The Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Evansville has welcomed two new faculty members in the past two years. For this double-feature edition of the Faculty Research Spotlight Series, Dr. Rebekah McKay and Dr. Kyle Clark shared the amazing research they completed before arriving to teach at UE.
Dr. McKay is a Greek archaeologist specializing in Aegean Prehistory and teaches archaeology, history, Latin, and related classes here at UE. Archaeology is the study of the human past through its material remains. Dr. McKay’s PhD dissertation investigated social and economic conditions and the use of common-pool resources during the formation of palatial states in Greece (ca. 1400-1200 BC). Economic and societal values are both somewhat invisible in the archaeological record, which usually deals with physical remains such as buildings, ceramics, and coins. In order to learn about how the ancient Greeks interacted with and affected their environment, Dr. McKay worked backwards from the evidence to the human behavior that caused it.
When scientists study the environment today, they begin with known human actions and study unknown environmental effects and results. Dr. McKay began her research by looking at the environmental results in order to hypothesize about ancient human actions and motivations. By studying forests and arable land, she was able to examine how societal changes impacted the environment. As society became more stratified and less egalitarian during this time, elites and new state governments undermined the community’s careful use of their shared resources.
Palatial leaders had the authority and strength to ignore the community’s rules about land use, which caused massive environmental and societal changes. Instead of all the community stakeholders deciding how to use land, decisions came from new palatial rulers who prioritized private land over shared areas. This new structure combined with population increases that taxed common land caused individuals to cultivate new land for their own use. The privatization of land encouraged producers to maximize their individual profit and prestige to rise through the newly formed social classes, widening wealth gaps in the community. Because the palaces gathered and redistributed agricultural and trade products, the new system also made community members increasingly reliant on the palatial administrative structure. Finally, ominously, these societal and agricultural changes prioritized short-term prosperity over long-term security.
Dr. McKay marshalled a wide variety of evidence to document her research. By looking at the environmental record of preserved pollen and phytoliths (microscopic silica deposits produced in plant cells) she found evidence of a man-made deforestation event during the time period of state-formation. She also used demographic data and consumption models to learn about how these environments could have supported ancient populations and their food needs. Finally, Dr. McKay incorporated documentary data from ancient administrative documents written in Linear B, an alphabet adapted to write the ancient Greek language. These documents provided information about land and food administration at specific points in time, supplementing the long-term trends shown by the environmental data. Drawing on so many forms of information allowed Dr. McKay to shed light on these complicated issues and research questions.
Dr. McKay said that doing archaeology involves “working really hard… but it’s the best kind of work!” In particular, she loves working with students and seeing people get excited about what they’re doing. When asked about a favorite memory from field work, she replied, “it’s hard to beat your first summer in Greece,” referencing her time at Mt. Lykaion in 2016. Dr. McKay recalled the camaraderie and excitement of doing archaeological fieldwork and forming friendships on top of the beautiful mountain.
In addition to discussing her research, Dr. McKay also gave some tips for choosing graduate programs and had plenty of advice for students considering graduate school in general. She described grad school as “costly in every way it can be to a person,” making the decision to attend is a significant one! Based on the tips Dr. McKay gave, here are some questions to ask when considering attending graduate school generally or choosing a specific program:
So, you’re thinking about grad school? Here are some questions to consider…
– Do you want to make graduate school research your highest priority?
– Do you find meaning and excitement in your academics right now? Graduate school pays off if one finds meaning in the work, so students should evaluate whether they enjoy their current academic work before considering if they should attend a graduate program.
– Does the program you’re looking at offer adequate funding? Some schools waive tuition for admitted graduate students and offer stipends associated with research or teaching assistantships.
– Have you located a potential advisor? If so, do you like the way this person thinks? Will this advisor support your curiosity and academics or make you do their own work? Is this person kind and someone you get along with?
– Does the program have scholars with related specialties or skill sets? These people can help you support your research and expand your expertise.
– What do current students say about the program? Finding out what it is like to study a particular degree track from a student’s perspective provides insights you won’t get from speaking with faculty.
For students trying to pick out their own areas of interest and research, Dr. McKay advises students to “notice the things that are delicious and that you would read about on your own time.” From there, they can research what questions other scholars are asking and discussing relating to this topic and what tools and training are necessary to conduct their research. When research is driven by questions and curiosity, it can develop organically and lead to evidence and additional questions that one might never have thought of at the beginning!
Dr. McKay hopes to be able to use her research expertise in classes concerning paleoecology for archaeology and ancient economics. She continues to be active in archaeological fieldwork as the Project Archaeobotanist at the Tombs of Aidonia Preservation, Heritage and Exploration project and the Director of Finds at the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project.
Dr. Clark is a human behavioral ecologist and teaches the University of Evansville’s anthropology classes. Anthropology, the study of humanity, is a brand-new major here at UE. Anthropology has four subfields: cultural anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistics. According to Dr. Clark, anthropology allows students to see how their personal experiences fit in the border scope of human experience, which can build empathy and understanding.
As a human behavioral ecologist, Dr. Clark applies evolutionary theory to human behavior to identify a behavior’s function in its context and determine why people behave the way that they do. In his PhD work, he applied this framework to studying ancestor worship while living among the Iban in Borneo (Indonesia)!
While working on his PhD at the University of Missouri, Dr. Clark noticed how common ancestor worship was in the ethnographies he was reading. Some of his advisors had connections with the Iban, so Dr. Clark decided to observe their religion of syncretized Christianity and ancestor worship to determine the effects of ancestor worship on their community. Dr. Clark employs the “descendant-leaving strategy” theory, which proposes that ancestors use traditions to guide the actions of their descendants. Dr. Clark was particularly interested in whether ancestor worship helped promote cooperation in Iban communities. Just as parents hope that their children stay alive and work together, so would ancestors hope that their distant descendants would prosper.
Cultural anthropology studies the human behaviors and practices which societies pass down between generations. Human behavioral ecology applies evolutionary theory to this framework to explain current behaviors. For example, natural selection would ensure that traditions that helped create prosperity and therefore helped Iban groups leave more descendants would be more likely to persist over time. At first, it might seem odd to apply evolutionary theory to religion, but Dr. Clark’s goal is to examine the behaviors that stem from the Iban’s religious beliefs, not the beliefs themselves.
Dr. Clark conducted his research by living in an Iban community longhouse for 10 months, during which time he observed all aspects of the Iban’s daily lives. He said this was the sort of on-the-ground research aspiring anthropologists dream about and was both incredible and difficult. Dr. Clark did lots of background research into what to expect when he arrived, but living in Borneo was still a vastly different experience than anything he had encountered prior. He mentioned the lack of hot water and toilet facilities as one obvious difference, which he said made him appreciate these amenities in America. Despite the challenge, he said that living in a completely new way and broadening one’s horizons is an important part of anthropology.
Another contrast between American and Iban cultures was the extent of the kinship networks in Iban villages. Dr. Clark lived in a longhouse which was the residence of 13 different households, most of which were at least somewhat related to each other. This is a very different living structure than the single-family households common in America. The resulting density of the Iban kin networks helped strengthen these community networks. In America, many people value family ties, but the density of one’s family network (i.e. how far one lives from most extended family members) is not as high of a priority.
Language barriers are often a hurdle for those living and working abroad. Dr. Clark took a summer course to learn to speak Indonesian before he arrived in Malaysia, but it was still a bit of a shock to adjust to the speed of the native speakers. Nevertheless, he continued working on his Indonesian during his time with the Iban and even learned some of their own language! Although his ability to speak Iban developed slower than Dr. Clark had hoped, the Iban community still welcomed and accepted him.
Dr. Clark was suitably proud of his ability to adapt to living in a completely different culture for 10 months to gather data for his research. In evolutionary anthropology circles, many scholars obtain research over a summer, making Dr. Clark’s 10-month field season a relatively rare accomplishment!
In the future, Dr. Clark would like to expand his research to study “ancestor-descendant conflict,” the conflict between an ancestors’ desired behavior and how their descendants want to behave. He will investigate how ancestor worship affects this tension and how the conflict in turn affects the community. He hopes to determine how a community’s size and kinship structures change the impact of ancestor-descendant conflict. Dr. Clark is currently working on grants to help him return to Indonesia with a team for a summer to observe multiple different longhouse communities. Studying multiple communities will broaden the scope of his research and increase the amount of data he will be able to collect and study.
Despite being some of the University of Evansville’s newest faculty, Drs. McKay and Clark have already accomplished fantastic research. It will be exciting for our academic community to see how their research continues to evolve and expand during their time at UE! The department of Archaeology and Anthropology seems justly proud of its new faculty.
Stay tuned for future faculty research spotlights in upcoming issues of Crescent Magazine!
The full faculty interviews with Drs. McKay and Clark are available in the digital version of this article at crescent.evansville.edu.
Are you a faculty member who is interested in being featured? Contact Grace Gleisner at gg126@evansville.edu.
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