Cheryl’s research in archaeology focused on the social and economic strategies that hunter-gatherers used to procure resources from their physical environments. Her doctoral dissertation, completed at the University of New Mexico, was a study of variation among stone projectile points (spear tips) that were made and used by Paleoindians who inhabited the NORTH American Great Plains and adjacent Rocky Mountains approximately 10,000 years ago. Cheryl studied over 300 projectile points found in the collections of four museums. She concluded that similarities in the size and shape of projectile points distributed across a large geographic area encompassing New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and beyond, indicate that highly mobile bison hunters regularly interacted with each other.
Cheryl’s current work in archaeology involves public outreach with organizations near her home in Baltimore Maryland as well as communications-related projects, writing and speaking for audiences everywhere. Selected projects include:
- working with
and the
- Herring Run Archaeology Project to document historic sites in Baltimore Maryland.
- panelist on three episodes of the Women in Archaeology podcast.
- co-author of an open-access textbook From the Ground Up: An Introduction to North American Archaeology.
•panelist “Accessing Archaeology: A Conversation on Equity and Ethics”
“Archaeology lets us explore what it means to be human, but the field is shaped by who gets to participate in it, which has historically been the space of an able-bodied demographic. In this 90-minute panel discussion, six disabled archaeologists discuss working in the field, labs, and in museums.”
watch Accessing Archaeology: A Conversation on Equity and Ethics