Shawn K. Collins, Laboratory Director

Shawn Collins has worked in the American Southwest over the past 10 years.  She has done work on cultures including Ancestral Puebloan, Ute, Navajo, and Euroamerican.  Shawn's historic archaeological experience ranges from homesteading to coal, precious metals, and carnotite-era mining.  She is also familiar with pre-Maya and Maya cultures of the Pacific Coast of Guatemala.

Shawn was trained in phytolith analysis by Dr. Deborah Pearsall at the University of Missouri Paleoethnobotany Laboratory.  Shawn specializes in phytolith analysis of archaeological samples and for paleoenvironmental reconstruction.  She has analyzed samples from the American Southwest, the Inland Pacific Northwest, the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, the Northern Frontier and the Basin of Mexico, Jamaica, Peru, Ecuador, and even Guam.  She is currently working to expand both her comparative collection and knowledge of vegetation in Mesoamerica and the Greater Southwest.  Shawn's areas of interest include interactions between people and the landscape, and agricultural intensification and technology.  She has completed a Master's thesis and is currently working on a doctoral dissertation using phytolith analysis to address these topics.

William J. Grimm, Project Director

Bill Grimm has been a practicing archaeologist in the North American Southwest since 1989.  He has experience with the major prehistoric cultures in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, including the Hohokam, Ancestral Puebloans, and the Mogollon.  He has also worked on historic mining towns and CCC camps.  His supervisory expertise ranges from small pedestrian surveys to moderate data recovery projects.  He has at one time or another performed nearly all of the tasks required to carry any project through to its completion.  His admitted shortcoming is laboratory work, though he has had plenty of recent experience to help improve that situation while working at the University of Missouri Research Reactor and Archaeometry Lab.  While there, he also gained some additional experience with statistical analysis, web site design, and computer programming.  Still, he prefers the open air around him and the dirt beneath his feet.

Bill's research interests are constantly evolving, and he is currently involved in research that is addressing questions about the clays that were used to produce pottery in the Chuska Valley of New Mexico.  He has been interested in the Chuska area since participating in a tempering material study in that region in the early 1990s.  A developing interest of his deals with the utility of agent-based models in answering archaeological questions.  He has experience with the conceptualization and programming of such models, and he hopes to have the opportunity to pursue this interest further.  In addition to these archaeological interests, his personal interests include sustainable living, alternative building techniques, and organic gardening.  He is also thoroughly committed to the goal of spending as much time with his family as he is able to.