Research Interests

My earliest research explores why seventeenth-century Native Americans living in the southern Appalachian Highlands initially participated in the deerskin trade. Changes in deer-hunting practices, deerskin production activities, and exchange patterns suggest some Native Americans altered their economic strategies to produce deerskins for commercial trade, transforming sociopolitical systems in the process. I continue to pursue my interests in culture contact in a new zooarchaeological research project in western North Carolina. More recently, my research interests have expanded to include Mesoamerica, where I study early village and urban economies, particularly social aspects of subsistence and differential animal-resource utilization.

Current Projects

Current research projects include studies of the following: 1) Subsistence and intercultural interactions at the Contact period Catawba Indian and Spanish Fort San Juan Berry site in western North Carolina; 2) Subsistence and differential access to animal resources at the Mississippian period Carter Robinson Mound site in southwestern Virginia; 3) Subsistence and the use of domestic dogs at the Late Woodland period Broad Reach site in eastern North Carolina; 4) Early village household economies at the Pre-Classic period Mixtec Tayata site in Oaxaca, Mexico; and 5) Urban economies and rabbit utilization at the Classic period Zapotec El Palmillo site, also in Oaxaca. These studies are funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and other research grants.

Curation Activities

We are currently working on a 5.5-year project to inventory and rehouse the Black Mesa Archaeological Project (BMAP) collections. BMAP is one of the largest, longest running projects in the history of North American archaeology. Fieldwork spanned seventeen years, from 1967 to 1983, and at its peak employed more than 200 persons in a single summer. Nearly 2,500 archaeological sites were identified, and more than 200 sites excavated, on the 256-square km of Black Mesa leased from the Hopi and Navajo by Peabody Energy. Fieldwork produced more than one million artifacts, which the CAI curates along with the field notes, maps, photographs, and other associated documents. Carried out in collaboration with the Hopi and Navajo and generously funded by Peabody Energy, this project will ensure that the BMAP collections are properly curated now and far into the future.

Courses

Anth 441D: Laboratory Analysis in Archaeology-Introduction to Zooarchaeology
Anth 484:   Internship-Curation of Archaeological Collections

Selected Publications

In press    Lapham, H.A. Animals in Southeastern Native American Subsistence Economies. In Subsistence Economies of Indigenous North American Societies, B.D. Smith (ed.). Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, Washington, D.C.

2008    Duncan, W.N., A.K. Balkansky, K. Crawford, H.A. Lapham and N.J. Meissner. Human Cremation in Mexico 3,000 Years Ago. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(14):5315-5320.

2006     Lapham, H.A. Southeast Animals. In Environment, Origins, and Population, D.H. Ubelaker (ed.), pp. 396-404. Handbook of North American Indians Vol. 3. W.C. Sturtevant, general editor. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

2005     Lapham, H.A. Hunting for Hides: Deerskins, Status, and Cultural Change in the Protohistoric Appalachians. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

2004     Lapham, H.A. “Their complement of deer-skins and furs”: Changing patterns of white-tailed deer exploitation in the seventeenth-century southern Chesapeake and Virginia hinterlands. In Indian and European Contact in Context: The Mid-Atlantic Region, D.B. Blanton and J.A. King (eds.), pp. 172-192. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

2004     Lapham, H.A. Zooarchaeological evidence for changing socioeconomic status within early historic Native American communities in Mid-Atlantic North America. In Behaviour Behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity, S.J. O’Day, W. Van Neer, and A. Ervynck (eds.), pp. 293-303. Oxbow Books, Oxford.

2003     Wall, R.D. and H.A. Lapham. Material culture of the Contact period in the upper Potomac Valley: chronological and cultural implications. Archaeology of Eastern North America 31:149-175.

2002     Lapham, H.A. and W.C. Johnson. Protohistoric Monongahela trade relations: evidence from the Foley Farm phase glass beads. Archaeology of Eastern North America 30:97-120.

2000     Lapham, H.A. More than "a few blew beads": The glass and stone beads from Jamestown Rediscovery's 1994-1997 excavations. The Journal of the Jamestown Rediscovery Center 1.