North American Program
North American Archaeologists
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George R. Milner, Professor, Midwest and Southeast U.S., human osteology
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Lee Newsom, Associate Professor (recent MacArthur Prize winner), Caribbean and Southeastern U.S., environmental archaeology
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Dean R. Snow, Professor, Northeastern U.S., paleodemography
Additional Department Archaeologists
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Susan Toby Evans, Adjunct Professor, Mesoamerica
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Kenneth Hirth, Professor, Mesoamerica
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Claire McHale Milner, Museum Curator, Great Lakes
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William T. Sanders, Professor Emeritus, Mesoamerica
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David Webster, Professor, Mesoamerica
Student Support
Students receive three-year (entering with a B.A. or B.S.) or two-year (entering with a MA) commitments of tuition and stipend (in academic year 2005 2006, a standard stipend will be in excess of $14,000). The funding picture, however, is much better than that. For example, during academic years 1997 2002 all students in their first five years received full-year stipends and tuition from departmental and university funding, graduate fellowships, or external research grants.
Recent Books on North America
Case Studies in Environmental Archaeology (Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology)
The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America
For More Information
George R. Milner: ost@psu.edu
Lee Newsom: lan12@psu.edu
Dean R. Snow: drs17@psu.edu
| Email: | anth@psu.edu |
| Telephone: | 814-865-2509 |
| Mail: | Wendy Fultz |
| 409 Carpenter Building | |
| Department of Anthropoogy | |
| The Pennsylvania State University | |
| University Park, PA 16802 |
Research Emphases
Geographical: Eastern Woodlands and Caribbean: from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and the Atlantic to the Mississippi. 
Cultural and Temporal: Paleoindians to settled hunter-gatherers and village agriculturists, especially late prehistoric tribal confederacies in the Northeast and chiefdoms in the Midwest, Southeast, and Caribbean.
Topical: The department emphasizes an integrated approach to demography and health (human osteology), subsistence and environment (paleoethnobotany), human land use, and settlement patterns. Topics of research include, among others, the origins of plant and animal domestication, the creation of intensively human-modified environments, and the impact of new ways of life on human population dynamics, health, and interaction (including warfare).
Training: Emphasis is placed on Archaeobiology, which encompasses the unified study of human, animal, and plant remains, along with accompanying cultural materials. It includes the application of geospatial information systems (GIS) to explain long-term patterns of natural and cultural landscape use. Faculty provide intensive training in human osteology and archaeobotany in fully equipped labs, and students have access to state-of-the-art computer facilities, including GIS.
Broad Background: A broad background is essential for a well-rounded anthropologist, and at Penn State students can take advantage of the North American faculty’s 
experience in Denmark, Egypt, and the Mariana Islands in western Oceania (Milner); Mesoamerica (Snow and Newsom); and the Caribbean and Amazonia (Newsom). Other archaeology faculty have personal experience in Central and South America and elsewhere in the world.
