I am an anthropological archaeologist and Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Florida State University. My research centers on the development of ancient societies on Pacific Islands, including Hawaiʻi, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and on the relationship between people and their island environments. I specialize in the use of geospatial technology in archaeology: geographic information systems, laser scanning, and remote sensing.
I have published more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and two books. Maps for Time Travelers: How Archaeologists Use Technology to Bring Us Closer to the Past (University of California Press, 2020) received the Society for American Archaeology’s Book Award in 2021. With Patrick V. Kirch I co-authored the second edition of Feathered Gods and Fishhooks: The Archaeology of Ancient Hawaiʻi (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2023). As PI or co-PI I have been awarded more than one million dollars in external funding from the National Science Foundation, the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund, and the National Geographic Society, and my current work in Palau is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
My earliest experiences in archaeology were in high school in the mid-Atlantic, including my home state of Delaware, and in college in the American Southwest. I earned my bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1997, then moved to Aotearoa New Zealand for a master’s degree at the University of Auckland (1999), which is where I began studying the history and cultures of the Pacific. I completed my PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2006 with a dissertation on how changes in Hawaiian society between AD 1250 and 1800 can be read in the history of the communities of Kalaupapa, on Molokaʻi.
Before coming to Florida State I held faculty positions at San José State University, the University of Otago, and Southern Methodist University.