"The future is not only on the edges of a discipline, but where two edges touch, and that is where the excitement is. And two edges of our pursuit of truth are about to touch..."

--Robert Ballard

"Within some archaeological artifacts there is a record to which an archaeologist is blind but which a physicist can hope to read... [but] a physicist is not a machine that, when fed with material, regurgitates an archaeological answer acceptable without qualification."

--Martin Aitken

"Every archaeological problem starts as a problem in geoarchaeology."

--Colin Renfrew

"The simple things you see are all complicated."

--Pete Townshend

I am a senior research fellow in the Department Geology and Geophysics at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where I oversee the Electron Microprobe Laboratory. I am also a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology, working on my dissertation in archaeology. My research interests involve the intersections of the materials and geological sciences with archaeology, particularly chemical analysis of archaeological materials, with the aim of addressing questions about human behavior in antiquity. In particular, I am interested in reconstructing exchange systems and uses of natural resources, specifically geomaterials and especially obsidian. I am also interested in technological choices, the chaîne opératoire, and material culture in general.