Dr. Alice Wright

Dr. Alice Wright is an anthropological archaeologist broadly interested in the dynamics of cross- cultural encounters and how these interactions transformed communities and the landscapes they occupied. She currently studies pre-Columbian interaction in the Eastern United States, including the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, an exchange network that linked groups across eastern North America during the Middle Woodland period, ca. 100 BC - AD 400.

Recently, she conducted non-invasive surveys and excavations at the Garden Creek site in western North Carolina, focusing on a settlement, mounds and earthworks occupied from ca. 200 BC - AD 400. There, she explored the relationships between community aggregation, monumentality and craft production and exchange. With colleagues from Bryn Mawr College and Sewanee: The University of the South, now she co-directs the Pinson Environment and Archaeology Regional Landscapes (PEARL) Project, a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort tackling the Middle Woodland archaeological record of west Tennessee. She is also developing new field and collections-based projects to explore ancestral Cherokee landscapes in southern Appalachia.

Areas of expertise

• Southeastern United States archaeology, including the Southern Appalachians
• Ancestral Cherokee history and heritage
• Human-environment interactions in the past
• Contemporary fieldwork challenges, including community engagement and gender-based discrimination