KRISTA DOTZEL

A love of history, nourished by family vacations to historic places in the US and Europe influenced Krista Dotzel to major in history at The University of Iowa. A notice about a field school looked interesting, so she signed up and was hooked on archaeology.

After graduation, she enrolled in Eberhard Karls Universitat, Tubingen, Germany, earning her MA. The title of her Masters' thesis is Bone and Antler Technology at Vogelherd Cave: An investigation into Aurignacian Lives. Returning to the states, she chose UCONN because of its good funding, good facilities, the faculty and the opportunities that are available. She anticipates graduating in May, 2021. The title of her dissertation is Plant Microfossils, Domesticates, and Processing Strategies in Southern New England 2500-500 BP.

Krista applied for the Cooke Scholarship to, in her own words, "examine the development of agriculture during the Woodland period in Connecticut." Her research goals are to:

• establish when indigenous Algonquin societies in Connecticut began to grow maize and squash in the region,

• detect shifts in maize processing strategies and,

• understand whether and how shifts in processing strategies relate to settlement practices.

She intends to do this by "analyzing phytoliths, microscopic silica casts of plant cells, from carbonized food residues from sites in Connecticut dating to the Woodland period."

After graduation, Krista would like to stay in the northeast and dreams of a tenure-track position. She serves as a trustee on the Graduate Employee Union. Krista enjoys hapkido, a Korean form of martial arts.

MEGAN K. WILLISON

A love of history also guided Megan Willison into archaeology. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh in 2013, she was awarded the Irish Room Nationality Rooms Scholarship to participate in a field school in Ireland and the Isle of Man in the summer of 2012. That experience sealed her decision to major in archaeology. When deciding upon graduate schools, she had read several publications by Kevin McBride, PhD, and he had provided guidance to her during the application process. She was accepted into the program at UConn and decided to enroll due to Dr. McBride's advice and help, the amount of archaeological material about the early 1600s in New England, and access to museums and sites in the region.

She earned her MA at UConn in 2016 where she wrote a thesis considering how gender was conceptualized in the 17th century through analyzing mortuary remains and metallic battlefield objects, particularly cuprous 'amulets'. Her MA thesis was titled Gender in 17th Century Southern New England.

Megan applied for the Cooke scholarship in order to have the funds to pay for radiocarbon dating and the analysis of several botanical samples. The radiocarbon dating is critical in establishing the age of particular feature contexts. The sites she is analyzing in her PhD thesis contain more than one occupational episode and were inhabited during and prior to the 17th century. Dating of certain features will be invaluable in determining which features (such as post molds, middens, and hearths) date to her time period of interest and which, if any, might be associated with an earlier time period.

The botanical analysis will enable her to establish the season(s) and length of occupation of the three 17th century sites to be studied. This information will help her to determine site types and to construct a site settlement pattern for the early 17th century in southern Connecticut.

Megan expects to graduate in May or June, 2020. The title of her thesis is Indigenous Settlement Patterns and Trade in Early 17th Century Southern New England. Early in her career, Megan thought she would like to be a professor and teach but after her working experiences with the National Park Service, she now thinks that working for the National Park Service, or a similar governmental agency where she can advocate for and oversee archaeological projects, is her goal.

In her spare time, Megan loves to read, hike, watch movies, and dance. She has taken ballet and Irish step dancing classes since a small child and continues her ballet involvement by taking local adult ballet classes.