Hi everyone! I’m Nikki Silva and I’m one of the returning CHI Fellows for the 2017/2018 fellowship. I’m a 5th year PhD Student in Anthropology and my research attempts to answer the question: How does culture contact/interaction between two groups of people affect the creation of a new community and the use of space at this new location? My work will explore the effects of cultural interaction on the spatial dimension of community by using a multi-scalar approach to site structure.

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Last year I collaborated with other returning CHI fellow Autumn Beyer on the Mapping Morton Village project, an interactive map of the Morton Village archaeological site, where Autumn and I will both do our dissertation research. The project’s goal was to provide background on the Morton Village archaeological project and also educate visitors about some basics of archaeology.

My CHI project this year will focus on building a web resource on Oneota Archaeology, which will include a map, citations, and other information for scholars interested in this topic. It will be a big project and I will only be able to complete one portion of it during the fellowship, but I look forward to continuing the project after the fellowship ends.