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Meet the SAIE team

 

The members of the SAIE Lab include faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows of the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. The SAIE Lab is a center for teaching and research development within the university, as well as a base for collaboration with scholars from other institutions.

If you are interested in collaborating with researchers from the SAIE Lab or would like more information about opportunities for research, please contact SAIE Lab director Michael Frachetti for further information.

 
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Current lab members

Featured
Jack Berner
Jack Berner

My research focuses on the relationships between Bronze Age settlements and their surrounding landscapes in the Central Eurasian Steppe (roughly corresponding to Northern Kazakhstan and Southern Russia). To accomplish this, I combine field research with remote sensing and spatial modeling.

Xiaoyi Liu
Xiaoyi Liu

Undergraduate Student, Arts & Sciences

I am interested in philosophy, anthropology, and education studies. I am fascinated by how technology can empower marginalized groups and act as a lens through which they rediscover their culture and history. I like 3D modeling and design.

Sewasew Assefa
Sewasew Assefa

Ph.D. student in Anthropology. Some of my research interests include: Archaeology of the nile valley, the effect of socioeconomic changes on health, global/international trade in the ancient world, and bioarchaeology.

Mirae Jo
Mirae Jo

I am interested in environment-people-water dynamics in diverse ecological and social settings. Specifically, my research focuses on technological choices of water systems and the formation of the hydraulic landscape in medieval Central Asia through analytical methods (GIS, geoarchaeology) and theoretical frameworks (Chaîne Opératoire, Actor-Network Theory).

Emma Valegos
Emma Valegos

Emma Vagelos is an Undergraduate Senior studying the environment, earth science, and education. She is interested in understanding the relationships between landscape process and form as well as human use, specifically in the form of cultivation and food.

Ina Musabegovic
Ina Musabegovic

I am Undergraduate majoring in Data Science with a minor in economics.

Ann Merkle
Ann Merkle

Graduate Student, Department of Anthropology

I focus on early medieval mobile pastoralist societies in Central Asia and the Eurasian Steppe, and the concurrent spread of Islam. My work in Central Asia has produced the ceramic typology for an early medieval site at Tashbulak, Uzbekistan. I currently study the social and economic landscape of mobile pastoralist and early Muslim populations in the rural highland regions of Central Asian and the Eurasian Steppe in order to determine the nature of their interactions with lowland urban sites through time.

Golnoosh Dehghanpoor
Golnoosh Dehghanpoor

Graduate Student, Department of Computer Science (on leave, 2019)

My research interest is mainly in application of algebraic and machine learning methods to image analysis, with an emphasis on aerial and satellite imagery. My current research focuses on unsupervised methods for feature extraction and classification.

Sammi Fremont
Sammi Fremont

Undergraduate Student, Arts & Sciences

I am majoring in Global Studies with a concentration in Development and minoring in Environmental Studies and the Business of Social Impact. I am interested in using spatial analysis to research environmental impact.

Collaborators

Featured
Xinzhou Chen, Ph.D.
Xinzhou Chen, Ph.D.

Graduate student Department of Anthropology

I study the emergence and development of pastoralism in highland Tibet during the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, ca. 3500-2000 BP. My research entails environmental simulations, predictive modeling, and seasonality modeling to understand mobility, economy, and interaction of early agro-pastoralists living in the region around Llasa.

Dr. Patrick Daly
Dr. Patrick Daly

Senior Research Fellow, Earth Observatory of Singapore

Dr. Daly’s research focuses on the relationships between social practice and material culture, with particular reference to changes brought about during foreign intervention, occupation, and colonization. For the past five years, he has been focusing on later prehistoric cultural interactions around the South China Sea.

Dr. Paula Doumani Dupuy
Dr. Paula Doumani Dupuy

Assistant Professor, Nazarbaev Univ. Kazakhstan

I use scientific methods in the study of Bronze Age steppe ceramics, with a focus on distribution and useage of raw materials in the ceramic production. My ultimate aim is to study the social and economic landscape of Bronze Age populations in the Eurasian Steppe and determine the nature of their interactions through time.​

Dr. Taylor Hermes
Dr. Taylor Hermes

Post-doctoral Research, Max Plank Institue of Genetics, Leipzig

My research focuses on the emergence and transformation of ancient (Bronze Age and later) pastoralist communities in Eurasia, with specializations in zooarchaeology, human and faunal isotopic analysis and dietary reconstruction, GIS, and statistical modeling.

Yuqi Li, Ph.D.
Yuqi Li, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Nankai Univ. China

My Ph.D. research in the SAIE Lab (WashU) spans the Bronze Age to the early historic period (2500 B.C.E. 600 C.E.). Methodologically, I implement a wide range of geospatial techniques as well as conventional pedestrian survey and excavation methods, with a particular emphasis on UAV-based aerial survey (drone survey) and hydraulic modeling. To learn more about my research, please check out this news article: Did ancient irrigation technology travel Silk Road?

Dr. Lynne Rouse
Dr. Lynne Rouse

Researcher, German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Berlin

My research interests center on social and economic interactions, and how the choices made by populations are affected at various scales. I use a combination of GIS, Spatial and Agent-based modeling, and archaeological field data to examine the role of metal production during the Bronze Age of southern Jordan. My upcoming work will shift my geographic focus to Central Asia, however, the emphasis on the strategies of pastoral nomads in the Bronze Age will remain central.

Elissa Bullion, Ph.D.
Elissa Bullion, Ph.D.

Archaeologist, U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service

I study bioarchaeology and mortuary practices of populations across Central Asia. My dissertation work focuses on a medieval population at the Karakhanid site of Tashbulak in the highlands of Uzbekistan. Through osteological, molecular, and contextual analysis, my research explores the roles of imperial institutions and local identities in broader processes of globalization.

Edward R. Henry, Ph.D.
Edward R. Henry, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Colorado State University

I explore issues of mobility and complexity through ancient societies which interacted across Eastern North America during the Early and Middle Woodland periods (ca. 1000 BCE to CE 500), as well as Bronze Age through Medieval-period pastoralists in Central Asia. My research on urbanism has occurred at Mississippian sites (e.g., Cahokia) in the American Midwest and Southeast, and also in Central Asia. I address questions related to temporality, expanding inequality, specialization, and religious participation.

Dr. Alexei Mar’yashev (in memoriam, 1933-2018)
Dr. Alexei Mar’yashev (in memoriam, 1933-2018)

Professor, Kazakhstan National Academy of Science

Alexei Mar’yashev was a senior researcher at the A. Kh. Margulan Institute of Archaeology in Almaty, Kazakhastan until his peaceful passing in 2018. He was as close friend and the co-director of the Dzhungar Mountains Archaeology Project with Michael Frachetti from 1999-2018. He specialized in the Bronze Age archaeology of Kazakhstan and carried out archaeological surveys and excavations across the Tian Shan Mountains and Semirech’ye for over 30 years. He also specialized in Central Asian rock-art studies and was a celebrated national alpine climber, making first ascent of many peaks (above 5000m) in the front range of the Tian Shan and Pamir Mountains.