Associate Professor Undergraduate Coordinator My work is underpinned by the desire to understand the relationship between long-term human history and the lived experiences of individuals and communities. The major impacts of my research have been in understanding the nature of organizational complexity and diversity in Pre-Columbian Eastern North America using multi-scalar approaches to interrogate the recursive interactions between structure and agency, institutions and individuals. My recent research has focused on developing high-precision radiocarbon chronologies of Northern Iroquoia to advance and apply archaeological theories of processes by which discrete populations realign into chiefdoms and confederacies. Research Research Areas: Archaeology Research Interests: Archaeology of eastern North America Settlement patterns Archaeology of households and communities Organizational complexity Archaeology of warfare Multi-scalar analyses Social network analysis Radiocarbon dating and chronological modeling Geophysics Social theory Heritage Cultural resource management Selected Publications Selected Publications: Manning, S.W., J. Birch, M.A. Conger, M.W. Dee, C. Griggs, C.S. Hadden, A.G. Hogg, C. Bronk Ramsey, S. Sanft, P. Steier, and E.M. Wild. (2018). Radiocarbon Re-dating of Contact Era Iroquoian History in Northeastern North America. Science Advances 4: eeav0280 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/12/eaav0280 Birch, J., & Hart, J. P. (2018). Social Networks and Northern Iroquoian Confederacy Dynamics. American Antiquity, 83(01), 13-33. doi:10.1017/aaq.2017.59 Birch, J. and V.D. Thompson, eds. (2018). The Archaeology of Village Societies in Eastern North America. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. 211 pp. https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9781683400462 Education Education: PhD, Anthropology, McMaster University, 2010
