Krista Dotzel
Current Title: Archaeologist, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Connecticut Office; Natural Resources Conservation Service
Q&A
What sparked your interest in Anthropology/Archaeology??
I went on a family trip to Ireland in high school and got to visit Neolithic tombs. I hadn’t really thought about archaeology much before that time.
What are your research interests?
I use phytolith and macrobotanical analyses to look at people-plant interactions in pre-Contact Southern New England, particularly with respect to maize, beans, and squash.
Where will you/are you conducting your fieldwork?
Southern New England.
What do you find most interesting about your field work location?
I like that I am local to the area and can find people interested in my research anywhere in my daily life. I am also interested in the fact that the communities in the area had very heterogenous practices over a relatively small region. People were making very different decisions within a fairly small area. I also see evidence of very early maize use in certain parts of the region and evidence that the ways people used maize across the region changed over time.
What is your most memorable experience thus far in the field?
I accidentally got too close to the chicks of a wild turkey while carrying some excavation equipment in the forest. The mother turkey charged after me and I dropped all my equipment to flee the scene. Wild turkeys are big!
What do you do in your “downtime?” Tell us something interesting about yourself!
I like to knit and have been practicing Hapkido, a Korean martial art for the past few years.