| Faculty Information
Full Time Faculty:
Patricia D. Beaver (PhD - Duke 1976; Professor; Director, Center for Appalachian Studies )
Cultural anthropology, social organization, gender; Appalachia, China. E-Mail.
Dr. Beaver continues to serve as Director of the Center for Appalachian Studies (which is celebrating its 25 th anniversary this year), coordinating the MA in Appalachian Studies and regional research and service activities, in addition to teaching in the anthropology department. For her Spring semester 2004 course on Appalachian Cultures she used a book of Cratis Williams's memoirs, I Come to Boone , which she had co-edited with David Cratis Williams. Students followed their reading about Boone in 1942 with interviews with downtown elders. They hit the streets just in time for the sad closing of Farmer's Hardware, but managed to interview store founder Cecil Greene (a high school student of Cratis Williams when Chapel Wilson Hall was ASTC's Demonstration High School), other store employees, and customers-in-mourning for the loss of this downtown institution where one could buy just about anything. This spring's class focuses on the north fork headwaters of the New River, and students are conducting oral history interviews with elders at the Riverview Community Center in Ashe County, which they will present back to the community in a presentation scheduled for late April. Graduate and undergraduate students have done original research projects on the New River headwaters for several years, and Beaver hopes to compile these and other research resources in a book manuscript spring semester of 2006.
Beaver's newest research involves the Allen School in Asheville . Founded in the 1870s the school was a Methodist boarding school for African-American high school girls until it closed in the 1970s. There is little documentation of the Allen School , but the memories and school memorabilia of former students and teachers provide a rich inventory of information on African-American communities in western North Carolina , the mission movement in the mountains, the civil rights era in the mountains, and other topics related to gender, race, and religion. Beaver has been working with graduate student researchers Rebecca Baird, who is preparing archival materials from the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection archives for an Allen School website, and Jamie Butcher, who is writing her MA thesis on the Allen School , based on interviews with former teachers and students conducted summer of 2004. Beaver, Baird, and Butcher will present a workshop for a Multi-Cultural Development Conference in Hayesville , North Carolina in April, and hope to secure funding to continue this research through the 2005-2006 academic year and beyond.
Jefferson C. Boyer (PhD - UNC-CH 1982; Professor and Director of Sustainable Development)
Social anthropology, peasant and regional studies, rural development; Honduras and Central America, Appalachia. E-Mail
Dr. Boyer continues to focus on agrarian studies and rural communities sustainable development outreach in Central America and Appalachia. He traveled to Honduras in May 2006 to catch up with his two undergraduate students, Henry Blackford and Claire McLendon. They had spent most of spring semester conducting preliminary fieldwork with the indigenous Lenca in the western highlands. Their supervisor, economist Wilfredo Cardona, headed the research office of rural sustainable development for the Ministry of Agriculture. The results of their participatory research efforts are: a report (in Spanish) of the sustainable agriculture and rural development potentials for the Lenca, ongoing efforts to create both a Lenca Technical and Cultural Institute for adult education, and a Lenca Foundation to strengthen funding for this underserved indigenous population. With the help of the Office of International Programs (OIP), Cardona visited the ASU campus in October to present the results of this preliminary field effort and to plan for future collaboration with interested students, faculty and administrators.
Boyer’s scholarly-outreach efforts in Appalachia and the South include his work as board member at Highlander Research & Education Center (New Market, TN), and with ASU-Sustainable Development Program outreach with the Appalachian Coalition for Just and Sustainable Communities (ACJSC) and the Center for Integrating Research and Action (CIRA) at UNC-Chapel Hill. In April 2006 he presented the paper “Seeking Sustainability in ‘Outsourced Appalachia’” at the Applied Anthropology meetings in Vancouver, BC. In July he traveled to Louisville, KY to be with Highlander Center’s director, Pam McMichael, as she gave the keynote address at the Rural Sociology meeting and he gave the paper “Struggle for Community in Appalachia.” His article “Reinventing the Appalachian Commons” is forthcoming in a series on the global commons in Social Research 50(3)217-232.Winter 2006-2007. He combined his Highlander and ACJSC efforts by helping both to organize a southeast regional task force for a citizen based renewable energy policy at Highlander in October 2006. He recently has been active speaking in Ashe County hearings, encouraging the possibility of citizen- based wind energy initiatives. He is working with CIRA on a statewide effort to attack poverty with sustainability initiatives. The present focus is the re-localization of our food system; he is currently organizing a CIRA meeting in Cove Creek and ASU’s Valle Crucis Sustainable Agriculture Training and Research Farm in late March.
Boyer used his off-campus scholarly leave (fall semester, 2006) to work primarily on a two-volume project entitled Agrarian Honduras: Struggles with Modernity and Globalization. His attack is chronologically backwards; he is writing about the contemporary era (Vol. 1) first, and even drafting the later chapters first. Someday, he will reveal his secret about the advantages of approaching history and life in this manner! Finally, his book review of Eric Holt-Giménez’s Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture (Food First, 2006) was just accepted by the journal Human Ecology.
Cheryl P. Claassen (PhD - Harvard 1982; Professor)
Archaeology, shell, sociology of archaeology, gender, Archaic; eastern US. E-Mail.
Dr. Claassen was a discussant at the 11th international Congress on
Archaeology and Ethnography in Lisbon in September for a session on
Shellfish-use in Europe and the Middle East and in August presented on shell symbolism in the Americas at the 5th Congress on Archaeolozoology, held in Mexico City. The rest of the year she has been trying to write a book on the period 8000 to 4000 years ago in the Eastern US. In late April she will chair and present in a session that she has organized on ritual caves and cave rituals in the US. Her paper will lay out the evidence for rockshelters in Kentucky and elsewhere being used as birthing locations and menstrual retreats 3500 years ago. One of the activities women did while awaiting delivery or medicine or the end of the seclusion period was twining rope and string. The oldest domesticated seeds in the US come from one of these caves and may have been stashed there as food stores for the seclusion period.
 Susan E. Keefe (Ph.D. 1974 University of California, Santa Barbara; Professor of Anthropology) Medical anthropology, applied anthropology, Appalachian studies. E-Mail
Dr. Keefe has done fieldwork in Mexico and Barbados and among Mexican Americans in Southern California and Appalachian peoples in western North Carolina. She has authored and edited five books and monographs, including most recently Appalachian Cultural Competency: A Guide for Medical, Mental Health, and Social Service Professionals (University of Tennessee Press, 2005). She is currently editing another book on participatory development in Appalachia. As a medical anthropologist, she has specialized in mental health issues and folk healing; these interests are evident in her recent book as well as a chapter entitled “Religious Healing in Southern Appalachian Communities” (In Southern Heritage on Display, Celeste Ray (Ed.), University of Alabama Press, 2003). She enjoys teaching applied anthropology and qualitative methods as well as medical anthropology. Over the nearly three decades that she has been at Appalachian State, she has mentored over 300 student interns both locally and elsewhere in the nation and the world.
Larry R. Kimball (PhD - Northwestern 1989; Associate Professor & Director ASU Laboratories of Archaeological Science)
Archaeology, microwear analysis, quantitative methods; S. Appalachias, Russia. E-mail.
Dr. Kimball undertook traceological analyses of PaleoIndian through Woodland tools from the stratified site 36Pe16 (Pennsylvania), Middle Archaic through Mississippian stone tools from the Coontree site (31Tv858) in Transylvania County (NC), and Connestee through Pisgah tools from the Bent Creek site (Buncombe County, NC). In his morphological analysis projectile points from stratified Middle Archaic contexts at Coontree (6400 – 4000 BC: calibrated), Kimball demonstrated that there is a previously unrecognized late Middle Archaic technology in the Southern Appalachians (4600 – 3800 BC: calibrated). Kimball assisted Scott Shumate with the report for National Forests in North Carolina: Documentation and Data Recovery for the Coontree, Hatch Mill, and Lance Mill Archaeological Sites. They are completing their analysis of the data recovery project for the NFsNC at the Cold Canyon (31Sw265) site in Swain County. This extremely dense series of Middle and Late Archaic occupations on an upland site will provide the largest database for these two foraging adaptations of the Southern Mountains. On October 17, 2006 ASU Labs of Archaeological Science and the Biltmore Estate hosted a luncheon at the Lioncrest Resturant on the estate. In attendance were: Chancellor Kenneth Peacock, Vice Chancellor Jerry Hutchins, Dean Robert Lyman, Associate Dean Richard Henson, Vivien McMahon, Chair Gregory Reck, Dr. Kimball, Dr. Thomas Whyte, Scott Shumate and the excavation crew (Megan Best, Lotte Govaerts, Lorie Hansen, and John Preston). Attending from the Biltmore Estate were: Bill Cecil, Jr., Ginger Cecil, Chuck Pickering, Ann Ashley, Ted Katsigianis, Rick King, Ellen Rickman, Kathleen Mosher, and Bill Alexander. After a wonderful meal, Kimball gave his first PowerPoint show (it’s a lot easier than you think), and then despite the rain; the entire ensemble slogged over to the Biltmore Mound site where Scott and the team explained the results of the first excavation in the habitation area (see Shumate). Kimball and Shumate are gearing up for three probable field projects this spring and summer – stay tuned.
Diane P. Mines (PhD - Chicago 1995; Associate Professor)
Cultural anthropology, phenomenology of place and time, social theory, ritual and politics, caste; India, South Asia. E-Mail
Dr. Mines received a fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies for seven months of field research in India starting December 2007. Her project, “Wilderness as Trope in the Contemporary Tamil World,” will take her (and her family) to the southern Indian state of Tamilnadu, the site of her previous research. There she will explore how Tamils in south India conceptualize the “wilderness” or “wasteland,” the dry, desert scrub areas beyond inhabited space. Her thesis is that Tamils see the wasteland as a metaphor for processes of transformation and change more generally. Ultimately she hopes to show how the study of this landscape relates to human preoccupations with death, history, and temporality more generally.
Diane has also been working on some publications. One, a continuing project she will submit later this spring to a publisher, is a co-edited book (with Nicolas Yazgi) called Do Villages Matter? She recently completed an article entitled “Hinduism and Exchange,” which will appear this fall in A Handbook for the Study of Hinduism (Routledge). And she will be working on a second edition of her previous co-edited volume (with Sarah Lamb), Everyday Life in South Asia (Indiana). Her Spring 2007 Off-Campus-Scholarly-Assignment (often referred to in English as a “sabbatical”) is helping her find the time to complete these various projects and to do library research for her upcoming fieldwork. She is also trying to find time each day to read a little Tamil, to refresh her language skills. Recently, she relieved some stress by demolishing—with crowbar, grunts, and rough kicks—a rotten old chicken coop outside her house.
Gregory G. Reck (PhD - Catholic 1972; Professor and Chair)
Ethnological theory, social change, magic and religion, narrative ethnography; Mexico, Mesoamerica, Latin America, Appalachia. E-Mail.
Gregory Reck presented a paper entitled “Disasters, Terra Nullis and the New World Disorder” at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in San Jose, California this past November. He also chaired the session entitled “Disorders and Dangerous Terrains” at the same meetings. This paper grew out of Greg’s professional obsession with the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and his attempts to contextualize the attacks of that day within an anthropological framework of globalization. Last semester he team taught a course entitled “9/11” to 80 ASU students and will teach the course again in the fall of 2007. His book review of Being in Christ and Putting Death in Its Place: An Anthropologist’s Account of Christian performance in Spanish America and the American South by Miles Richardson appeared in the journal American Ethnologist last May. Greg also recently received a university research grant that will finance a documentary video he is working on with two colleagues from other departments. The video will focus on the social and economic dimensions of youth soccer programs that control the development of soccer players from an early age through college.
On the local level, Greg is still chairing the Boone Area Planning Commission and is trying to motivate the Town to be more proactive in community planning, resource protection and development control. Greg also became a grandfather for the second time. His daughter, Alexandra, gave birth to Jasmin Adea Hasselkuss on December 13, 2006.
Gwen Robbins (Ph.D. - University of Oregon 2007; Assistant Professor) Biological anthropology, bioarchaeology, human growth and development, age estimation and paleodemography, microstructure of hard tissues, India. E-Mail: Robbinsgm@appstate.edu Website: http://www.appstate.edu/~Robbinsgm/
Dr. Robbins enthusiastically joined the faculty of the anthropology department at ASU this year. Gwen is a recent PhD (degree conferred in June, 2007) from the University of Oregon. Her training has spanned the sub-disciplines from working as the assistant director of an archaeological field school in American Samoa, excavating human skeletal material in India, to photographing enamel defects on children’s teeth in rural schools in India. Her primary research interest involves biodemography, or the integration of population statistics and human skeletal growth and development to discuss biocultural stress levels in a comparative framework. Her dissertation focused on an examination of these issues using late Holocene skeletal remains from India but Gwen is interested in looking at modern human biology from evolutionary and biocultural perspectives as well.
In addition to Gwen’s pursuit of the tenure-track position at ASU last winter, she also (finally, after 6 years) finished her dissertation! The results of her dissertation research provide (1) new methods for examining paleodemography in subadult archaeological samples, (2) refinements to methods for examining stress markers in the skeleton, (3) a synthetic approach to bioarchaeology that includes a role for individual agency in terms of female strategies for reproductive success as a force in shaping child health and growth profiles, and (4) new perspectives on human health, subsistence transition, and climate change in prehistoric India.
Gwen presented this work at the American Association of Physical Anthropology and the Human Biology Association in Philadelphia in March 2007. She is currently working on grant proposals to publish this work and to perform additional analyses of sub-adult long bone ontogeny, nutritional status, and metabolic challenges to homeostasis using microradiography and CLSM (Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope). Also this year, Gwen began working on a collaborative project with Haviva Goldman of Drexel University in Pennsylvania. They are developing a project to examine human bone growth and disruption as a 3-dimensional phenomenon (using micro-CT).
Gwen’s contribution to the Donner Party project is ongoing. The Donner Party was a large group of 87 immigrants who traveled out west (to California) in 1846. They suffered from bad luck and bad choices that left them stranded in October in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during one of the worst winters in 100 years, just 100 miles from the safety of Sutter’s Fort. The group is almost synonymous with the idea of starvation cannibalism as many members of relief and rescue parties returned with macabre reports befitting their Victorian sentiments. Last year, Gwen looked at the microstructure of bone fragments from the hearth at the Alder Creek campsite as part of a larger project that reconstructed life at the camp and was featured in a History Channel special “Cannibalism: Secrets Revealed.” Her work demonstrated that the butchered, burned and fragmented bones from the hearth belonged to many other mammals (including the family dog), but that humans were not among the refuse. This work was written up and submitted in October as part of a larger co-authored piece on interdisciplinary approaches to archaeology that is targeted for publication in American Antiquity. This summer, many more bags of burned bone fragments arrived from the Donner Lake campsite and several undergraduate students at ASU are participating in the analysis of that material.
On the teaching front, Gwen has been developing a concentration in Biological Anthropology for anthropology majors. It is currently working its way through committees but will hopefully be available in Fall 2008. Details will be available on her website as soon as possible. Spring 2008, she is teaching Paleoanthropology of South Asia, a course that integrates archaeology and biological anthropology to understand the prehistory of this dynamic and important region. Gwen also developed a new seminar course (one-time offering) on Forensic Taphonomy for Spring, which will cover all of the processes that affect the skeleton after death and prior to discovery (including decomposition, freezing, burning, etc). This course also has a practical component, with labs on age and sex estimation, other tools for identification, pathological changes, developmental stress, etc.
Gwen is really excited to be here at ASU because her research interests overlap with the other faculty. In terms of teaching, she feels that small class sizes afford an enhanced learning experience and the development of more personal relationships with students that is impossible at so many other institutions. Gwen also enjoys her relationship with the amazing skeletal collection in 401. Students are always welcome to come by and talk, just make a little noise on your way in so Gwen doesn’t jump out of her skin upon looking up from the bones to find a living person in the room.
Sharon K. Rorbakken (PhD, U of Iowa, 2000) Cultural Anthropology, Feminist Theory, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality, Social Class. Oceania, Hawaii, and the United States are geographical areas of interest. Email
Rorbakken is currently working on a video ethnography which centers on a young ex-con who is attempting to re-enter society and adjust to a world in which he has little knowledge since his youth and young adulthood were spent inside institutions. Another area of research interest in the early planning stage is the construction of lesbian gender in the western North Carolina mountains and in eastern Tennessee.
M. Scott Shumate (MA - U of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1992, Assistant Director, ASU Laboratories of Archaeological Science) Email
Archaeology, historic archaeology; Southern Appalachia, eastern US.
Scott Shumate spent the spring of 2004 in preparation for the ASU archaeological field school. In this case, preparation came in the form of carrying out another field investigation and subsequent report preparation - the proceeds of which helped to subsidize student housing during the following field school.
With a number of Asheville area volunteers, Shumate returned briefly in the fall of 2004 to continue the excavations of the new block area at the Biltmore mound site and to effect its closing and protection for the winter months. During the fall semester of 2004 he served as istructor of the ASU archaeological lab methods class and was joined by many of the field school students from the previous summer's excavations. With Dr. Larry R. Kimball and Dr. Brett Riggs, Shumate finally completed reporting on the earlier investigations conducted at the seventeenth-century Cherokee winter house/summer house complex in Swain County, North Carolina. The final version of this weighty tome was delivered to the USFS in January of 2005. Beginning in January and continuing till April of 2005 Shumate has been engaged in excavations at the Bent Creek archaeological site (31Bn335) in Buncombe County. Joined by veteran archaeologist and former ASU graduate John Paul Preston (who was coaxed from retirement and his latest hobby of racing vintage sports cars) and a crew of other professional archaeologists, the team is mitigating the effects of this past fall's series of destructive hurricanes. Flood deposits reveal a mixed context of former Pisgah, Connestee, and Pigeon phase occupations along this portion of the Bent Creek floodplain. Earlier testing at this site conducted in 1990 revealed radiocarbon dates of AD 660, AD 900, and AD 1560. The latter was derived from charcoal found in association with a horse bone and may represent early contact between Native Americans and Spanish explorers in this portion of western North Carolina.
In other mixed news, Shumate briefly volunteered to assist UNC-Chapel Hill archaeologist Lance Greene in his investigation of a series of post-Removal period cellar pits associated with the former Welch family occupation in Cherokee County . He offered a presentation on Connestee series ceramics to the Cherokee Museum in October of 2004. And finally, on the home front, he and his now nine-year-old son Sam recently served as roadies at the Isaac Dickson Elementary school talent show, where they created quite a stir by nearly dropping a fairly large piano off the edge of the stage.
Thomas R. Whyte (PhD - Tennessee, 1988; Professor)
Public archaeology , zooarchaeology, zoogeography, experimental archaeology; eastern North America, southern Appalachians. E-Mail .
Tom Whyte continues to teach Introduction to Archaeology, Field Archaeology, Archaeological Laboratory Methods, Zooarchaeology, Prehistory of the Southern Appalachians, and Stone Age Stereotypes. His current research includes analysis of archaeological fish remains from prehistoric sites in the Southeast, deer long bone histology (with Gwen Robbins), analysis of archaeological materials from the Charles Church Rockshelter site in Valle Crucis, and research on Iroquoian/Cherokee origins in the Appalachian region. He is currently writing a text on Appalachian Summit Prehistory.
His work on fish remains from archaeological sites in the Southeast is contributing to the knowledge of species' prehistoric distributions and to better wildlife management. The deer bone histology study will make possible the identification of very fragmentary bones found on archaeological sites. His research of Appalachian Summit region rockshelters is clearing up some misunderstandings of local cultural sequences and the functions of rockshelters in prehistory. His four-field study of Iroquoian/Cherokee origins identifies the Appalachian region, nearly 4,000 years ago, as the likely place of Cherokee/Iroquoian divergence from a common linguistic ancestor.
Tom Whyte's personal life, of late, can be summarized as follows: 13 chickens, two ponies, one puppy, one cat, one lizard, an old house in continuous repair, one guitar, two banjos, lots of ukuleles and harmonicas, and a great family. Sadie is 12, Alice is 9, and Lauri continues to do Massage Therapy and part-time teaching at Caldwell Community College .
Emeritus Faculty:
 Harvard G. Ayers (PhD - Catholic 1973; Professor)
Archaeology, physical anthropology, forensic anthropology, human ecology of the southern Appalachians; North American Indians, Southwestern US. Email
Harvard Ayers led his 26th Southwest trip in Spring 2006. That trip took a new turn, for the colder. Picture this: an entire winter in the Four Corners without a major snow storm! Think drought! Think global warming!
So, they expected to have fine weather for the trip. Wrong! Even a week before they departed Boone, snow and cold were predicted for the first weekend of the trip, which encompasses the 17 mile, two day backpack with the “bedroom on their backs” in Canyon del Muerto, Arizona. Thanks to honcho Remi Wingo’s expertise in the outdoors, everyone in class was super-prepared for the “big hike.” Many had never done anything this ambitious in the out-of-doors, and all were psyched.
The first clear sign of distress came on the Friday as they toured Petroglyphs National Monument in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The wind was blowing sand horizontally around the rock art at 50 MPH, blinding the students and permeating their cameras. Ike Eastvold told warned that they were already getting snow at Canyon del Muerto. So Ayers made a quick phone call, and shortly thereafter broke the bad news. They had almost a foot of snow on the ground and it was coming down hard. Temperatures were expected to hover around 0o F at night with blowing and drifting snow. Not good.
A quick change in plans was made and they spent the next three nights in a Red Roof Inn in Gallup, feeling deprived of the most anticipated event of the two-week trip. But one thing occurred in Gallop that brought it home as to why they just couldn’t do the hike. Remi and Matt Brouchard went jogging early the first morning in shorts and wondered why their legs were burning as they returned to the motel. They didn’t know the temperature was slightly below zero. When their legs thawed out, they were OK, but there was no way that this motley crew would have easily survived two days on the trail and one on the ground in the canyon of death!
Despite heavy winds in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, the rest of the trip went reasonably well. Mesa Verde, Colorado, was great, as was Zuni, New Mexico. And, you know, Canyon del Muerto is not called wilderness for nothing.
The 2006 Arctic trip went much better. Nine ASU students and the professor went to the Yukon of Canada and Alaska on the fourth such trip for Dr. Ayers in as many years. They got to watch in the Gwich’in village of Old Crow, Yukon, as the residents made important decisions about land claims with the Canadian government, and Ayers’ old friend Barry gave them a king salmon again which was food for a couple of days for those that like fish. A hike to Crow Mountain and a river trip to Rampart House on the Yukon-Alaska border were well received by all.
Next came several days in Fairbanks and then off to another Gwich’in settlement, Arctic Village, Alaska. The highlight of the four-day stay in Arctic (as it’s called by those who know it well) was an overnight camp trip that went up river from town to the southern extent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The class went mountain climbing again and got to observe their guides hunt and fish. Other than a few fits and starts with the airline flights, the whole trip went pretty well.
For the next two summers of ’07 and ’08, there will be no Arctic trip for ASU students. Dr. Ayers will be doing research for a book, Arctic Gardens- Voices from an Abundant Land. Ayers and his two co-authors will visit 11 Gwich’in and Inuit villages in Alaska and northwestern Canada twice each, interviewing some 80 people about their relationship to the land. The purpose of the book is to bring the humanity of the Arctic Natives to the American and Canadian public who only think of “big oil” versus the Sierra Club in the titanic struggles to obtain the life-blood of our culture without destroying the fragile natural environment of this beautiful area. Stay tuned as this project progresses over the next 2-3 years.
Brian C. Bennett (PhD - S. Illinois 1972; Professor)
Peasant studies, social change, social theory; Yugoslavia, Europe, Third World.
Office Manager:
Laura Anne Middlesteadt (BA, Botany, UNC-Chapel Hill, 1986). Email
262-2295
A native of Boone, Laura Anne returned to her "roots" in 2004 after 20 years in Chapel Hill, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Athens, Ga. Her previous employment has included plant tissue culture lab work, and serving as first the assistant curator of tropical collections and then the public relations manager for the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Her gardening articles have been published in Carolina Gardener, the Georgia Journal of Science, and the Gainesville Sun, among others. She has a 10-year-old son, Erik, whom she adopted from Yekaterinburg, Russia in 1998.
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