Archaeological field methods, including excavation and regional survey, are well suited to telling detailed, place-based stories, but they have significant drawbacks as means for characterizing the diversity of (and drivers of variation within) large, interregional systems. Even when data from multiple regional projects can be integrated,...

Almost seven hundred years ago, North African traveller ibn Battuta described the use of cowrie shells as adornment and currency in both the Maldives and Mali. Though these regions were a quarter of a world apart, they were linked by networks that moved people, things and ideas over long distances. This talk will draw on archaeological and...

Sonia is the Director of Ancient Agriculture and Paleoethnobotany Laboratory (AAPL), Postdoctoral Fellow at Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA.

She is a postdoctoral fellow who describes herself as an anthropological archaeologist with a specialization in paleoethnobotany, the study of the interaction between people and plants in the past. Her current research projects center on the pre-Columbian history of cacao and the adoption and use of plants in the Andes, from sea level to the highlands and from PaleoIndian to modern times. In addition, she has been...