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UCLA Archaeology Students win NSF Grants

by eric — last modified April 30, 2010 02:38 PM

The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology is extremely proud to announce that four UCLA archaeology graduate students (three from the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Archaeology, one from the Department of Anthropology) have won National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, three-year fellowship grants for research. Only 20 such awards were awarded in the field of archaeology this year.

Brett Kaufman's (IDP) research focuses on ancient Near Eastern metallurgical technology utilizing anthropological and archaeo-metallurgical analyses. He is interested in the progression of differential alloy selection from the Chalcolithic to the Middle Bronze Age. Kaufman hopes that studying the reasons and impetuses for varying norms in technological choice may lead to a better understanding of human behavior during these crucial periods.

Kevin Hill (IDP) studies models of economic specialization as imperial strategies in the Inca Empire c. AD 1420-1532. His project will focus on the nature of craft specialization and commodity production in an Inca province in the Lake Titicaca Basin of highland Peru, with a goal of understanding how new technologies were imported by the Inca into regions under their control.

Hannah Lau (IDP) received a GRF to explore the historical ecology of the Iron Age site of Oqlanqala in the Autonomous Republic of Naxçivan in Azerbaijan. During the Iron Age, Oqlanqala was incorporated into two of the largest Near Eastern Empires: the Urartian Empire in the Middle Iron Age and the Achaemenid Empire in the Late Iron Age. Lau's study will explore the interaction between the state administration at Oqlanqala in the Iron Age and the indigenous village inhabitants via a study of the faunal remains at the site from the Iron Age and a comparison with nearby Bronze and Iron Age domestic settlements.

Katherine Brunson's (Anthropology) research focuses on the introduction and use of sheep in Late Neolithic China. Using ancient DNA analysis along with traditional zooarchaeological techniques, she will examine links between wool textile production and increasing social complexity during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age.

Please join us in congratulating our award-winning graduate students!

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