W&M Featured Events
[PAST EVENT] Anthropology Brown Bag: "Navigating the Changing Tide of Archaeology in the Pacific"
Location
Zoom
Originally from Texas, Megan Edwards Alvarez is an anthropologist whose methodology has been blending archaeology and historical anthropology since her first field experience in 2002. Prior to moving to Guam in 2021, fieldwork—in both urban and rural contexts—had taken her across the US (Virginia, Long Island, Chicago, New Orleans, Hawai'i) and overseas (Ireland, France). While she has specialized in Historical Archaeology of the last 500 years, she has worked on sites and trained with materials stretching from the Irish Mesolithic (7000 BCE) to the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), and now the full breadth of human occupation in the Mariana Islands. Her work—whether in an academic, CRM, or regulatory context—strives to bridge the many divides that plague archaeology and anthropology. Megan received her BA in Anthropology from William & Mary (2005), MA in Archaeology from the Queen’s University of Belfast (2006), and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago (2021). Her research and past publications reflect an interest in how profound social change impacts foodways—whether from English colonization in Virginia and Ireland, the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, or industrialization in Gilded Age Chicago. She currently works as an archaeologist in Guam’s Historic Preservation Office, living and working on a tropical island in the Western Pacific with a traumatic multi-national colonial past (Spanish, American, Japanese) and tense present as a heavily-militarized Unincorporated Territory of the US. Please email [[jdcarlson]] for Zoom link.
Contact
[[jdcarlson]]