People

Dr. José M. Capriles – Assistant Professor of Anthropology 

Dr. Capriles is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in environmental archaeology, human ecology, and zooarchaeology. He received his Licentiate Degree (2004) in Archaeology from Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia, his M.A. (2006) and Ph.D. (2011) in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis. Before joining Penn State University, he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh (2012-2013), a Chilean FONDECYT Postdoctoral Researcher (2013-2015) and an Assistant Professor at Universidad de Tarapacá (2015-2016).

Dr. Capriles is interested in addressing a wide range of research problems using the most sound and cutting-edge scientific methods available. His work explores important past and present societal transformations, ecological dynamics, and human-environment interactions and particularly three sets of questions:

1. How did humans adapt to the changing environmental conditions of the South American Atacama desert, Andean highlands, and Amazonian tropical lowlands over time?
2. What social and ecological dynamics featured animal and plant domestication, the spread of early food production, and increasingly inequal institutions and organizations in these regions?
3. What socio-environmental factors were involved in the emergence and disintegration of increasingly complex polities such as the Tiwanaku and Inca states as well as in other multi-scalar population and cultural continuities and discontinuities?

To address these problems, he conducts research in Bolivia and Chile in collaboration with a broad network of international and interdisciplinary research teams. Dr. Capriles is also engaged in the preservation of cultural heritage through public outreach and the active participation of Indigenous and local communities in archaeological research.

In addition to his primary affiliation with the Department of Anthropology, Dr. Capriles is affiliated with the Latin American Studies Program and the Climate Science Dual-Title Degree Program.

Dr. Alejandra I. Domic – Postdoctoral Scholar in Paleoethnobotany

Dr. Domic is a trained plant ecologist, archaeobotanist, and palynologist. She is interested in understanding the impact of climate change and humans on the environment across time by studying how climate and humans have impacted ecosystems over a short- (decades) and long-term scale (centuries and thousands of years) and their resiliency to disturbance. The information contributes with a paleoecological outlook into an ecological problem that is critical for understanding not only how tropical ecosystems responded to changes in climatic conditions and habitat transformation over time but also bear on modern issues of how both vegetation and human societies will respond to the intensification of extreme climatic events.

Laurie Eccles – Human Paleoecology and Isotope Geochemistry Lab Supervisor

As a dedicated science technician her work is focused on fostering, in students, the confidence and practical skills needed to work in a science lab. Her field and lab experiences are broad and span from archaeology and paleontology to geochemistry. The core work she manages is sample preparation for radiocarbon analysis and isotope geochemistry (carbon, nitrogen, deuterium, and oxygen).

Laura Stelson – Ph.D. Student

Laura Stelson is an Archaeologist and Ph.D. student in the programs for Anthropology and Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment. Laura earned a B.A. in Anthropology and German at the University of Oregon and an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Bonn in Germany and has spent much of the last ten years working on archaeological projects throughout the western United States, Central America, and Germany. Her research interests include the application of remote-sensing and geochemical material sourcing to examine the influence of natural disasters in shaping cultural change. To explore these questions, Laura is working with Alaska Peninsula communities and the National Park Service to document and preserve two sites within Katmai National Park, a place where human cultures have converged with extreme geological hazards for thousands of years.

Dissertation Project: Investigating Community Resilience across Repeated Volcanic Events in Katmai, Alaska