Michelle Hegmon
Professor
Ph.D., Archaeology, University of Michigan
SHESC Themes: Societies and their Natural Environments
Field Specializations: Social Theory, Archaeology, Material Culture
Regional Focus: North America (Southwest)
Contact: Michelle Hegmon, SHESC 264
Research:
In the broadest sense, Michelle Hegmon is interested in the human social realm in the context of the larger environment. From this perspective, she is involved in the development of new transdisciplinary research projects that draw together natural scientists and archaeologists to investigate long term socio-environmental processes.
More specifically, her work involves social and feminist theory, archaeological approaches to gender, focus on middle range societies and an emphasis on ethnographic comparisons. Methodologically her work often involves ceramics, as well as analyses of architecture and material culture in general. Hegmon has done most of her research in the American Southwest, and since 1993 has been collaborating with Margaret Nelson on the Eastern Mimbres Archaeological Project, which is studying processes of land use, interaction and regional reorganization in the Classic and Postclassic Mimbres periods (ca. 1000-1450) in southwest New Mexico.
Research Projects:
Eastern Mimbres Archaeological Project
Long-Term Vulnerability and Transformation Project
Mimbres Pottery Image Digital Database
Teaching:
Hegmon teaches a graduate seminar on the archaeology of the social realm and also teaches the graduate core course Archaeology of Small Scale Societies, as well as various courses on Southwest archaeology.
Select Publications:
Hegmon, M., Peeples, M., Kinzig, A., Kulow, S., Meegan, C. M. & Nelson, M. C. (in press). Social transformation and its human costs in the prehispanic U.S. Southwest. American Anthropologist.
Hegmon, M. & Nelson, M. C. (2006). In sync, but barely in touch: Relations between the Mimbres region and the Hohokam regional system. In A. P. Sullivan and J. Baymen (Eds.), Hinterlands and regional dynamics in the Ancient Southwest (pp. 70-96). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Nelson, M. C., Hegmon, M., Kulow, S. & Schollmeyer, K. G. (2006). Archaeological and ecological perspectives on reorganization: A case study from the Mimbres region of the U.S. Southwest. American Antiquity, 71, 403-432.
Hegmon, M. & Sunday Eiselt, B. (Eds.) (2005). Engaged anthropology: Research essays on North American archaeology, ethnobotany, and museology: Papers in honor of Richard I. Ford. Anthropological Papers. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
Hegmon, M. (2003). Setting theoretical egos aside: Issues and theory in North American archaeology. American Antiquity, 68, 213-243.
Hegmon, M. (2002). Recent issues in the archaeology of the Mimbres region of the North American Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Research, 10, 207-357.
