Katherine Spielmann

Senior Sustainability Scientist, Global Institute of Sustainability
Teaching Faculty, School of Sustainability
Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

School of Human Evolution and Social Change
Arizona State University
PO Box 872402
Tempe, AZ 85287

Phone: 480-965-7212
Fax: 480-965-7671
Email: kate.spielmann@asu.edu

Biography

Please note that Dr. Spielmann is currently on sabbatical leave until January 2012, and is not in her office.

Dr. Spielmann's current research concerns socio-ecological systems. She leads a collaborative team of archaeology and ecology faculty and students investigating the long-term ecological changes on Perry Mesa, Agua Fria National Monument, north of the Phoenix Basin that resulted from a pulse of occupation by farmers in the A.D. 1200s and 1300s. Other research interests are in archaeology, bioarchaeology, economic anthropology, exchange and social networks, and ritual economies in small-scale societies. Dr. Spielmann has focused much of her career on prehistoric economies, primarily in North America. She is especially interested in the ways in which economic intensification is fueled by increasing demands for food and goods in ritual, political, and social contexts. One of her primary contributions has been to demonstrate the variety of conditions under which small-scale societies with relatively simple political systems develop complex, specialized economies. She is also interested in the relationship between diet and health under different subsistence regimes. Dr. Spielmann teaches courses on the human dimensions of sustainability, North American archaeology, and economic archaeology.

Selected Publications

Spielmann, K. A. 2007, Mesoamerican ritual economy: Archaeological and ethnological perspectives. Boulder: University of Colorado Press.

Spielmann, K. A., J. Mobley-Tanaka, and J. Potter. 2006. Style and resistance in the seventeenth century Salinas province. American Antiquity 71(4).

Spielmann, K. 2004. Communal feasting, ceramics, and exchange. In B. Mills (Ed.), Identity, feasting, and the archaeology of the greater Southwest (pp. 210-232). Boulder: University of Colorado Press.

Spielmann, K. A. 2004. Clusters revisited. In E. C. Adams & A. I. Duff (Eds.), The protohistoric pueblo world, A.D. 1275-1600 (pp. 137-143). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Expertise

economics; diet; archaeology; socioecology; agrarian societies;

Courses

SOS 110: Sustainable World

Education

Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1982
M.A., University of Michigan, 1977
A.B., Harvard University, 1976

Journal Articles

Briggs, J. M., K. A. Spielmann, H. Schaafsma, K. W. Kintigh, M. Kruse, K. Morehouse and K. Schollmeyer. 2006. Why ecology needs archaeologists and archaeology needs ecologists. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 4:180-188. (link)

Books and Book Chapters

Spielmann, K., S. J. Hall, M. Kruse-Peeples and D. Nakase. eds. In review. Legacies on the landscape: Long-term Socio-ecological Interactions in the Southwestern U.S. from Field to Table: The Historical Ecology of Regional Subsistence Strategies. University of South Carolina Press. South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Posters/Presentations

Kruse, M., H. Schaafsma, K. Schollmeyer, J. Briggs, K. Horn, K. Kintigh, C. Lai and K. Spielmann. 2006. Legacies on the landscape: Integrating ecology and archaeology on the Agua Fria National Monument, Arizona. Poster presented February at the 7th Annual Meeting of the Graduates in Life, Earth and Social Sciences Research Symposium, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.

Kruse, M., H. Schaafsma, K. Schollmeyer, J. Briggs, K. Horn, K. Kintigh, C. Lai, K. Spielmann and C. Wichlacz. 2006. Legacies on the landscape: Integrating ecology and archaeology on the Agua Fria National Monument, Arizona. Poster presented at the 19 January 2006 CAP LTER 8th Annual Poster Symposium, Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. (link)

Schaafsma, H., M. Kruse, W. Russel, J. Briggs, K. Spielmann and S. Hall. 2008. Ancient agriculture of the Perry Mesa tradition in central Arizona: Interpreting ancient land-use and modern landscapes. Poster presented at 10 January 2008 CAP LTER 10th Annual Poster Symposium, Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ. (link)