I am currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Anthropology of American University in Washington DC. My dissertation research is on the inarticulate Whites of the 19th century Upland Georgia. The inarticulate Whites are a group of European descent people not represented in written history. I have both a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Bachelor of Science in Anthropology from Kennesaw State University. I earned a Master of Arts in Anthropology from Trent University, Canada, after successfully defending my Master thesis at the Cayo Center for Employment Training (CET) in San Ignacio, Belize. My Master thesis research is based on the excavation I had conducted at the Eastern Court of Pacbitun, Belize. Upon receiving my graduate degree, I then became a yearlong Graduate Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Where I was a member of the Emergence of Complex Societies Project, studying the long-term evolution of human societies and trying to understand the shared underlying principles that are responsible for the emergence of complex social, political, and economic organizations. Currently, I am the field director of the IRAW@Bagan archaeological project in Myanmar (irawbagan.wordpress.com). As a Registered Professional Archaeologist (RPA), I have also worked on Cultural Resource Management projects at over 150 sites in the United States, ranging from Paleo-Indian to more recent historical sites. I have researched and published on Maya archaeology, residue analysis on ancient foods and beverages, archaeomusicology, ancient trade and exchange, and crafts production.
