Kara Bridgman Sweeney

E-Mail: karabsweeney@brockington.org

Kara Bridgman Sweeney (Ph.D. pending, Anthropology, University of Florida; M.A., Archaeology, University College, Cork, Ireland) has over 15 years experience in the field of archaeology, with an emphasis on lithic analysis, historical interpretation, and public archaeology and outreach. Along with lithic analysis, Ms. Sweeney's specialties include ethnoarchaeology and the presentation of archaeological information in written reports and public lectures. Kara participated in National Science Foundation funded laboratory analyses (specifically, those of hafted and other bifaces) of several Stallings Island complex (Late Archaic period) sites while employed by the University of Florida’s Southeastern Laboratory. She also participated in a National Science Foundation funded expedition to Konso, Ethiopia, where she worked with villagers who still make and use stone tools to scrape animal hides. These experiences gave her a unique perspective on her Ph.D. studies, which involve deconstructing extant Early Archaic (some 10,000 years ago) artifact types, in order to examine social variation and processes at differing scales as they have affected the distribution of material culture. The title of her dissertation (in progress) is "A Complex Web of History and Artifact Types in the Early Archaic Southeast." Kara Bridgman Sweeney works out of our Savannah, Georgia office.