Teaching Assistant Professor
Email: rvbriggs(@)email.unc.edu
Phone:
Office: 409B
Education:
2017 Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Alabama
Dissertation: From Bitter Seeds: The Role of the Hominy Foodway in the Early History of Moundville. Chairs: Vernon J. Knight, Jr., and Ian W. Brown;
Committee members: William Dressler, C. Margaret Scarry, Lesley Jo Weaver. Defended May 1, 2017.
2011 M.A., Anthropology, University of Alabama
Thesis: Negotiating the Area Between: Explorations of an Upper Creek Settlement in the Lower Black Warrior River Valley. Chair: Vernon J. Knight, Jr.;
Committee members: Kathryn E. Holland Braund, Ian W. Brown, Jason DeCaro, Michael Murphy.
2005 B.A., Anthropology and Global Studies, Warren Wilson College
Archaeology Thesis: An Exercise in Settlement Patterning for Two Ranger Districts
Research Interest:
Foodways (the anthropology of food), gender, and identity; social complexity and the emergence ofcomplex societies; hominy and maize; infographics; Mississippian, proto-historic, and historic periods in the Southeastern United States; historic Creek Indian archaeology; Moundville and westcentral Alabama; Burke phase (A.D. 1400-1650) and western North Carolina; protohistoric and historic Catawba Indians; embodied cognition and practice theory; historical anthropology (sensu Marshall Sahlins).
Publications:
Refereed Journal Articles
2016 The Civil Cooking Pot: Hominy and the Mississippian Standard Jar in the Black
Warrior River Valley, Alabama. American Antiquity 81(2):316-332.
2015 Hominy and Nixtamalization in the Historic Native Eastern Woodlands. Native South
8(1):112-148.
2012 A Landscape Analysis of a Late Eighteenth-Century to Early Nineteenth-Century
Upper Creek Camp. Journal of Alabama Archaeology 58(1-2):41-63.
Book Chapters
Accepted Detangling the Histories of Hominy: A Historical Anthropological Approach. In
Eating the Past, edited by Tanya Peres and Aaron Deter-Wolf. University of
Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.
Books
Under Contract From Bitter Seeds: The Hominy Foodway and Moundville’s Origins. University
Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Technical Reports and Other Publications
2011 Investigations at the Haney Site. Stone and Bones, Winter 2011.
2005 Settlement Patterning for Two Ranger Districts in Pisgah National Forest. Report on
file at Warren Wilson College, Asheville, North Carolina.
2005 Exploring the Discourse of Student Learning at a Work College: Final Report. Report
on file at Warren Wilson College, Asheville, North Carolina. With Barbara
Routhieaux, Christina Vair, Phillip Roop, Kevin Giddens, and Susanne Martin.