida State University, received her BA in Anthropology and in Geography from the University of Florida. Her thesis will focus on refining least-cost path methodologies to better reflect human movement, and, in the future, this resulting method will be applied to understand movement of marginal communities in Southeastern colonial contexts.

Sarah Harken is an MA student at Southern Illinois University. She received her BA at the University of Northern Iowa and has worked in Cultural Resource Management in Wisconsin and Illinois prior to returning to school for her graduate degree. She is interested in Mississippian ceramics and is planning to study the elemental composition of ceramic material from the American Bottom region in Illinois using portable X-Ray Fluorescence technology.