Hello again! I’m happy to announce that I am one of the returning CHI fellows. In case you are not familiar with the CHI blog, I’ll first give you some background on my personal research and my previous CHI project, before delving into my plans for this year.

Autumn BeyerI’m a second year Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology. In addition to being a returning CHI fellow, I am also one of the RA’s in LEADR, and I am a Campus Archaeology Program (CAP) graduate fellow. My main research focuses on prehistoric foodways through the analysis of animal bones in the Midwestern United States. My previous CHI project was co-created with Nikki Silva involving our dissertation research site. The project, Mapping Morton Village, makes a portion of the Morton Village Archaeological Project available to the public as a digital cultural map of the site. This map is thematic, focusing on various types of information about archaeological methods and research using the Morton site as a case study.
This year my project with have a Campus Archaeology focus. Through my CAP fellowship, I will be working with CAP fellow Susan Kooiman on a project documenting and recreating early food practices on MSU’s campus (1855-1870). We will be exploring the archives and analyzing the animal bone remains from the collections to explore this past environment. My CHI project will be digitally documenting our research throughout the year, as well as creating a digital presence online for the project. While we are still working out the fine details of how we would like to portray this project, we know that we would like to highlight several of the food practices that took place during the early years of MSU’s campus including cooking, sustainability, and food production through the analysis of ceramics, animal bones, and archival resources. For additional information about this project see blog posts by myself and Susan on the Campus Archaeology website.

I’m looking forward to this year as CHI fellow and am excited to see where my project takes me!