Dr. LuAnn Wandsnider

Ph.D. University of New Mexico, 1989

Associate Professor of Anthropology

Office: 824 Oldfather Hall
Email: lwandsnider@unl.edu
Phone: (402) 472-8873
Fax: (402) 472-9642

Subfield:

Archaeology

Major Research Interests:

Archaeological method and theory, archaic-late prehistoric of the North American high plains, traditional food preparation, spatial analysis, quantitative methods (GIS, EDA), formation of the archaeological landscape, pastoralist land use systems

Dr. Wandsnider's research has three main themes. The first of these is concerned with the Late Prehistoric time period on the High Plains. In Northwestern Nebraska, her research has focused on the appearance and disappearance of pit hearth technology, which was widely used from AD 250 through AD 1000. The ability of the this material record to comment on gender systems, land tenure, subsistence strategies, and so forth is the subject of her research here.

A second emphasis is that of the formation, documentation, and analysis of archaeological landscapes. She has worked in southern India, using ethnoarchaeological methods to monitor land parcels that participate in an agropastoral land use system. Other recent methodological work is concerned with spatial analysis of archaeological distributions that relies on results from actualistic studies. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and associated technologies (GPS, remote sensing) play an important role in this work.

Most recently, she has initiated work to understand the relationship between traditional cooking systems, food biochemistry, and nutrition. This work ties directly into understanding significant subsistence shifts documented archaeologically and genetically in the human genome.

Recent and Representative Publications:

"Regional Scale Processes and Archaeological Landscape Units." In Unit Issues in Archaeology. A. F. Ramenofsky and A. Steffen, eds. University of Utah Press: Salt Lake City, Pp.87-102, 1998.

The Roasted and the Boiled: Food Composition and Heat Treatment with Special Emphasis on Pit-Hearth Cooking. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 16:1-48, 1997.

Describing and Comparing Archaeological Spatial Structures. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 3(4):319-384, 1996.

Space, Time, and Archaeological Landscapes. J. Rossignol and L. Wandsnider, eds. Plenum Press: New York, 1992.

"The Spatial Dimension of Time." In Space, Time, and Archaeological Landscapes. J. Rossignol and L. Wandsnider, eds. Plenum Press: New York. Pp. 257-282, 1992.

"The Character of the Archaeological Records and its Influence on Archaeological Survey." Journal of Field Archaeology 19(2):169-188 (with E. L. Camilli), 1992.

Quandaries and Quests: Visions of Archaeology's Future. (editor) Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Educational Background:

Ph.D. Anthropology, University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), 1989
M.S. Anthropology, University of New Mexico (Albuquerque), 1981
B.S. Anthropology, Geology, University of Wisconsin (Madison), 1979