CHRISTOPHER HAYS, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
UW-Fond du Lac
UW-Washington County
E-Mail: chays@uwc.edu

My educational background includes a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.A. and Ph.D. from SUNY-Binghamton. I have conducted both academic and cultural resource management-related field and laboratory research in archaeology throughout the Eastern United States. I have also participated in excavations on Paleolithic and Mesolithic period sites in Germany. During the past five years I have been at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge where I was the Regional Archaeologist for the southeast part of the state, and I was an adjunct faculty in the Dept. of Geography and Anthropology.

I have taught undergraduate students in both the field and the classroom at the University of Virginia, SUNY-Binghamton, and Louisiana State University. In the fall of 2000, I began teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Fond du Lac and Washington County, and I am thoroughly enjoying the experience. In addition to my college teaching, I have delivered over a hundred lectures and presentations to the public ranging from kindergarten to high school students and library associations to amateur archaeological societies.

My research focuses on mortuary ceremonialism and long distance exchange systems in the Eastern Woodlands from the Late Archaic to the Middle Woodland period. In particular, I have conducted extensive research in the Ohio Valley Early Woodland Adena culture. Currently, I am researching the origins of ceramic production and exchange in the Poverty Point culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley. I have publications printed or accepted in the Journal of Archaeology Science; Tennessee Anthropologist; Louisiana Archaeology; and the Encyclopedia of Prehistory.