BIOGRAPHY
Mark
A. Rees is an archaeological anthropologist and assistant professor in
the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at University of Louisiana at
Lafayette.
Dr. Rees became interested in archaeology as a teenager exploring the banks
of Bayou Vermilion and backwaters of the Atchafalaya Basin. As an undergraduate
student he participated in an archaeology field school at Magnolia Mound Plantation
in Baton Rouge. He was subsequently employed in cultural resource management
with the National Park Service, private consulting companies and several universities.
Dr. Rees received an M.A. in historical archaeology from the University of
Massachusetts at Boston in 1991. His thesis examined the historical demography
of a seventeenth-century Christianized Massachuset community outside of Boston.
He received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma in 2001
with specializations in archaeology, cultural anthropology, ethnohistory,
and political organization. He was an assistant field supervisor on the Early
Cahokia project and participated in excavations in and around the pre-Columbian
metropolis of Cahokia in western Illinois. His dissertation was a comparative
analysis of Mississippian (ca. AD 1000-1700) political culture in the Southeast,
based on a study of single mound sites associated with the Moundville polity
in west-central Alabama. His research was supported by a National Science
Foundation dissertation improvement grant (SBR-9711795).
While completing his doctoral studies Dr. Rees served as a research archaeologist
and instructor at the Center for Archaeological Research, Southwest Missouri
State University. His experience ranges from colonial homesteads in Massachusetts
and Vermont to archaeological surveys in the piney hills of west-central Louisiana.
He has directed excavations of French and British colonial sites in Missouri
and Virginia, joined in the search for early nineteenth century Delaware settlements
in the James River Valley of Missouri, and participated in the mitigation
of Native American sites on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. He has contributed
to more than eighteen major archaeological projects throughout the northeast,
mid-Atlantic, mid-West, and southeastern United States.
Dr. Rees is the author of more than two dozen technical reports and numerous
papers delivered at professional meetings. He has published articles in the
journal Southeastern Archaeology, the Quarterly Bulletin of the Archeological
Society of Virginia, and the Missouri Archaeological Society Quarterly. He
is a recent contributor to the The Archaeology of Traditions: The Southeast
Before and After Columbus (University of Florida Press, 2001), Historical
Perspectives on Midsouth Archeology (Arkansas Archeological Survey Research
Series, 2001), and Between Contacts and Colonies: Archaeological Perspectives
on the Protohistoric Southeast (University of Alabama Press, 2002). He is
co-editor with Cameron Wesson of Between Contacts and Colonies and is currently
working on a manuscript on Mississippian political culture in the Southeast.
He plans to co-edit a volume on Plaquemine culture (ca. AD 1200-1700) in the
Lower Mississippi Valley.
Dr. Rees joined the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University
of Louisiana at Lafayette in the Fall of 2001. His arrival was a homecoming
of sorts. His mother, Margaret Baquet Rees, was a graduate of Southwestern
Louisiana Institute and University of Southwestern Louisiana, now University
of Louisiana at Lafayette. While growing up in Lafayette he made frequent
visits to his grandparents in Breaux Bridge. His interest in the past was
first instilled in that ancient town of La Pointe (later called Pont des Breaux).
Since coming to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Dr. Rees has begun
research on Native American mound sites and early historic settlement in south-central
Louisiana. He has initiated two programs of research along these lines: the
Plaquemine Mounds Archaeological Project and Early Acadian Archaeological
Project.
The Plaquemine Mounds
Archaeological Project (PMAP) commenced with an archaeology field school
during the 2001 winter intersession. Among the long-term goals of PMAP are
to document, map, and investigate the settlement patterns associated with
late prehistoric and protohistoric (ca. AD 1200-1700) Native American earthen-mound
construction in the western Atchafalaya Basin. The initial field season included
efforts directed at mound stabilization and site preservation, assisted by
matching grants from the National Association of State Archaeologists and
Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana. The 2003 field school focused on three mound
sites in St. Martin and St. Mary parishes. The Plaquemine Mounds Archaeological
Project is supported by a 3-year grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents
Research Competitiveness subprogram.
The Early
Acadian Archaeological Project (EAAP) is investigating archaeological
evidence for eighteenth-century Acadian settlement in south-central Louisiana.
The EAAP was launched during the winter of 2002 with an archaeology field
school at a second-generation Acadian home site and plantation on the Teche
Ridge in Iberia Parish.
Through these dual research projects Dr. Rees is examining the settlement
patterns, cultural practices, and social histories of two distinct peoples
of Louisiana. Both projects promise to shed light on poorly known areas of
regional culture history, while providing exceptional educational opportunities
for students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
