Michelle Pigott holds a PhD in Anthropology (2024) from Tulane University, an MA in Anthropology (2020) from Tulane University, a MA in Historical Archaeology (2015) from the University of West Florida, and a BA in Anthropology (2010) from the University of Central Florida. Her primary research focuses on how Native America structured the early contact and colonial era of the American Southeast through a combination of radiocarbon, ethnohistoric, and material analyses. She is a project co-director of the Upper Catawba Archaeological Project and Berry Site Field School in western North Carolina. Her other research interests include landscape archaeology, rock art, archaeologies of persistence, and Indigenous history.

As a postdoc in the Laboratory of Archaeology, she is working with Cultural Resources of US Army Fort Benning and affiliated Tribes to develop a cultural resource management plan as well as interpretive signage and other public-facing projects for the base.