Dr. Wriston is a geoarchaeologist interested in how past cultures coped or adapted to changing environmental conditions. She uses a broad interdisciplinary approach to build environmental contexts that show how prehistoric people used the landscape and what resources were targeted. Dr. Wriston’s work often draws from geomorphology, soils, remote sensing, ecology, and isotope ecology. Her recent research includes reconstructing the lake level history of pluvial Lake Warner in southcentral Oregon in relation to Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene age archaeological evidence; using the stable isotope signatures of ostrich eggshell beads and fragments to identify local specimens and interpret changing paleoenvironments; archaeological excavation of Impala and Ngabaa rockshelters in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe; and environmental reconstruction of the same using nearby river cut stratigraphic exposures, hand augered samples, isotopic signatures, and OSL to determine periods of reactivation in a stabilized Kalahari dune. Dr. Wriston is now expanding her geographic focus from the western United States and southern Africa to include Alaska.

geoarchaeology, geoarchaeologist, archaeological science, stable isotopes, hunter-gatherer studies, archaeological sensitivity modeling, environmental reconstruction, climate change, archeology