Departmental News

Annemarie Teagle, second year masters student in cultural anthropology, presented her ethnographic research on Deadheads (fans of the Grateful Dead) at the Southwest Popular/ American Culture Association (SWPACA)'s sixth annual meeting of the Grateful Dead Studies Association. Her presentation, "If You Get Confused...": Deadhead Cultural Adaptations in a Changing Musical Landscape, and her thesis explore changes in Deadhead culture as time, the band, and the music performance landscape shifts.

Drs. Todd Ahlman, Nick Herrmann, and Ashley McKeown were funded by a grant from the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to locate the remains of four missing crewmen from a crashed WWII flight. They led a team of 11 applied anthropology doctoral students plus a recent graduate who served as an interpreter on the four-week dig.

Learn more on the Texas State News page.

In the summer of 1541 the Coronado expedition camped in two canyons (barrancas) on the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado in their attempt to find Quivira-the lost cities of gold. One of the Coronado campsites has been located but Coronado’s second Barranca campsite has never been found. Through a detailed review of the Coronado narratives and a GIS analysis of the landscape and travel schedules, Bousman believes he has identified the most likely location of the missing campsite. It is in Palo Duro Canyon. The Summerlee Foundation funded a proposal to look for Coronado’s lost Barranca campsite. In May a group from Texas State, TPWD and THC Stewards will begin their search. The photograph shows the part of Palo Duro Canyon where Bousman belives the Coronado Expedition camped in 1541.

Doctoral Student, Erin Mathison, Featured in Hillsview Magazine 

Erin Mathison has been featured in Hillviews, The Magazine of Texas State University (Spring 2026 issue). In the article, Erin explains how she uses geoarchaeology to better understand past life. As a geoarchaeologist, Erin Mathison specializes in delving into the nitty-gritty.

The first-year doctoral student studies soil geology to better understand the lives of past people and she has a fitting field lab at Spring Lake, the headwaters of the San Marcos River and a jewel of the San Marcos Campus. Mathison’s work caught the attention of the National Science Foundation, which awarded her a $159,000 Graduate Research Fellowship Program grant in July.  The funding will cover three years of tuition and living expenses and also enable Mathison to start her dissertation. She intends to conduct her research in the volcanic uplands of the Alaskan Peninsula. 

Dr. Angela K. VandenBroek, assistant professor of anthropology at Texas State, has a new book out! Edited with Lora Koycheva and Matt Artz, Anthropology and AI starts off with a deep dive on anthropology's long history with artificial intelligence—all the way back to its earliest days in the 1940s —as anthropologists have built, shaped, critiqued, and challenged AI throughout its history.

The volume includes 10 chapters capturing current conversations in the anthropology of AI from across applied and academic approaches—offering challenges, frameworks, and applications for both the fields of AI and anthropology.

In the conclusion, the editors discuss the future of Anthropology and AI from each of their different vantage points—drawing out the tensions and possibilities at the intersections of these two fields going forward.

Dr. VandenBroek's individual contribution to the volume introduces the concept of "bullshit epistemics" to challenge us to think beyond the common critique of AI confabulations and shift our attention to how AI changes the ways that we understand and evaluate knowledge when it is radically unsituated, decontextualized, and unaccountable. 

Graduate Students from the Department of Anthropology held a tabling event for National Anthropology Day. These tables showcased the four subfields of Anthropology: Cultural, Biological, Linguistics, and Archaeology with artifacts, interactive games, and freebies for those who stopped by. These volunteers talked to many interested students on Texas State campus regarding the different aspects of Anthropology and answering any questions students may have had. This event spread the word on Anthropology and encouraged fellow students to become interested in the field and its different subfields. 

The Innovative Anthropologies Lab represented cultural and linguistic anthropology at the department tabling event for World Anthropology Day! Lab Staff held a zine makerspace workshop the day before to craft shareable materials for promoting the subfields to Texas State students. (Pictured, left to right: PhD students, Wònú Ajayi, Caroline Story, and Faith Itiola.)

The Reilly Center for the Art and Symbolism of the Ancient Americas announces the first of an ongoing series of virtual lectures on the art and archaeology of Native America. In the inaugural talk, "Winged Victory: A Mysterious God, a Mysterious Glyph," Nicholas Carter proposes a reading for a hitherto undeciphered Maya hieroglyph as "victory" or "conquest" and explores the iconography of a related supernatural being attested in Classic Maya art.

Sunday, March 8, 2026 | 6:00 pm

Contact Dr. Nicholas Carter for more information. 

Congratulations to Dr. Todd Ahlman and the Center for Archaeological Studies who have been awarded an additional $1,133,140 from the United States Department of the Army for the project “Fort Leonard Wood IGSA (Intergovernmental Support Agreement): Environmental Compliance Year 4." 

For the past five years, Dr. Christi Conlee has served as the Chair of the Anthropology Department. Dr. Conlee ushered the department out of the pandemic, guided us through a significant change in university leadership, and the "Race to R1." She absorbed stress from above and below while continually providing steady and grounded leadership. 
During her tenure as Chair, she worked to clarify and formalize policies, move programs forward, and ensure the department runs smoothly. Dr. Conlee generously and patiently held space for faculty, staff and students to share ideas, experiences, and concerns. The department truly appreciates her service! As she transitions back into a full-time faculty role, Dr. Conlee will be teaching more classes and devoting additional time to student mentorship and research. 

Following Dr. Conlee's departure, the Anthropology Department is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Nicole Taylor as Chair effective January 1, 2026.

Dr. Taylor earned her bachelor's degree in English from Texas State University, her master's degree in English from Texas A&M University, and her doctoral degree in Anthropology from The University of Arizona. She joined Texas State as an Associate Professor in 2016 and was tenured in 2019. During her time at Texas State, she has served in various service and leadership roles, including Ph.D. Program Coordinator, Associate Chair, and Faculty Senate Liaison. Prior to joining to Texas State, she worked in nonprofit and corporate settings conducting research and evaluation in the areas of substance abuse, education and poverty, childhood obesity, school climate, and institutional culture. She then served for five years as the Director of Scholar Programs at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Dr. Taylor is a cultural anthropologist whose research explores contemporary social issues among youth in the United States, including social media engagement, body image concerns, childhood obesity, and the experiences of college students in higher education. Her recent work focuses on the development of digital methods for social media research. Her work has been funded by two National Science Foundation grants and resulted in two ethnographic monographs, a co-edited special journal issue, a co-edited methods volume, and 12 peer-reviewed articles and chapters.

Congratulations to Dr. Carolyn Boyd whose research was recently featured in The University Star! The piece, titled Research Continues to Discover Meaning Behind Historical Mesoamerican Murals, interviews Dr. Boyd about her continued work with the rock art found along the Pecos and Rio Grand rivers.  

Britt Bousman will deliver a lecture entitle “Conquistadors, Bison Hunters and Horses in the Southern Plains” for the "Caroline B. Brettell Seminars in Anthropology" at Southern Methodist University’s Anthropology Department on April 10th. The Brettell Seminars in Anthropology series is the flagship lecture series of the Department of Anthropology. Bousman received his BS, MA and PhD degrees from SMU.

A new article in Science Advances coauthored by TXST archaeologist Dr. Carolyn E. Boyd presents the most comprehensive chronology to date for the iconic Pecos River style murals of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. Using 57 direct radiocarbon dates and 25 dates on mineral accretions across 12 sites, the TXST/Shumla team demonstrates that hunter-gatherer artists produced these elaborate polychrome murals for more than 4,000 years, beginning around 5760–5385 years ago. The study shows that muralists followed consistent rules of composition, color sequencing, and symbolism over millennia—evidence of a long-lived metaphysical tradition tied to the region’s culturally powerful landscape. The findings position the Lower Pecos as a “cultural keystone place” and offer rare insight into the deep origins and persistence of a pan–New World cosmovision later expressed in Mesoamerican societies and continuing into the present.

Congratulations to Anthropology senior, Isabella Mavourneed, who recently published a research article on Neanderthal DNA in the Spring 2025 volume of the Texas State Undergraduate Research Journal. This research was undertaken as part of an Honors Course under the direction of Dr. Britt Bousman. She proposed the topic of the honors course after taking World Prehistory with Dr. Bousman.

The Leakey Foundation and Houston Museum of Natural Science are hosting Dr. Jill Pruetz for a lecture and book signing for her latest published book Apes on the Edge on November 3rd.

"Join primatologist Dr. Jill Pruetz as she shares discoveries from her extensive field research, exploring the unique characteristics of these chimpanzees and the dynamics between them and the people they live alongside. Drawing from her recently published book, Apes on the Edge, Dr. Pruetz explores the extraordinary adaptations and behaviors that set the Fongoli chimpanzees apart from the forest-dwelling chimpanzees known from other regions of Africa, underscoring the importance of protecting these remarkable apes and their fragile habitat." - Leakey Foundation.

Photo Credit: Leakey Foundation, Book Cover: Frans Lanting and U Chicago Press

Come meet your professors!  

The Anthropology Department invites students students to come and get to know your faculty!  We'll talk about upcoming opportunities and Spring 2026 course offerings.

Free pizza will be provided! 

Date/Time | Friday, October 24 - 12:00 - 1:00 pm 
Location | ELA 227

The Center for Archaeological Studies (CAS) has been awarded funding for a new Veterans Curation Program (VCP) session during the 2026 Fiscal Year. The Satellite VCP lab at CAS has been led by Amy Reid (CAS Curator and Assistant Director) since 2018, and this new session will include hiring four student veteran technicians and two returning assistant lab managers, Rob Curran and Katharine Lukach.

The VCP, funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), provides paid employment and vocational training for recently separated veterans using archaeological collections administered by USACE. Veterans working in the CAS laboratory are being trained in data entry, report writing, photography, scanning technologies, and many other transferable job skills to help prepare them for new careers while also helping to rehabilitate important archaeological collections and associated records for long-term curation and future research.

What influences our interactions and encounters with soils? Nadia Luis (Anthropology MA student) explores this question through their research on food forests and community gardens in Texas in a new post on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog. They invite us to think about soils and human bodies through possibilities of collaboration. Read the post on the blog or listen on Platypod, the CASTAC Podcast via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

TXST Anthropology and the InnoAnth Lab was well-represented this year at the annual meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4s) in Seattle. Dr. Nicole Taylor, Dr. Angela K. VandenBroek, Caroline Story (PhD Student) and Manar Naser (MA 2025) presented papers on digital methods, tech entrepreneurship, and large language models.

Anthropology Graduate Students Katie Gerstner (doctoral), Lydia Lehman (Masters) and Raymond Vagell Ph.D present their research at the 47th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Primatologists. Katie, Lydia, and Raymond study primate conservation and care with Dr. Jill Pruetz.

Lydia was invited to present her artwork in The Power of Art in Primate Conservation Symposium. In the provided link, all artists and descriptions of their work can be found. Katie chaired the Diet and Ecology Symposium and presented data on chimpanzee drinking behavior from her dissertation. Raymond presented his dissertation research about touchscreen enrichment with captive lemurs. 

Antonio Beardall, Texas State University Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology with a focus on Archaeology, recently published an article, Peopling Archaeology in Belize: Humanity Beyond the Remains, co-authored with Belizean educator, Norberto Quetzal. The article is based on Beardall's 2024 conference presentation at the Belize Archaeology Symposium, discussing community archaeology and engagement initiatives in Belize, including his dissertation research at Texas State. This is the first article in Belizean archaeology that centers engagement with and inclusion of Belizean citizens in archaeological research. The article was published in the Research Reports on Belizean Archaeology Vol. 19. published by the Belizean Institute of Archaeology under the National Institute of Culture and History. 

Dr. Karla Hernandez-Swift (PI) and Museum Director Servando Guierrez Carillo (co-PI) received a $9,998 Firebird Foundation Anthropological Research Grant for their project, “Preserving Voices: Documenting the Oral Literature of the Teenek People – Death Rituals, Practices, and Beliefs.” Conducted in Dr. Hernandez-Swift’s hometown of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, this initiative also provides resources for engagement and training of the Teenek community to ensure the ongoing collection and preservation of oral histories. 

Join us for this year's speaker series featuring Agustín Fuentes (Aug. 29), Alfredo González-Ruibal (Oct. 17), and Melissa Leach (Nov. 14). Our speakers will be discussing the challenges posed to and by science in these challenging times. Through engaging presentations on their new books, these scholars bring bold, timely research into the heart of our Texas State Anthropology learning community. Learn more and register to attend.

Join us for a virtual open house to learn about graduate programs in anthropology at TXST.

Meet our faculty, explore opportunities in our centers and labs, and get details on our Master of Arts and Applied PhD programs.

October 17, 2025 | 10:00 AM – 12:45 PM (Central US)

Learn More & Register to Attend