Department of Anthropology

Eastern North America

program description

Eastern North America is one of several regions of the ancient world where a complete sequence is found from mobile hunter-gatherer societies to agriculturally based chiefdoms.  Few parts of the world have as much excavated archaeological and osteological material.   As a result, Eastern North America provides unique opportunities to investigate long-term population trends and movement, the transition to agriculture, and the origins of sociopolitical complexity.

Eastern North American Archaeologists

George R. Milner, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology: Eastern North America (Midwest and Southeast, Archaic, Mississippian), settlement patterns, land use, human osteology (paleodemography, paleopathology)
Claire McHale Milner, Ph.D., Director of Exhibits and Museum Curator: Eastern North America (Great Lakes and Northeast); ceramic studies; museum studies
Lee Newsom, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Anthropology: Eastern North America (Gulf Coast), Caribbean, Amazonia, paleoethnobotany, plant domestication, human-environment interactions as adaptive systems, long-term change in environmental systems
Dean R. Snow, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology: Eastern North America (Northeast, Iroquois), settlement patterns, paleodemography, archaeoinformatics

Little Salt Spring, FL, (Newsom Research Site)

SELECTED BOOKS BY PENN STATE FACULTY

• Case Studies in Environmental Archaeology (Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology)
• The Iroquois
• In Mohawk Country
• The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America
• On Land and Sea

research emphasis

Geographical:  Eastern Woodlands (from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and the Atlantic to the Mississippi) and Caribbean.
Cultural:  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 program emphasizes an integrated approach to demography and health, long-term population trends, subsistence and environment, human land use, and settlement patterns.  Topics of research include, among others, the origins of plant 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 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 paleoethnobotany in fully equipped labs, and students have access to state-of-the-art computer facilities, including GIS, digital imaging, database management, and other cybertools.
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 Amazonia (Newsom). 

Mesoamerican Faculty in Other Departments
Timothy Murtha, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture. GIS visualization, The Maya
Matthew Restall, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Colonial Latin American History, Anthropology, and Women's Studies, Department of History. Ethnohistory, The Maya