Program Director, InHerit: Indigenous Heritage Passed to Present
Graduate Student
kac2898@email.unc.edu
Alumni Building 211
About Kaitlyn
My background of Anthropology and Ceramics combined with a passion for Cultural Heritage Issues, Community Outreach, and Education brought me to study Archaeology and pursue graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill. Along with my research, I have served as a teaching assistant for many classes in the Anthropology department. Currently, I also serve as the Program Director of InHerit: Indigenous Heritage Passed to Present and the Alliance for Heritage Conservation, which focuses on heritage issues and educational outreach for and about Indigenous peoples.
Research Interests
Maya archaeology, social network analysis, ceramic practices, communities of practice, interaction, community engagement, cultural heritage
Research Background
My research uses ceramic data from the Maya site of K’axob, Belize and sites from the rest of the Maya region to map Communities of Shared Practice using Social Network Analysis. The goal of the work is to map interactions among sites during each period prior to the arrival of the Spanish. These networks will show how interaction changed over time based on the sharing of ideas, pottery technologies, and styles. Since the creation of pottery was a consistent practice across time, changes in ceramic trends can reflect changes in interaction between crafters. These persistent networks can also be used to demonstrate that people did not cease to exist and, in fact, became more tightly interconnected across times of change and hardship.
Education
MA, University of North Carolina, 2023; BA, Winthrop University, 2020