I am an archaeologist with research interests in culture contact and change, material culture studies, and general anthropology.   I have excavated at sites in the United States and the Caribbean, but my primary area of research has been in the archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography of sub-Saharan Africa.  I am interested in how archaeology can help us understand the transformations that occurred in Africa during the period of the Atlantic trade.  My field experience includes sites in the Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Togo. However, my most recent archaeological research has focused on the African settlement at Elmina, Ghana, the site of the first and largest European trade post established in sub-Saharan Africa.

My principal publications include the Record of the Past: An introduction to Physical Anthropology and Archaeology (Prentice Hall 2000), Anthropology: A Global Perspective, co-authored with Raymond Scupin (4^th edition, Prentice Hall 2001), West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives, edited (Leicester University Press 2001), and An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast (Smithsonian Institution Press 2001).  To find out more about the Record of the Past, visit the companion website