Recent Projects

My primary interest is zooarchaeology, the study of animal remains from archaeological sites. I draw on evolutionary ecology to study predator-prey interactions and consider human demography, technological change and independent changes in paleoenvironments that affect prey abundance.

Compiling 10,000+ yr long fish records in the Columbia River system (in collaboration with Jim Chatters) and Owens Valley, California (with Michael Delacorte). Species abundance fluctuates greatly, probably due to both climatic and human factors.	Articulated salmon vertebrae at The Dalles Roadcut, a 9000 year old archaeological site on the Columbia River.
Analyzing and compiling other faunal project records for faunal remains in the Lower Columbia-Portland Basin. This work is establishing the importance of backwater, resident freshwater fishes (minnows and suckers, esp.) to Native American subsistence and highlighting the importance of backwater habitats (rather than the mainstem Columbia) in providing fishery resources View/Download MS PowerPoint Presentation (4.4MB). I am also linking pre-European contact faunal records with historic accounts to develop a baseline on the kinds of fishes present in the system prior to extensive landscape modification and introductions of exotic species View/Download MS PowerPoint Presentation (17.7MB).	Map of the Lower Columbia (Pettigrew 1990). (Click to Enlarge Image)
Mummified Seals, Dry Valleys of Antarctica (with Mike Etnier). Pending research project that will document a sample of the several hundred mummified remains present throughout the region. Such work will use the remains (radiocarbon dates, DNA and other studies) to reconstruct paleo-environmental change (both of marine conditions and inland basins) and document the history of several species (crabeater seal especially) for which we lack long-term records.	Mummified seal remains, Dry Valleys, Antarctica.
Compiling faunal records from the Puget Sound/Gulf of Georgia Region (collaborating with Sarah Campbell) to examine questions of resource depression and resource intensification as part of a larger project looking at subsistence stability and change in the Pacific Northwest.
Continuing projects in the Great Basin of Western North America. Most recently I presented results of a study on the fish remains from a site south of Pyramid Lake, Nevada, at the 2004 Great Basin Anthropology Conference. This project poses questions about the importance of storage and fish transport and highlights how little we really know about the ancient use of fish in arid regions of the American West.	Mummified fish, cui ui (Chasmistes cujus), from a cave in Northwest Nevada (Click to Enlarge Image).