Available Content

UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON (2023 - Present)
*Indicates a recurring course taught during the semesters listed

HISP 100: Introduction to Historic Preservation | Fall* (2023 - Present)
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This course focuses on the relation between American historic preservation and the fields of museum studies, archaeology, and preservation law and planning. The course also considers community and government mechanisms for preservation at the local, regional, and national levels. It develops awareness for the “real world” issues facing preservation-inaction: how surveys of historic resources are accomplished; who and what constitute preservation’s allies, opponents, obstacles, and sources; what knowledge and methods are employed by preservationists to achieve their objectives; and, what preservation means to the public. This course meets the curriculum requirements for the American Studies elective (ASEL), Human Experience & Society (HES), and Humanities (HUM) general education requirements.

HISP 207: American Archaeology | Spring* (2024 - Present)
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This course provides an introduction to the methods and techniques used to identify and date archaeological cultures, reconstruct past lifeways and develop ethical archaeological standards. Throughout the course, we will discuss the history and basic concepts involved in doing archaeology, who archaeological stakeholders are, and contemporary methods and themes in anthropological archaeology. We will also review current discourse and case studies involving archaeological ethics, compliance, and resource conservation in archaeological practice. The case studies highlighted in course content will focus on American archaeology, particularly sites from the Southeastern US and the Mid-Atlantic regions. HISP 207 is a prerequisite course for the historic preservation major at UMW and for upper-division coursework in archaeology, particularly field and lab methods coursework such as HISP 462, HISP 467, and HISP 471 special topics courses. This course fulfills both the Writing Intensive (WI) and the Digital Intensive (DI) requirements.

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE (2018 - 2023)

ANTH 120: World Prehistory | University of Tennessee, Knoxville
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This course provides an introduction to methods and techniques used to identify and date archaeological cultures, reconstruct past lifeways and describe cultural evolution. Throughout the course, we will broadly review the archaeological understanding of the past in regions such as Africa, western Europe, southwest Asia, and the Americas from earliest dated human cultures to rise of complex civilizations. This course is a prerequisite to the Anthropology major and upper-division archaeology coursework, and it also meets either the Cultures and Civilizations (CC) or Social Sciences (SS) general education requirement for all majors.

ANTH 120: Introduction to Archaeology (redesigned course) | University of Tennessee, Knoxville
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This course provides an introduction to methods and techniques used to identify and date archaeological cultures, reconstruct past lifeways and describe changing material culture trends. Throughout the course, we will discuss the history and basic concepts involved in doing archaeology, who archaeological stakeholders are, and contemporary methods and themes in anthropological archaeology. We will also review current discourse and case studies involving archaeological ethics, compliance, and resource conservation in archaeological practice. This course is a prerequisite to the Anthropology major and upper-division archaeology coursework, and it also meets either the Cultures and Civilizations (CC) or Social Sciences (SS) general education requirement for all majors.

UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON (2023 - Present)
*Indicates a recurring course taught during the semesters listed

HISP 320: Material Culture | Spring* (2024 - Present)
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This course examines the connections between material culture (the “forms”) and ideas, practices, and beliefs (the “values”) that shaped them, for what they can tell us about our past. The conversations around what constitutes material culture and how we engage, interpret, and study the material world are foundational in the field of historic preservation, as with many other related disciplines. Material culture studies invite us to consider the philosophical, theoretical, and ethical dimensions of physical objects, along with the practical, technical, and sustainability aspects of how we interpret and steward material culture for stakeholders across time and space. The course readings focus on a variety of concepts within the material world- from buildings and parks to living and deceased persons, to packaged food and appliances - and introduce students to major themes and methods relevant to the field of material culture. Class discussions, activities, and research projects will challenge students to examine the interrelationships between the production of meaning and the production of material culture for peoples in the past, present, and future. This course fulfills the Speaking Intensive (SI) requirement.

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE (2018 - 2023)

ANTH 360: North American Prehistory | Fall 2021
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This course will provide an in-depth overview of the broad cultural and temporal scope of the peoples and cultures present in different regions of North America, from the peopling of the Americas to the early Colonial encounters. By the end of this semester, you should have a grasp on the variation between different cultural areas across North America as well as the history and ethics involved in the archaeology of Indigenous sites. The course will provide you with a framework to connect the deep history of Indigenous peoples in North America to present contexts, politics, and conversations that involve descendant Indigenous communities. This course is a writing-intensive course that fulfills the Archaeological Area requirement for the Anthropology major and it meets the criteria for the US Studies Upper Division Requirement.

ANTH 361: Historical Archaeology | Fall 2022
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This course will provide an in-depth overview of the areas of archaeological inquiry in field of North American Historical Archaeology, ranging from colonial Contact in the 16th century through the 50-year cutoff for archaeologically designated cultural resources. Topics covered by this course include archaeological manifestations of industrialization, racialization, gender, class conflict, diaspora, incarceration, and global warfare. By the end of the semester, you should have a grasp on the application of historical archaeology method and theory as well as the broad range of peoples and site types included in this era. The course will provide you with a framework to connect these cultural resources to historical patterns both past and present, in order to understand the role that these sites play in structuring contemporary politics, archaeological practice, and ethics. This course is a writing-intensive course that fulfills the Archaeological Area requirement for the Anthropology major and it meets the criteria for the US Studies Upper Division Requirement.

UNIVERSITY OF MARY WASHINGTON (2023 - Present)
*Indicates a recurring course taught during the semesters listed

HISP 462: Lab Methods in Archaeology | Fall* (2023 - Present)
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This course encourages students to understand and experience how laboratory procedures form an integral part of the archaeological research process. Through readings and lectures, discussions, and hands-on experience, this course provides students the opportunity to acquire the basic skills essential to proper laboratory methods and analytical techniques. Such skills are critical to archaeological careers. Students will learn about the process that archaeological collections typically undergo from field to final curation, with added emphasis on curation ethics and on the quantitative analyses that we use to learn more about the past from collections. Students will also learn basic identification for major archaeological artifact materials, including lithics, ceramics, glass, metal, and organic material culture, as well as learn about the inherent needs and challenges that each material type poses for ethical, long-term curation.

HISP 467: Field Methods in Archaeology (CRM) | Spring 2024
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This course is an introduction to archaeological field methods, including excavation, geophysical survey, feature and artifact identification, mapping, and site interpretation. Students will hone these skills while conducting a cultural resource assessment of the planned area of impact (AOI) for a UMW campus development project scheduled for Summer 2025. Through this course, students will engage in the process of designing, implementing, and assessing an archaeological reconnaissance that is tailored to the specific field setting, site history, and feasibility within the project AOI. The students who successfully complete this course will have developed the skills necessary to continue on to other archaeological research and contract projects in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions in the U.S.

HISP 471: Field Methods in GPR | Fall 2024
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Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is a high-demand, non-invasive technology that is exploding in the preservation field, but the training needed to use it effectively is still specialized and not widely available. The goal of this course is to orient you on how GPR is used, how to tailor your field methods to suit different environments and feature types, and how to make critically assess GPR work that others have done. This course will include a sizeable applied component to reinforce the fundamentals of carrying out a ground penetrating radar (GPR) survey in the field and interpreting the results in the lab. Students will have the opportunity to conduct field surveys in different field conditions that likewise contain different types of cultural features.

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE (2018 - 2023)

ANTH 430: Fieldwork in Archaeology (Rose Hill Plantation Field School) | Summer 2021
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This course is an introduction to archaeological field methods, including excavation, geophysical survey, feature and artifact identification, mapping, and site interpretation. Students will hone these skills at the Rose Hill Plantation State Historic Site in Union, South Carolina, the setting of an early-nineteenth-century plantation landscape. Students will engage in connecting the archaeological data derived from the excavations to broader themes of materiality, identity, political economy, resistance, and power through the study of the spaces in which the enslaved persons at Rose Hill lived and labored. Students who successfully complete this course will have developed the skills necessary to continue on to other archaeological research and contract projects in the Southeastern U.S.

ANTH 430: GPR for Anthropology (Field School and Seminar) | Summer 2023
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This course will cover the fundamentals of carrying out a ground penetrating radar (GPR) survey and interpreting the results. Students will be exposed to different types of sites that can be studied through GPR and gain hands-on experience with operating the equipment and processing the data. This course will demonstrate the necessary steps required for to perform a comprehensive GPR project, including GPR assembly, survey planning and set-up, GPR data collection, post-processing in RADAN 7, georeferencing GPR results through geographic information systems (GIS), and writing professional technical reports about a GPR project and its findings. One of the major goals of this class is to get each student to think critically about GPR procedures and how geophysics are used to understand what lies beneath the earth’s surface. Each student is expected to participate in two surveys and write full technical reports about the methods and findings of each survey.

ANTH 430/493: Advanced Fieldwork in Archaeology (FMNF Still Sites Field School) | Winter 2023
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This course is an accelerated introduction to standard and advanced archaeological field methods, including excavation, geophysical survey, feature and artifact identification, mapping, and site interpretation. Students will hone these skills at a series of archaeological moonshine still sites on the Francis Marion National Forest (FMNF) near Charleston, South Carolina, the setting of a late nineteenth to twentieth century clandestine landscape. Students will engage in connecting the archaeological data derived from the excavations to broader themes of mobility, identity, political economy, resistance, and power through the study of the spaces in which former coastal plantation owners lived and made moonshine while navigating encroaching industrial activities. Students who successfully complete this course will have developed the skills necessary to continue on to other archaeological research and contract projects in the Southeastern U.S.

HISP 470: Historic Preservation Abroad | Summer 2025
Faculty co-instructor with Dr. Andrea Livi-Smith (UMW-HISP)

View the blog (Summer 2025) | Learn more about HISP 470 at UMW

Parker, Katherine G. (2022)
Role Models Feature: Natalie Adams Pope. Horizons & Tradition 64(2):20-22.
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Heath, Barbara J., Rebecca J. Webster, and Katherine G. Parker (2020)
Discovering a Palisade: Indigenous-Anglo Interactions In the Seventeenth-Century Northern Neck. The Bulletin of the Northumberland County Historical Society 57:5-23.
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‡Invited participation | *Student Co-Author

*Parham, Emmeline A., *Tonya N. Peña, *Kale T. Dalton, *Mariah D. Mireles, *Hannah C. Claflin, *Madeleine E. Shroades, and Katherine G. Parker (2023)
I’ve Got Friends In Low(Country) Places: A Case For Adaptive Survey Methods From The FMNF Still Sites Project. Paper forthcoming at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Society of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. February 18th.
Learn More about the FMNF Still Sites Project

Heather Wholey, Nicole Grinnan, Carole Nash, Katherine Parker, McKenna Litynski, Bill Lees, Sarah Miller, Lindsey Cochran, panelists (2022)
‡ Panel: Unifying the Language of Climate Change Archaeology. Panel presented at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Philadelphia, PA. January 5-8.
Learn more about North American Heritage at Risk (NAHAR)

Parker, Katherine G. (2020)
‡ Structuring Colonial Entanglements on the Chesapeake Landscape: Exploring Evidence of Fortification from the Coan Hall Site. Paper presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, Boston, MA. January 8-11. Access PDF

Parker, Katherine G. (2021)
‡ “Still Here”: The Archaeology of Moonshine, Memory, and Identity in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Paper presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Durham, NC. October 24-27.
Learn more about the FMNF Still Sites Project

Parker, Katherine G. and Jordan L. Schaefer (2019)
Mapping Moonshine in Hell Hole Swamp: Preliminary Modeling of Clandestine Liquor Distillation Sites in Coastal South Carolina. Paper presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Jacksonville, MS. November 6-9.
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Hollenbach, Kandace D., *Megan E. Belcher, Rebecca J. Webster, Katherine G. Parker, and Barbara J. Heath (2019)
‡ A Review of Paleoethnobotanical Analyses Conducted at the Coan Hall Site, Northumberland County, Virginia. Paper presented at the 44th Annual Meeting of the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference, Ocean City, MD. March 21-24.
Learn more about the Coan Hall Site

Parker, Katherine G. (2019)
‡ Geophysical Investigations of Colonial Interactions: A Case Study of Two Sites in Northumberland County, Virginia. Paper presented at the 44th Annual Meeting of the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference, Ocean City, MD. March 21-24.
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Znachko, Caroline, Armando Anzellini, Katherine G. Parker, and Christa Hicks, editors (2022)
Climate Change: Anthropological Perspectives and Human Responses. University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology Visiting Lecture Research Series 1. Open access provided through the Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange (TRACE).
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Carter, Katherine G. (2014)
The Temple Mound: Re-envisioning Chronology and Function of Mound F on the Angel Site (12VG1). Undergraduate thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia.
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20909.74726

• UMW Archaeology Lab Website
  Access the website here

• Drowning in the Drink: Climate Change and the Threat to Coastal Moonshine Still Sites. Blogpost for the Heritage at Risk Committee (HARC), Society for Historical Archaeology. March 30, 2023.
  Access the blog post here

• South Carolina Archaeology Month 2020: Avocational Archaeology StoryMap
  Access the StoryMap here