Cahokian Dispersions Diasporic Connections in the Mississippian Southeast

Dr. Melissa Baltus  is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toledo. She earned her BA from Minnesota State University Moorhead and both her MA and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her area of specialization is North American Archaeology, with a focus on the Indigenous city of Cahokia; research interests include urban dynamics, social movements, and the materiality of relationships.  She has been awarded the University of Toledo's Recognition for Outstanding Contributions to University Scholarship and Creative Activity and the College of Arts and Letters Outstanding Teacher Award. She has authored or co-authored articles published in  American Antiquity ,  Journal of Social Archaeology , and  Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory , as well as chapters in peer-reviewed volumes like the recently published  Reconsidering Mississippian Households and Communities  (A. Betzenhauser and E.W Malouchos, eds., 2021).

Dr.  Sarah E. Baires  is an accomplished Associate Professor of anthropological archaeology at Eastern Connecticut State University.  Her research focuses on the pre-Columbian (AD 1050-1400) Native American city of Cahokia, which is located near St. Louis, MO and concerns how cities are built, what draws people to cities, and the role religion plays in the organization of political governments. Dr. Baires has published multiple peer-reviewed articles and two books:  Land of Water City of the Dead: Religion and Cahokia's Emergence  (University of Alabama Press), and  The Global Middle Ages: Cahokia and the North American Worlds  (Cambridge University Press). Dr. Baires is also featured in two documentary series: Native America (episode 3, PBS), and Ancient Mysteries: Cahokia (Smithsonian Channel). She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropologyfrom the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.



Dr. Elizabeth Watts Malouchos  is a Research Archaeologist and Collaborative Research Liaison at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey at the University of Illinois. She specializes in the archaeology of North America and developing collaborative research with descendant communities. Her research focuses on the relationships between communal identity formation and the built environment in Native societies of the Midwest and Southeastern US. She is co-editor of the volume  Reconsidering Mississippian Households and Communities  (University of Alabama Press, 2021) and the author of articles appearing in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, the Journal of Field Archaeology, American Antiquity, and other journals. She holds a BA in anthropology from the University of Illinois and MA and PhD degrees in anthropology from Indiana University.  

Dr.Jayur Madhusudan Mehta  is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Florida State University, specializing in the study of North American Native Americans, human-environment relationships, and the consequences of French and Spanish colonization in the Gulf South. Dr. Mehta earned his PhD in Anthropology from Tulane University (2015) and his MA (2007) from the University of Alabama. He received his BA from the University of North Carolina (2004) and is an avid Tarheel!  Dr. Mehta is also a Registered Professional Archaeologist and he has lead excavations in both the United States and Mexico. He is currently leading two major investigations: 1) the Gulf Resilience Hub, an interdisciplinary study of climate hazard impacts on Indigenous communities of the Gulf Coast, and 2) the Evergreen Plantation Archaeological Survey, a multidisciplinary archaeological investigation into the lives of free and enslaved Africans at a Louisiana sugar plantation. Dr. Mehta’s research is funded by NSF, LEH, and National Geographic, and he has published research in the fields of environmental archaeology, ethnohistory, and indigenous religious and ritual practices.