Departmental News

Dr. Daniel Wescott will be giving the 2025 Presidential Seminar!

In this presentation, Dr. Wescott will discuss how bone size and shape is influenced by activity and behavior and how anthropologists use this information to develop the biological profile, a key tool in identifying unknown decedents.  

Talk Title | Show Me Your Femur: What I Can Tell from Your Skeleton    
Date/Time | Wednesday, April 30, 2025 | 3:00 - 5:00 pm    
Location | Flowers Hall 230

Danny Wescott is a biological anthropologist and the Director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State. He earned his master’s degree from Wichita State University in 1996 and his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Tennessee in 2001. His research focuses on developing methods for forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology and includes locating clandestine remains, estimating the postmortem interval, interpreting skeletal trauma, and developing a biological profile from human skeletal remains. As Director, Danny strategically leads multi- and inter-disciplinary research teams that include international researchers. He has been principal or co-principal investigator on fifteen externally funded grants at Texas State University totaling over $4,500,000. He has published more than 80 research articles, 147 technical reports, and authored or co-authored approximately 100 professional conference papers and posters. Danny has also mentored over 40 graduate students and served as a member on more than 50 thesis and dissertation committees. He is an expert in human skeletal morphology and forensic taphonomy, and he is regularly consulted on medicolegal death investigations.   

Congratulations to PhD student, Myriah Allen, who was awarded the J. Michael Quigg Student Research Grant from the Council of Texas Archaeologists for $1200. These funds will help cover travel costs related to her PhD research project entitled "The Ascent of the Southern Plains Horse Cultures: an In-Depth Look at the Early Acquisition of Livestock, Trade Goods and Their Effects on the Southern Plains Tribes, AD 1540-1680".

The Center for Archaeological Studies has been awarded two interagency cooperation contracts totaling over $500,000 to assist the Railroad Commission of Texas with their Abandoned Oil and Gas Well Plugging efforts. These projects, led by CAS's Amy E. Reid, will involve cultural monitoring and Section 106 cultural resources reviews, and will provide great opportunities for students to gain professional experience. 

At the recent Council of Texas Archeologists (CTA) meeting, Jodi Jacobson was awarded the CTA’s E. Mott Davis Award for Public Education for her TxBOX: A Museum in a Box program. The E. Mott Davis Award is awarded annually by the CTA and recognizes outstanding efforts made by a firm, agency, or institution to advance public awareness and appreciation of archeology, and to foster support for the preservation and protection of archeological resources.

According to the nomination to the CTA’s Public Outreach Committee: TxBOX is an outreach tool for K-12 educators to provide student enrichment on Texas archaeology. TxBOXes are full mini-museums complete with interactive displays and artifacts, and include Lesson Plans, articulated web content for deeper-dive exploration, and comprehensive lists of additional teacher resources associated with teaching Texas Past and Texas Archaeology. The material was developed to help meet 3rd-8th grade level TEKS and is adaptable for any age group.

Jodi has successfully designed these boxes to be equivalent to school field trips to small museums, but without the field trip and admission costs, and to reach students in rural schools where local museum presence is sparse, or Title I schools where field trip funds may be limited. She utilized Texas State Curriculum Development and Instruction Department and Teacher focus groups and reviews to ensure that the TxBOX content provides outreach on archaeology, the importance of preservation, and Texas past; but also satisfies Texas Education TEKS for 4th and 7th grade related to Texas History.

TxBOX is available for FREE to any requesting Texas Public School, Texas Public School PTSA, or Texas Public School Classroom or Organization. They are shipped out for free and include a fully pre-paid return label for shipment back to CAS. TxBOXes can be checked out by region or merged with other regions to provide a larger display. There are no costs for ground shipping and return of one region box for any requesting school. Costs for expedited shipping or request for additional regional materials would be covered by the schools and/or PTA’s request, making even multi-region sets financially feasible for Title I or lower budget rural schools. Funding for TxBOX was provided by the Center for Archaeological Studies (CAS) and a matching grant by the Texas Preservation Trust Fund.

Jodi has not only invested years in the development of the Central Texas Region TxBOX with physical contents and digital resources, but she has also been brilliantly forward-thinking and has designed TxBOX to be scalable where additional boxes can be easily modeled after the Central Texas Region box. She is also dedicated to ensuring that these mini museums are actually beneficial to both teachers and students, by collaborating with educators, incorporating surveys and carefully considering feedback. The feedback thus far has been overwhelmingly positive, and the boxes have already successfully shared important information about Texas Archaeology with Texans who likely would not have otherwise been exposed to and have advanced public awareness and appreciation of archaeology. This outreach tool has and will continue to foster support for the preservation and protection of archaeological resources.

TxBOX is Jodi’s brainchild and she collaborated with the following folks in its development: Mike O’Brien – Resin Casts of Artifacts; Chris Ringstaff – Knapping of lithic point replicas; Wilson Family Foundation – Consultation and input into Wilson-Durham-Chandler information along with comments (Earline); Gwynne Ash Texas State Department of Curricula shaping ideas and early input for developing teaching materials; Barbara Ludden, Rockport ISD School Librarian.

This is the third CTA E. Mott Davis Award for Public Outreach to CAS since 2018. Previous awards include CAS’s Spring Lake Site Data Recovery Project in 2018 and Amy Reid in 2023 for her children’s book Maybe You'll be an Archaeologist.
 

The Department of Anthropology is saddened to share the news that Professor James (Jim) F Garber died on March 31, 2025, in San Marcos. He was born May 13, 1953 in Chicago, Illinois. Jim obtained an undergraduate degree from the University of New Mexico in 1975 and a PhD from Southern Methodist University in 1981. He taught for 37 years at Texas State University from 1982 until he retired in 2019. He was the director of the Anthropology Program from 1990-1993 and first Chair of the newly created Anthropology Department from 1992-1997. He developed “Magic, Ritual and Religion”, one of the most successful classes at the University and held annual archaeological field schools in Texas or Belize starting in 1982. Most of his research focused on Mayan civilization in Belize and he established strong collaborations with Belizean and other scholars. Many students took his classes and field schools, and many of them went on to become professional Anthropologists. He was respected and an inspiration to all. His contributions to the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University were foundational.

A celebration of Life will be held at the Meadow Center, on April 16, 2025 beginning at 4:00 p.m. All who knew him are welcome to join us in honoring a life well lived and a spirit that will never be forgotten.

Congratulations to Katie Gerstner (advisor Jill Pruetz) who has been awarded the College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Doctoral Student Award!

The Texas State University Phi Kappa Phi Chapter and The Graduate College are delighted to announce that two TXST doctoral students and one recent master's alumna have been selected as awardees of the Dissertation Fellowship or Graduate Research Grant from The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi.

The Phi Kappa Phi Dissertation Fellowship is a highly competitive, $10,000 national fellowship awarded annually to only twelve active Society members who are doctoral candidates and are completing dissertations. The award provides financial support during the dissertation writing process to candidates in all fields of study whose projects demonstrate originality and significant potential for advancing knowledge in the candidates’ disciplines. This year marks the fourth year in a row that TXST has had a winner of the Phi Kappa Phi Dissertation Fellowship. 

Kyrsten Cruz (advisor Nick Herrmann) was awarded a Phi Kappa Phi Dissertation Fellowship in the amount of $10,000. Only12 of these were awarded nationwide and the fellowship will provide support for Krysten to write her dissertation on Early Mycenaean mortuary structures and their associated human remains.

The Phi Kappa Phi Graduate Research Grant is a highly competitive, $1,500 grant awarded annually to only twenty active Society members who are attending graduate school and who are conducting or presenting research. This year marks the third time that TXST has had two Phi Kappa Phi Graduate Research Grant recipients in a single year—10% of the awardee pool for this prestigious national award—and the fourth year in a row that TXST graduate students have received this award. 

Gwen Olivier (advisor David Kilby) was awarded a Phi Kappa Phi Graduate Research Grant in the amount of $1500. Only 20 of these were awarded nationwide and will assist with field research in New Mexico aimed at how the paleoenvironment affected the distribution of archaeological sites over a 14,000 year period.

Congratulations to Krysten and Gwen!

Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Wesoctt who has been invited to give the 2025 Presidential Seminar Lecture!  

In this presentation, Dr. Wescott will discuss how bone size and shape is influenced by activity and behavior and how anthropologists use this information to develop the biological profile, a key tool in identifying unknown decedents.  

Title | Show Me Your Femur: What I Can Tell from Your Skeleton
Date | Friday, April 18, 2025
Time | 3:00 - 5:00 pm
Location | Flowers Hall 341

Join the Department of Anthropology for our 2025 Career Workshop.  Students are invited to explore job prospects and career options with an Anthropology Degree.

Event Date | Thursday, April 10th, 2025      
Event Time | 4:30pm – 5:30 p.m.       
Target Audience | Current TXST undergraduate Anthropology majors and minors

The workshop will consist of a 65-minute program featuring both faculty presentations and a question-and-answer session.

Visit the Career Workshop Event Page for more information and registration. 

Exciting research is going on across all fields of anthropology at Texas State! Texas State Anthropology Students investigate everything from archaeological sites to the impact of COVID on community development. They write papers and make presentations about human evolution and bone decomposition. They explore the theoretical underpinnings of anthropology from Boas anthropology to practice theory and gender. 

Join us for the 2025 Texas State University Anthropology Research Conference to hear students share some of their research from 8am – 5pm on Friday, April 11, 2025!

Visit the Research Conference Website for paper submissions and more information. 

Join the Anthropology Department for a movie night! 

The Department will be watching “Sorry to Bother You” on Thursday, March 6, 2025 at 6:30 pm in ELA 114.  All students are welcome to attend. 

Get to know your Anthropology faculty and have free pizza!  We'll talk about upcoming opportunities and Fall 2025 course offerings. 

Date/Time | Friday, February 28, 2025 - 12:00 - 1:00 pm  
Location | ELA 225

Free Pizza! 

Katie Gerstner, from the Pruetz Lab, received a small research grant to support her dissertation research, “Examining Seasonality and Anthropogenic Effects on Western Chimpanzee Gut Microbiomes (Pan troglodytes verus) in Savanna Habitat.”

This research aims to investigate ecological impacts on gut microbiomes of endangered savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Senegal by examining how anthropogenic and seasonality affects microbial composition patterns in two savanna chimpanzee communities. By elucidating the presence and transmission dynamics of pathogens derived from savanna biomes, this research will fill a missing gap that is needed to fully understand what shapes a healthy chimpanzee microbiome.

Photo is of Katie collecting data in the savanna for the Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project.

As a first-generation scholar, Dr. Angela K. VandenBroek's ambitions have always necessitated a patchwork career in parallel to her anthropological education. From customer service through to web development, these professional experiences have been shaped by her growth as an anthropologist and vice versa. This chapter is a reflection, inspired by teaching applied anthropology students at Texas State University, that explores what she learned tacking between theoretical anthropology and applied anthropology and how this tacking became an intertwining praxis at the intersection of design, technology, and anthropology. First, she argues that anthropology is not a career path that can only lead down one of two divergent roads: “academic” or “applied.” Rather, it is a way of thinking; it is a critical and ethical commitment; it is an ability to sit comfortably with intolerable complexity of social life and make sense of it;; and it is a curiosity and engagement with anthropological conversations. Second, she outlines a series of tactics for building a more productive and impactful anthropological praxis from this perspective. She contextualizes these tactics as not merely ways to “get things done” but also as a way of testing, extending, and expanding anthropological understandings of design so that we may also “do some good.”

Read the article

The Graduate College and the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society at TXST are pleased to announce that six Texas State University students have received the Phi Kappa Phi Love of Learning Award in the 2024 competition. Nationally, 200 students from 108 institutions were selected for the Love of Learning Award this year, with Texas State tying second with Texas Tech University for the most awards received by a single institution.

This $1,000 award helps active Phi Kappa Phi members fund post-baccalaureate professional development pertaining to their graduate studies, ranging from costs associated with doctoral dissertations, continuing education, career development, and travel expenses for teaching, research and/or learning. Since The Graduate College began offering external funding advising services in 2016, nearly 50 TXST graduate students have received this competitive award. External funding coordinators Dr. Andrea Hilkovitz and Dr. Brian Smith encourage all Phi Kappa Phi members to apply for the Love of Learning Award because it can be used to fund many different activities, including travel and research-related expenses.

The 2024 awardees include the following students:

• Stephanie Baker, doctoral student in applied anthropology
• Keegan Beane, doctoral student in applied anthropology
• Mai Bui, doctoral student in mathematics education
• Kelsey Fox, doctoral student in applied anthropology
• Neelam Thapa Magar, master’s student in sustainability studies
• Ainsley Tyler, master’s student in psychological research

Stephanie Baker

Keegan Beane

Kelsey Fox

Thinking about graduate school in Anthropology?  Get anthropology-specific advice and guidance at the How to Get into Graduate School Workshop!  

Moderator: Dr. Augustine Agwuele

November 14, 2024  
4:30 - 5:30pm

Registration Required

The World Neolithic Conference brings together researchers from around the globe to address one of the fundamental transitions in human cultural and biological evolution - the emergence of food production and the associated changes in lifeways, including the origins of villages and cities. The weeklong conference is being held in early November in Şanlıurfa, Turkey, the location of the the Göbekli tepe World Heritage Site. Dr. Kilby is collaborating with Dr. Yoshitaka Kanomato (Sendai University, Japan) and Dr. Andrei Tabarev (Institute of Archaeology and Ethology, Russia) to chair a session on Lithic Technology During the Paleolithic- Neolithic Transition. The full-day session includes 14 presenters from seven countries. Dr. Kilby's presentation is titled, "The Reorganization of Technology" and will address changes in the organization of stone tool technology that accompany the transition from hunting and gathering to dedicated farming in the North American Southwest.

The Anthropology Department is pleased to host two incredible presentations as part of our Speakers Series!  

Dr. Lindsay Smith 
La Varilla Electronica: Community-centered forensics and sensory labor in the Mexican Borderlands.
Friday, November 1, 2024 | 2:00 - 3:00 pm
Online via Zoom

Dr. Héctor Beltrán
Code Work: Hacking across the US/México Techno-Borderlands
Friday, November 8, 2024 | 2:00 - 3:00 pm
Online via Zoom

Please visit our Speakers Series page for more information on the talks and how to join.

Join us for the Meet the Professors lunch!  Get to know your faculty, find out about research and opportunities in the department, and learn about class options for the Spring!  

Pizza provided.

Friday, October 18, 2024 | 12:00 pm | ELA 245 
 

Congratulations to Ph.D. student, Rose Moore (Dr. Christina Conlee advisor), who has received a $2000 scholarship from the PaeloWest foundation for her dissertation project tilted "Stress, Health, and Diet during Wari Expansion: A Bioarchaeological Approach to the Central and South Coasts of Peru Between the Early Intermediate Period and Middle Horizon."

Texas State Anthropology 2024-2025 Speaker Series

Spacetime in Ruins: An Interdisciplinary Archaeology of Place and Migration at the Stagecoach Inn

Trish Markert  
Assistant Professor of Archaeology, Western University

The Stagecoach Inn in D’Hanis, TX sits at the intersection of multiple migrations in 19th and 20th century Texas. It is a limestone and sandstone ruin obscured by brush from the closest county road, but it was once the most prominent and visible marker of a small Alsatian settlement on the Texas “frontier.” The stagecoach line brought a steady stream of travelers between San Antonio and Mexico during the mid-19th century – but rather than these transitory passings-through, this presentation examines the lives of migrants and descendants who called this place home. In this talk, I trace five generations of residents at the inn across several intersecting migration events: Alsatian and German immigration to Texas, the violent displacements of settler colonialism, the forced migration of enslavement, and migration from Mexico amid the Mexican Revolution. Using interdisciplinary methods, I examine the material remains of the structure, the archival traces of its occupants, and narratives of life in the 20th century. Looking outward from its rubble walls, I question how people mark the spacetime of past migrations on the built landscape and what that means for a community-based archaeology of place in the present.

Friday, October 11, 2-3PM | Online via Zoom 

 Get the Zoom link on Canvas

Graduate student, Caroline Story (advisor, Dr. Agwuele), has been invited to present her master’s thesis, "A critical approach to understanding Naija," at the birthplace of American anthropology, Columbia University. The conference will be hosted by the Teachers College’s Language and Social Interaction Working Group from October 18th-19th.

Congratulations to Theresa De Cree (Dr. Wescott advisor), Kelsey Fox (Dr. Hamilton advisor), and Ivanna Robledo (Dr. Herrmann) who were each awarded a $180,000 National Institute of Justice Graduate Research Fellowships! Excellent work everyone. Below you can find the titles of their specific projects.  

Theresa De Cree  
Defining the Properties of Osseointegrated and Ingrowth Bone Around Orthopedic Medical Devices and Their Effect on Fracture Risk in Elderly Populations: A Forensic Anthropological Perspective

Kelsey Fox 
Enhancing Equitable Forensic Identification: An Evaluation of Pelvic Morphology for Parity Detection and Age Estimation in Unidentified Skeletal Remains

Ivanna Robledo 
A Multi-Method Genetic, Craniometric, and Isotopic Approach to Estimating Geographic Origin of Unidentified Latinx Remains

Dr. Kate Spradley, co-PI, and research collaborators have just been awarded $2,062,069.00 for a grant titled “MOSAIC: Unifying Methods of Sex, Stature, Affinity, & Age for Identification through Computational Standardization” from the National Institute of Justice. Dr. Courtney Siegert will serve as senior personnel as this project builds on her dissertation research. The award will be split among five universities and Texas State will receive a subcontract award for $311,000.00 including three years of financial support for a PhD student in the Applied Anthropology PhD program. 

Please attend the 18th annual Texas Association of Biological Anthropology conference here at Texas State on Saturday, November 2, 2024. This is a great opportunity to meet biological anthropologists from all around our great state and get an idea of what people are researching. Abstracts are being accepted until October 18th. Student tickets are only $10! Check out the TABA website and feel free to contact Dr. Cunningham if you'd like any further information.

So how smart are lemurs, exactly? How do we even start to figure that out? Meet Ray Vagell, researcher and graduate student from Texas State University who uses SMARTA (a custom-designed touch screen system) to study how lemurs solve problems at the Duke Lemur Center. The podcast also discuss the fun – but mysterious – fact that only female ruffed lemurs have color vision. Ray also uses SMARTA to study ruffed lemur vision, and how his research has become enrichment for some ruffed lemurs who love pushing and playing with the device. Sometimes they even find ways to cheat the system! 

Congratulations to Amy Reid ant The Veterans Curation Program, run out of CAS, who received an award for $281,357 for their FY25 VCP session!  The funding will be used to hire four new student Veterans and for two returning assistant lab managers, Robert Curran and Katharine Lukach. 

The VCP provides employment and vocational training for recently separated veterans using archaeological collections administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  Veterans working in the CAS laboratory are being trained in data entry, report writing, photography, scanning technologies, and many other transferable job skills.  The veterans are helping the Corps rehabilitate archaeological collections and associated records for long-term curation and future research. 

The Anthropology Department will host their annual Graduate Student Open House on Friday, October 4, 2024 from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm.

Students interested in pursuing a Master's or Ph.D. at Texas State should attend to learn more about our graduate degree programs, course offerings, subdisciplines, academic Centers, and more.  

Registration information and a schedule of events can be found on the Graduate Open House page. 

Dr. Jill Pruetz's Lab members are heading to the 46th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Primatologists (ASP) in Rivera Maya. 

Raymond Vagell 
Talk Title | Not All Those Who Pace Are Stressed: Pacing In Captive Ruffed Lemurs (Varecia spp.) Could be An Excitement Response Towards An Enrichment 

Katie Gerstner and Carson Black 
Talk Title | Insights into Wild Chimpanzee Gut Microbiome Composition: Methodological Approaches and Implications for Understanding Primate-Environment Interactions

A scholarship endowment named for Dr. Kent Reilly's has established and is open for donations.  The scholarship is for MA students studying the indigenous symbol systems and/or archaeology of the Americas. The aim is to give at least one $1000 scholarship a year with a preference for out of state students so they can get in state tuition. Donations can be made through University Advancement. 

Join us as we celebrate with service, food, drinks, dance, and music the life for Dr. Frank Kent Reilly, III.  

Saturday, October 12, 2024 | 1:00 - 5:00 pm 
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church  
6000 FM 3237 
Wimberley, Texas 78676

Congratulating to Dr. Jodi Jacobson who has been awarded $304,531 from The United States Department of the Interior and the National Park Service for the project, “Archaeological Inventory of the Rio Grande Corridor.” This project is a four-year agreement with Big Bend National Park and will include National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) Section 110 survey and inventory of archaeological and historic resources for segments of land along roughly 100 miles of the Rio Grande within the Park and will provide multiple opportunities for students.

Congratulations to Amy Reid who has secured a two-year agreement with TxDOT in the amount of $306,630. The agreement is to provide curation services and will allow CAS to continue receiving new collections from TxDOT’s contractors, rehabilitating additional legacy collections, and providing long-term care and access of TxDOT collections for research and public education.

Congratulating Dr. Jill Pruetz who is the recipient of a Regents’ Professor Award, which honors professors who demonstrate a record of distinguished teaching, research or other scholarly activities, and service at the local, state, and national levels. It is the highest honor in the Texas State University System.