Former Professor and the Curator of Anthropology in the Anthropology Department,  I  have  degrees in anthropology from Northwestern University (BA 1970) and Michigan State University (MA 1973 and PhD 1978).  Prior to coming to GVSU in 1990, I worked as a historic preservation manager for the USDA Forest Service in West Virginia and Michigan and taught at Davis and Elkins College and Adrian College.  My interests and publications in archaeology have primarily focused on the Pre-Columbian peoples of eastern North America, though I have done fieldwork in Arizona, California, and West Virginia in addition to international work in Botswana and Jordan.  A main interest throughout my career has been to actively promote public understanding of the rich and complex cultures that inhabited our area before Europeans, whose descendants still live here today.   In recent years I have become very interested in issues related to social justice and inequality facing contemporary Native Americans. 

Selected recent publications

2015   Trade and Complexity in the Americas 1200 BC to AD 900, with Erica Begun in Cambridge History of the World Volume 4, Edited by Craig Benjamin, Cambridge.

2013   More Than Grave Lots?  The Jack’s Reef Horizon in Michigan, with John R. Halsey.  Archaeology of Eastern North America 41(1): 145-192.

2013   Storage, Function and Economy at the South Flats Enclosure by Donald Gaff, Laura Sherrod and Janet Brashler. Michigan Academician 41(3): 261-288.

2011   The South Flats Earthwork  (20MU2), with Donald Gaff. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology.   36(2):195-226.

2010   Culture, History, and Discourse at Tree of Life:  A Faith Based Relief Agency in Mission South Dakota, Julie Adkins, Tara Hefferan, and Laurie  Occhipinti, eds.. in Not By Faith Alone :  Social Services, Social Justice, and Faith-Based Organizations in the United States.  Lexington Books. Lanham, MD.