Chair of Curriculum in Archaeology; Director of Research Labs of Archaeology
Professor
scarry@email.unc.edu
919-962-3841
Alumni Building 108
Website
Research Interests
Archaeology, paleoethnobotany, subsistence economies, foodways, North America, Greek Aegean, complex societies
Research Background
I am an archaeologist who specializes in analyzing plant remains. Throughout my career, a major focus of research has been late prehistoric and colonial-era (roughly AD 900-1700) Indian and European communities of the American South. In particular, I am interested in how and when people altered their foodways in the face of social or political reorganization or disruption.
My earliest research and writing has been devoted to investigations of foodways within the Moundville polity. I examined changes in the agricultural economy as the polity developed, the provisioning of Moundville itself from rural communities, and the social deployment of food to mark social identities and political events. I also addressed the nature of the earliest residential community at Moundville and its reorganization as part of a planned mound-and-plaza complex in the 13th century AD.
My southeastern U.S. research is not confined to the Mississippian world. I am also interested in colonial-era foodways. I have examined adjustments Spanish colonists made to their foodways as they settled environments unsuited to raising traditional Iberian foodstuffs and interacted with southeastern Indians, who introduced them to new foods. This work emphasized the role of native communities in shaping the Spaniards’ new food practices as well as the Spaniards’ reluctance to forego their familiar staples. Currently, with other UNC colleagues, I am examining change and stability in foodways among Piedmont North Carolina Indian communities as they engaged in various ways and with varying degrees of intensity with English traders and settlers.
In 2002, I began collaborating with Donald Haggis (UNC-CH Department of Classics) and Margaret Mook (Iowa State Classical Studies) and Rodney Fitzsimmons (Trent University) on a completely new research program at Azoria (ca. 600-500 BC), an early urban center on the island of Crete in the Greek Aegean. Our Azoria research is a multi-stage, 20-year project designed to investigate changes in the agropastoral economy on Crete during a critical period of coalescence and city-state formation. Our excavations have revealed a massive civic complex with shrines, assembly halls, public dining rooms, and associated kitchens and storerooms at the heart of the city. In short, we are examining a community in which the public accumulation, display, and consumption of food is central to the politics and identities of its citizens.
Education
PhD, University of Michigan, 1986