Scholarships
Scholarship Application
The mission of the PaleoWest Foundation is to support archaeological research, education, and preservation worldwide to advance the profession and create and sustain knowledge relevant to today’s world. To this end, the Foundation has established two scholarship grant programs. The first, the PaleoWest Foundation Graduate Scholarship, supports innovative graduate students and their research. If selected, grants up to $2000 will be awarded to applicants. The number of awardees will depend on funding availability and the quality of the applications. Applicants must fill out the application form and submit it by October 1. Any graduate student currently enrolled in an anthropology or archaeology program may apply and the funds may be used any way the student sees fit. However, priority will be given to those students applying the funds to innovative research, dissertation writing, or completing a degree. Requirements include allowing the Foundation to feature any Foundation-supported student project on the Foundation’s website, on social media, and in public presentations.
The Foundation’s Board of Directors is particularly pleased to announce a second scholarship grant, the PaleoWest Foundation Native American Scholarship. This scholarship grant supports Native American students in their scholarly pursuits at Northern Arizona University (NAU). The grant is limited to tribal members of federally recognized tribes matriculating at NAU and studying anthropology. The grant is solely funded by the Foundation, but is administered by the University. A single grant of up to $5,000 will be awarded to the successful applicant each year. Applicants may apply through the Department of Anthropology at NAU.
Congratulations to Reanna Yazzie, winner of the 2024 PaleoWest Foundation Native American Scholarship
Reanna Yazzie (Diné) is an Anthropology Major at NAU who will graduate in 2025. Her educational goals are to gain a deeper understanding of anthropology and how the critical thinking skills she learned will help her have a positive impact on the communities she may be researching. She also wants to ensure that any research she completes is done ethically, and she hopes to be educated on how to do so correctly. Creating a strong network and connecting with her peers and mentors is also a goal of hers, as is collaboration and the exchange of ideas.
Due to her Diné background, she holds value in any research she may do in her career and intends to do the research with integrity and consent from all parties. It is also a career goal of hers to preserve any cultural heritage she comes into contact with. She will also attempt to work with communities to restore any cultural heritage that may have been lost. Another career goal will be to collaborate with museums and cultural institutions to ensure they have policies in place that will respect cultural diversity and indigenous rights.
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2023 PaleoWest Foundation’s Scholarship Grant
This year we were able to award five scholarships. The winners are Michael Broughton, Petra Peretin, Erin Ray, Jaime Rogers, and Ben Shirey.
Michael Broughton is a second-year master's student at the University of Utah. His thesis research is a collaborative project spanning several units at the University of Utah (Anthropology, Geography, Natural History Museum of Utah), that proposes a new direction in packrat midden research—the development of isotopic records of long-term paleoclimate change from amberat deposits. He will be collecting crystalized urine (amberat) packrat midden samples from the City of Rocks National Reserve in southwest Idaho in efforts to obtain and analyze radiocarbon dates and stable isotope data to create a high-resolution (decadal to sub-decadal) paleoclimate record over the last 10,000 years in the Great Basin. Such continuous paleoclimate records are rare in arid western North America due to the lack of suitable paleoecological archives (e.g., sediment from lakes and wetlands). A suite of archaeological and paleoecological questions remain to be answered in this region due to a lack of high-resolution climate reconstruction data. Providing this new method is successful, he will address questions regarding prehistoric human occupancy patterns in the eastern Great Basin as well as tracking trends in the dispersal of prominent vegetative food resources (e.g., pinyon pine).
Petra Peretin is a PhD student from Binghamton University in New York. Her dissertation research is focused on using innovative methods that offer new avenues for understanding and explaining subsistence patterns of past Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) communities. Proteomics offers novel means of shedding new light on long-standing questions regarding Iroquois subsistence strategies and challenging pre-existing theories about the arrival and use of certain plants and animals in the Northeast. This approach relies on the fact that the remains of food are absorbed into the pores of ceramic vessels which can be extracted and used to identify the possible plants and animals that were cooked in each pot. Using proteomics is a relatively new approach that has not been applied to Iroquois or Northeastern archaeology in general. This method presents a new way to learn about the different plants and animals that were being consumed which does not rely on plant and animal preservation and identification, can go beyond biases within existing collections, and provides data about material found directly inside cooking vessels, which is more likely associated with which foods were being eaten.
Erin Ray is a PhD candidate at the University of New Mexico. Her dissertation reconstructs life history through changes in diet from infancy to adulthood with a focus on the impact of diet on parental investment throughout the Holocene. Erin will study changes in diet through stable isotope analyses of collagen, apatite, and incremental enamel samples of directly dated human remains from middle-Holocene foragers and late-Holocene Classic Maya farmers. The remains come from rockshelter sites in southern Belize and are the only continuous transect of human skeletons in the Americas. She will analyze the impact of emerging inequality and gender on parental investment, and the effect of food production decision-making strategies on the health and survival of children in prehistoric Mesoamerica.
Jaime Rogers is a PhD candidate studying at the University of South Florida. His dissertation research, A Multi-Scalar Approach to Oyster Management in Florida’s Largest Estuary, investigates oyster reef governance in the Tampa Bay Estuary over the past two millennia. He collaborates with local estuary managers to provide long-term ecological context and data relevant to habitat suitability models used in oyster restoration. Jaime aims to develop a framework applicable to other estuaries and advocates for increased Indigenous presence in contemporary estuary management.
Ben Shirey is an MA student in archaeology at Colorado State University. His thesis will present a new demographic model for the heartland of the Purépecha Empire (modern-day Michoacan, Mexico) in the Postclassic period (1000-1520 CE) by synthesizing prior skeletal and ethnohistoric data with settlement extent and density data from recent LiDAR surveys of the region’s urban centers. This precise reconstruction of the region’s population size and structure at its height will inform questions regarding the relationship between environmental changes and population movements in Postclassic Western Mexico as well as contribute to broader knowledge of the diverse forms of social organization in the pre-contact Americas.
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2022 PaleoWest Foundation’s Scholarship Grant
This year we were able to award four scholarships. The winners are Harland Ash, Michael Broughton, Kelsey Hanson, and Piyawit Moonkham.
Harland Ash is an MA student at Northern Arizona University. His thesis research is a focused approach to the application of virtual reality and multimedia digital archaeology in support of cultural resource managers to promote increased public engagement and interest in cultural heritage sites. Recent advancements and increased accessibility to virtual reality equipment provides new opportunities for cultural heritage managers to create experiential mediums. His work will produce both an interactive web-based virtual tour and a virtual reality application of the Nine-room cliff dwelling.
Michael Broughton is an MA student at the University of Utah. For his thesis, he will collect and analyze radiocarbon and stable isotope data from ancient tule elk faunal specimens excavated from the King Brown Site and Emeryville Shellmound as well as current tule elk faunal specimens collected within central California to track resource depression, distant patch use, migration patterns, and population increases and declines over the last 5,000 years. This study has implications for predicting past and future climates, prehistoric human and faunal relationships in central California, and modern wildlife management, as they inform on factors influencing historic period faunal community composition and the distributions, abundances, and genetic diversity of vertebrate taxa that are of current management concern.
Kelsey Hanson is a PhD candidate from University of Arizona. Her dissertation utilizes archaeological collections of paint, paint production tools, and painted media as a material archive of Chaco-era performances (A.D. 850-1300). Kelsey will use a combination of optical microscopy, X-ray fluorescence, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy to define recipes in 1,566 paint-related objects from Chaco and post-Chaco era sites. Social network analysis of shared recipes illustrates the circulation of knowledge within and between Chaco communities. This reveals waves of sociopolitical centralization, fragmentation, and dispersal, offering new culturally situated insights into the rise and fall of the Chaco World.
Piyawit Moonkham is a PhD student at Washington State University. His dissertation examines how community-based research on Buddhist temple spaces and betel nuts chewing can offer another perspective on social worldview, sociopolitical complexity, and the use of psychoactive plants in Thailand. This dissertation explores sociopolitical spaces of Buddhist temples and analyzes residue analysis of dental calculus of six individuals buried at Nong Ratchawat c. 4,000 years ago. The study highlights community-based research and demonstrates how vital the communal/heterarchical point of view on spatial movement, social interaction, and plant use was among the local communities in Thailand.
Congratulations to Amber Renee Archie, winner of the 2022 PaleoWest Foundation Native American Scholarship
Amber is from the Navajo tribe, where her clans are the Towering House clan, Black Streak Wood People clan, Tangle clan, and the Honey Combed Rock People clan. She is currently in the last few semesters of her undergraduate career at NAU where she is on track to obtaining two degrees in Anthropology & Environmental Sustainability Studies. Amber plans to go to graduate school to obtain her master’s in either Anthropology or Engineering at a university in the southwest region of the United States. She also hopes to obtain her Ph.D., so that she can stay in the research sector and hopefully teach about traditional ecological knowledge or indigenous perspectives within archaeology.
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2021 PaleoWest Foundation’s Scholarship Grant
This year we were able to award five scholarships. The winners are Erica Bradley, Jill Eubanks, Bre Gauthier, David A. Ingleman, and Will Marquardt (not pictured).
Erica Bradley is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her dissertation project, “Assessing the Relationship Between Pluvial Lake Levels and Paleoindian Land-Use in Hawksy Walksy Valley, Nevada/Oregon,” focuses on several large Paleoindian lithic scatters associated with a pluvial lake in the northwestern Great Basin. She aims to develop a site chronology using site associations with relict pluvial lake features, projectile point seriation, and obsidian hydration dating. Once she has developed a chronology, she will use obsidian sourcing to examine if and how toolstone conveyance patterns changed through time.
Jill Eubanks is a PhD student at University of California at Davis, Department of Anthropology. Her dissertation project “Investigating Precontact Resource Conservation of Artiodactyl
Populations in the San Francisco Bay Area” aims to investigate how Ancestral Ohlone and Bay Miwok peoples hunted deer and elk using data from (1) proteomic analysis to estimate sex of artiodactyl remains; (2) dental cementum increment analysis to estimate artiodactyl age and season of death; (3) strontium isotope analysis to estimate possible artiodactyl migration movements and locality of death; and (4) environmental habitat and diet reconstruction based on carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen stable isotope analysis from bone mandible fragments.
Bre Gauthier is a first-year master’s student at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a research assistant with the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit. For her master’s thesis project, Bre hopes to construct a radiocarbon chronology of Hanging Rock Shelter (HRS). HRS is located on the traditional lands of the Northern Paiute and is one of two well-stratified sites in the Nevada High Rock Country with evidence of occupation spanning the Holocene. Bre takes a collaborative approach to conducting archaeological research whenever possible and she acknowledges the support of the Nevada State Museum in working with the HRS legacy collection.
David A. Ingleman is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His dissertation, “Social Animals: A Zooarchaeology of Hawaiian Sovereignty, ca. 1845-1893 C.E.,” will combine archival research with analyses of legacy artifact collections, including morphological and stable isotope analyses of archaeofaunal remains, to cast light on practices of multispecies sociality in the Hawaiian kingdom.
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2020 PaleoWest Foundation’s Scholarship Grant
This year we were able to award three scholarships. The winners are Corey Bowen, Caitlin A. Wichlacz, and Scott Yost.
Corey Bowen is a PhD student at University of Illinois at Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology. His dissertation project is titled “Places of Flow: The Sacred Waterscape of Tiwanaku, Bolivia.” His project will investigate Tiwanaku’s waterworks as simultaneously ritual and pragmatic structures. He will begin with site-level excavation to identify the construction dates and techniques for the main urban canals and to better understand their relation to neighboring monumental architecture. He will combine this with remote sensing data from ground-penetrating radar and aerial thermal imaging surveys to predict the original origin and routes of the water that was channeled through Tiwanaku.
Caitlin A. Wichlacz is a PhD student at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University. Her dissertation project, “Reassembling Salado: Ceramic Categorical Boundaries and Relations in the Phoenix Basin, ca. 1300-1450 CE” will establish an empirical basis for understanding manifestations of the Salado phenomenon at Hohokam sites in the Phoenix basin of Arizona by investigating how Salado polychrome ceramics were incorporated into contemporaneous Hohokam ceramic practices and assemblages. Her research will examine the production of archaeological knowledge and the interwoven relations of raw materials, landscapes, knowledges, and technological choices that shaped the practical and social meanings of engagement with Salado materials and practices.
Scott Yost is a Master’s student at Northern Arizona University. His project is provisionally titled “Upholding Power and Hegemony During The Terminal Classic period Through Monumental Architecture in Mayan society, Belize.” For this project he will examine the architectural landscape in the Belize river valley and explore questions of hegemony, power flux, classism, and internal strife and how architecture, public works, and city planning have been used to exemplify and prop up those themes.
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2019 PaleoWest Foundation’s Scholarship Grant
This year we were able to award three scholarships, and it was a challenge choosing the top three, given the large number of worthy applicants. In the end, the Board decided that the winners would be Christopher Schwartz, Thatcher Rogers, and Cala Castleberry.
Christopher is a PhD student at Arizona State University and his project is titled “Scarlet Macaws, Distant Exchange, & the Establishment of Central Places in the US Southwest & Mexican Northwest, ca. 900-1450 CE.” His goal is to understand the role of scarlet macaws in the establishment of three regional centers, Pueblo Bonito, Wupatki, and Paquimé. Using radiogenic strontium analysis with contextual analyses using theoretical elements from material culture studies, he aims to (1) discern whether macaws in the SW/NW were imported or raised locally, (2) characterize treatment and deposition of macaws at each center, and (3) identify patterns of continuity or change in acquisition and treatment of macaws over time.
Thatcher is a PhD student at the University of New Mexico and his project is titled “Between Casas Grandes and Salado: Investigating Community Formation and Identity in the Borderlands of the Southwest, AD 1200-1450.” Thatcher proposes to investigate archival documents, survey and site records, and pertinent archaeological collections from southeastern Arizona and northeastern Sonora, curated by the Amerind Museum and the Arizona State Museum, in order to gain a comparative regional sample to mitigate the limited excavation data from Casas Grandes.
Cala is an MA student at Northern Arizona University and her project is “We are the Land: TCP Nominations, Activism, Politics and Spirituality in Protecting Apache Sacred Places.” Her project examines how the White Mountain and San Carlos Apache Tribal Historic Preservation programs navigate various politics and policies in reference to TCP nominations. Discussions of the Apache-Stronghold’s fight to protect and preserve Chí’chil Biłdagoteel (Oak Flat) provide a powerful window into Apache epistemologies associated to place, identity and overall future well-being.
Congratulations to Mowana Lomaomvaya, winner of the 2019 PaleoWest Foundation Native American Scholarship
Mowana is a member of the Hopi Tribe and is from the village of Hotevilla on the Hopi Reservation. She is a student at Northern Arizona University, a teaching assistant in the Anthropology Department, and a student assistant at Cline Library – Special Collections and Archives. Mowana is in the last year of her undergraduate studies, majoring in Anthropology with an emphasis in Archaeology and a minor in History. At the conclusion of her undergraduate career, Mowana will be continuing her education by seeking a Master of Arts degree in Applied Archaeology in the graduate school program at NAU.
Congratulations to Raquel Romero, winner of the 2018 PaleoWest Foundation Native American Scholarship
Raquel is a second-year graduate student in the Applied Anthropology program at Northern Arizona University. Her family comes from Goodyear Village, District 4, of the Gila River Indian Community. She is Gila River O’odham and San Carlos Apache. She graduated from ASU with a BA in anthropology, and shortly after was hired as an archaeologist for her tribe. While working with her community, she quickly noticed an underrepresentation of tribal members pursuing formal education in archaeology.
As a result, her masters research has focused on tribal youth engagement. The primary goal of this research is to learn the most effective methods for outreaching to youth. The PaleoWest Foundation scholarship will provide her the opportunity to travel to more tribal communities and learn about this topic. We are extremely pleased to support Raquel and her studies.
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2018 PaleoWest Foundation’s Scholarship Grant
Yes, you read that right. Winners! This year we were able to award six scholarships to aspiring graduate students. The winners were Katelyn Bishop, Bobbi Hornbeck, Kendal Jackson, Gregory Wada, Reuven Sinensky, and Raquel Romero. These applicants were unanimously selected by the Foundation’s board of directors as the top contenders. We at the Foundation are extremely pleased to be able to support so many excellent projects this year. Read about their projects below.
Katelyn Bishop is a PhD candidate at UCLA. Her dissertation project “Ritual Practice, Organization, and Change: Avifaunal Use and Iconography in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, AD 850-1150” will be important in advancing our understanding of past Pueblo ritual and religion and the value of birds in prehistory.
Bobbi Hornbeck is a PhD candidate at SUNY-University at Buffalo. Her dissertation project “Aleut Monumentality: Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Transformations of the Rat Islands Group of the Western Aleutian Islands, Alaska, c. 4000 BP to 1000 BP” will be an important contribution to the study of (previously unrecognized) earth mounds as monumental constructions within the context of Early Midden Period (4000 BP-1000CE) social and political complexity. In focusing on sites that face potential negative impacts from warming Arctic climates, her research is particularly relevant to our mission, which seeks to develop and support archaeological projects that advance the profession and create knowledge relevant to today’s world.
Kendal Jackson is a PhD candidate studying at University of South Florida. His project “Between Land and Sea: Deep-Time Historical Ecologies of the Tampa Bay Estuary, Florida” will be important in understanding PaleoIndian and early-Archaic-period habitation of terrestrial freshwater wetlands within the Bay depression; spatiotemporal patterning of marine transgression/estuarine development in the Bay over the Holocene; and, the roles ancient human communities played in modifying and managing ecosystem structure during the Bay’s estuarine development.
Gregory Wada is a PhD candidate at the UC Davis. His dissertation project “Evolution of the human microbiome: metagenomic insights into dietary adaptation, demographic patterning, and disease transmission from archaeological dental calculus” aims to (1) evaluate prehistoric disease load and the types of diseases present in prehistoric populations of the San Francisco Bay Area, (2) asses changes in microbial diversity with changes in human diet, and (3) evaluate the potential of geographic and temporal clustering of microbial relatedness as an indicator of population movement or interaction.
Reuven Sinensky is a PhD candidate at UCLA. His dissertation project “Niche Construction and Common Pool Resource Management in Marginal Environments” will be an important study in collective resource management in small-scale, early agricultural societies. His project is specifically relevant to our mission, which seeks to develop and support archaeological projects that advance the profession or create knowledge relevant to today’s world.
Raquel Romero is a Master’s student at Northern Arizona University. Her project “Tribal Youth Engagement: Establishing a Model for Archaeological Outreach” is an important step in exploring the importance of tribal representation in educational institutions and archaeology. Her project is specifically relevant to our mission by developing and supporting archaeological and preservation projects that have a demonstrable benefit or relevance to indigenous communities.
Congratulations to Morgan F. Smith, winner of the 2017 PaleoWest Foundation’s scholarship grant.
We were extremely pleased with the high quality of all the applications this inaugural year. His application was unanimously selected by the Foundation’s board of directors as the top application. Morgan is a PhD candidate at the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University. His dissertation project “Liquid Landscapes:” What Underwater Prehistoric Sites in the Lower Southeast Tell Us About Climate Change, the Peopling of the Americas, and the Settlement of a New Continent is a really important project for archaeologists and other researchers interested in the peopling of the Americas and adaptations to past climate change. The project’s effort to document adaptations of Paleoindian groups to the rapidly changing climate following the close of the last Ice Age, understand how regional specialization occurred following the initial occupation of the Americans, and build a more robust radiocarbon record for the peopling of the Americas is well in line with the mission of the Foundation. We are very pleased to support this project.