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Nine Hamilton College faculty members were approved for tenure by the College's Board of Trustees during a recent meeting. The Board granted tenure to Donald Carter (Africana studies), Anne Lacsamana (women’s studies), Tina Hall (English), Chaise LaDousa (anthropology), Rebecca Murtaugh (art), Angel David Nieves (Africana studies), Edna Rodriguez-Plate (Hispanic studies), Chad Williams (history) and Yvonne Zylan (sociology).

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nathan Goodale, Science Center Administrator Alissa Nauman and students Erica Kowsz ’11, Madeleine Gunter ’11 and Laura DeFrank ’10 presented their work at the 75th anniversary meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in April in St. Louis, Mo. 

Professors of Archaeology Charlotte Beck and Tom Jones have a co-authored an article that appears in the latest issue of American Antiquity (vol 75, no. 1). Their article, "Clovis and Western Stemmed: Population Migration and the Meeting of Two Technologies in the Intermountain West," evaluates whether terminal Pleistocene cultural traditions of the Great Basin and Columbia Plateau were derived from an early colonizing population known as Clovis or represent independent cultural developments.

A group of four Hamilton faculty members has been awarded a grant of $177,950 through the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program to fund a shared-use state of the art computing cluster. The project, titled "MRI-R2: Acquisition of a High Performance Computing cluster with a fast interconnect to enable shared-use, college-wide computational investigations at Hamilton College” is led by Assistant Professor of Chemistry Adam Van Wynsberghe as principal investigator with Assistant Professor of Biology Wei-Jen Chang, Assistant Professor of Physics Natalia Connolly, and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nathan Goodale contributing as co-principal investigators.

Heather Otis '10, Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nathan Goodale, and Ken Bart, director of the microscopy and imaging facility, published an article, "Sickle blade life history and the transition to agriculture: A case study from Southwest Asia," in the Journal of Archaeological Science. The article appeared online on Dec. 21 and will be published in the March issue of the journal. The study examines the importance of sickle technology during the transition to agriculture in the Middle East at an early Neolithic community occupied circa 11,500 years ago in Jordan.

“I want to research the experiences of British and Indian women during the British colonial rule in India,” explains Fiona Kirkpatrick ‘10. And as a Senior Fellow, she has done (and will continue to do) just that: she is exempt from taking classes so that she may devote her time to writing a lengthy thesis of her choosing.

Caroline Krumholz ’10 never described her interest in different people and ethnicities as anthropology until she came to Hamilton. Once she identified anthropology as a distinct subject with its own title and terminology, her interest began to grow. Ever since, she has become increasingly committed to learning more about culture and tradition. This summer, she is interning in Hamilton’s Anthropology Department, working under the advisory of Assistant Professor Chaise LaDousa. He is guiding her through the process of conducting fieldwork and sifting through relevant literature.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Nathan Goodale with co-author Ian Kuijt (University of Notre Dame) recently published an article titled “Daily Practice and the Organization of Space at the Dawn of Agriculture: A Case Study from the Near East”  in American Antiquity.

The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science(JSPS) acknowledged Assistant Professor of Anthropology Haeng-ja Chung's academic accomplishments of 2008-2009 and awarded her the full-period extension of the SSRC-JSPS Fellowship. As a result, her fellowship period is extended to 2008-2010, the maximum period the organizations could offer.

Matthew Eichenfield '09 presented at the "Barcamp San Diego," a technology conference held at Intuit's San Diego Campus on May 30-31. His presentation was titled "Analyzing Artifacts: What Computers Can Tell Us About Archaeology" and was the culmination of his year-long independent study project with Nathan Goodale, assistant professor of anthropology.