Institute of Archaeology

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Rita Stuart Shepard

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

Ph.D. UCLA, 1997

Fax: 310-206-4723
E-mail: shepard@ucla.edu

Mailing Address:

Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
308 Charles E Young Dr. North
A210 Fowler Building/Box 951510
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1510

Class Websites

Research Interests

Culture change in nineteenth-century Alaska, social interactions and culture exchange evidenced in archaeological records, Eskimo/Indian interactions and trade networks, impact of Russians and Americans on Alaskan native peoples, gender in pre-contact and contact-era Alaskan communities

Research Summary

The Unalakleet River Archaeological Project (URAP). This project examines archaeological Native Alaskan households, exploring how Yupik, Inupiaq, and Athapaskan social interactions affected the cultural impact of Russians and Americans on native peoples in nineteenth-century western Alaska. The investigation focuses on four abandoned settlements along the Unalakleet River, culminating in extensive excavation at one site, Tagilgayak. Surface survey of an early twentieth-century Lapp/Sami village in the river valley may be the focus of future research.

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Featured Publication

The Construction of Value

Scholars from Aristotle to Marx and beyond have been fascinated by the question of what constitutes value. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World makes a significant contribution to this ongoing inquiry, bringing together in one comprehensive volume the perspectives of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, philologists, and sociologists on how value was created, defined, and expressed in a number of ancient societies around the world. Based on the basic premise that value is a social construct defined by the cultural context in which it is situated, the volume explores four overarching but closely interrelated themes: place value, body value, object value, and number value. The questions raised and addressed are of central importance to archaeologists studying ancient civilizations: How can we understand the value that might have been accorded to materials, objects, people, places, and patterns of action by those who produced or used the things that compose the human material record? Taken as a whole, the contributions to this volume demonstrate how the concept of value lies at the intersection of individual and collective tastes, desires, sentiments, and attitudes that inform the ways people select, or give priority to, one thing over another.

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