Our People

Ryan Campbell, Interim Director

Email: rcampb@siu.edu
Phone: 618-453-5031
Office: Faner 3469

Research Interests

Dr. Campbell is an anthropologist and archaeologist whose work integrates cultural resource management, academic research, and public engagement. As Interim Director of the Center for Archaeological Investigations (CAI), he provides overall leadership and vision, serving as the Center’s chief administrative, fiscal, and personnel officer. His research and professional agenda emphasizes three interconnected goals:

• Advancing regional archaeological knowledge through investigations of prehistoric and historic sites across the Midwest.

• Training and mentoring students in compliance, field, and curation work to prepare the next generation of archaeologists.

• Building partnerships with Native Nations, agencies, and the public to ensure ethical stewardship of cultural heritage.

His work has ranged from historic and precontact cemetery investigations to large-scale CRM surveys and NAGPRA compliance initiatives. He collaborates closely with CAI staff, graduate assistants, and undergraduate interns who support the CAI’s mission.

Selected Research and Creative Works

Redefining the Map: Boundary Expansion and New Insights from Pere Marquette State Park. Paper presented at the Illinois Archaeological Survey Annual Meeting, Bloomington, Illinois, 2025 (with Ayla Amadio, Brenda Smith, Bethany Birdwell).

Across the Great Divide: The Relationship Between CRM and Academia in the Modern World. Paper presented at the Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2025 (with Mark Wagner, Matthew Greer, Chris Stantis).

Campus Archaeology for Outreach and Recruitment: Exploring the TW Thompson House at SIU. Paper presented at the Illinois Archaeological Survey Annual Meeting, Champaign, Illinois, 2024 (with Ayla Amadio).

Ground Truthing the Jackson County Poor Farm Cemetery: Towards the Preservation of a Historic Cemetery. Paper presented at the Illinois Archaeological Survey Annual Meeting, Springfield, Illinois, 2022.

Rediscovering a Lost Cemetery: Geophysical and Archaeological Investigations into St. Henry’s Cemetery (11S1742), East St. Louis, Illinois. Illinois Archaeology 31:95–125, 2019 (with Mark J. Wagner, Ayla Amadio).

In Search of the Dispossessed: Efforts to Identify the Jackson County Poor Farm Cemetery. Paper presented at the Illinois Archaeological Survey Annual Meeting, Champaign, Illinois, 2018 (with Justin Shields, Mark J. Wagner).

Burial Detection Using Ground Penetrating Radar in Southern Illinois: A Comparison of Historic Cemeteries. Illinois Archaeology 28:117–130, 2016 (with Nathan J. Meissner).

Archaeological and Architectural Investigations at the Hickory Hill Historic Site (Crenshaw Mansion), Gallatin County, Illinois. CAI Technical Report 15-2, 2015 (with Mark J. Wagner, David Birnbaum, Robert Swenson, Lucretia Kelly, Kathryn Parker, and Rosemary Bolin).

Carol Samarah

Email: nagpra@siu.edu

Ayla Amadio, M.A.

Email: amamadio@siu.edu

Ayla specializes in fieldwork, zooarchaeology, Midwest prehistoric, and historic archaeology. She has worked on various survey projects throughout the United States. Ayla is the field director, and is responsible for artifact analysis, data digitization, and report preparation for contract projects. Her research interests include: faunal analysis, lithic analysis, craft production, social complexity, household archaeology, ritual practice, food production, and historic land use.

Bethany Birdwell 

Researcher II

Email: bethany.birdwell@siu.edu

Mark Wagner

Email: mjwagner@siu.edu

Research Interests

My interests include the prehistory and early history of both Native Americans and Europeans in Illinois and the lower Ohio River Valley. I am particularly interested in culture contact issues between Native Americans and Euro-Americans and the variable outcomes contact had for members of both groups. Current projects include the investigation of an 1801-1802 U.S. Army post (Cantonment Wilkinson) that represented a reserve base for an invasion of the then Spanish-held Mississippi River Valley that never took place as well as the documentation of nineteenth century shipwrecks in the lower Ohio River. I also have a strong interest in Native American rock art sites focused around my belief that these sites represent largely untapped sources of information regarding prehistoric Native American spirituality and religious beliefs.

Selected Publications

2006  Going to See the Varmint: Piracy in Myth and Reality on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, 1785-1830 (first author with Mary R. McCorvie). In The Archaeology of Piracy, edited by Charles R. Ewen and Russell Skowronek. University of Florida Press, Gainesville.

2005  The Flatboat America (11Pu280): An Early Nineteenth Century Flatboat Wreck in Pulaski County, Illinois. Illinois Archaeology 14.

2004a  Mississippian Cosmology and Rock Art at the Millstone Bluff Site in Southern Illinois (first author with Mary R. McCorvie and Charles Swedlund). In The Rock-Art of Eastern North America: Capturing Images and Insight, edited by Carol Diaz-Granados and James R. Duncan. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

2004b  Visions of Other Worlds: The Native American Rock Art of Illinois. An Internet publication on rock art for the general public on the Illinois Archaeological Survey website.

2003  Smoking Pipe Manufacture and Use Among the Potawatomi of Illinois. In Stone Tool Traditions in the Contact Era, edited by Charles Cobb. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

2001a  The Archaeology and Rock Art of the Piney Creek Ravine. Illinois Transportation Archaeological Research Series, Volume 12. Urbana, Illinois.

2001b  The Windrose Site: An Early Nineteenth Century Potawatomi Settlement in the Kankakee River Valley of Northeastern Illinois. Illinois State Museum Reports of Investigations No. 56. Springfield, Illinois.

1997  Some Doubt That They Can be Civilized at All": Cultural Change and Continuity Among the Nineteenth Century Potawatomi. In Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change and Archaeology, edited by James Cusick. Center for Archaeological Occasional Paper No. 25, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

1996  Written in Stone: An Overview of the Rock Art of Illinois. In Rock Art of the Eastern Woodlands, edited by Charles H. Faulkner, pp. 47-79. American Rock Art Research Association Occasional Paper 2. San Miguel, California.

Brian Butler

Phone: (618)-453-4527
Fax: (618)-453-8467
Email: bbutler@siu.edu

Research Interests

I am an archaeologist with wide-ranging research interests in eastern North America. I am particularly concerned with the development of early horticultural societies and the subsequent “chiefdom” level Mississippian polities. I also have some specific interests in lithic technology and lithic resource utilization. Geographically, my work has focused on the southern Midwest and Midsouth, particularly in southern Illinois and the lower Ohio Valley. I also pursue research in the islands of Micronesia in the western Pacific. I have done work in Palau and the Mariana Islands, but my efforts have chiefly focused on the Marianas where I have examined questions of initial settlement, coastal ecology and island adaptations, as well as ceramic technology.

Courses

Anth 201: Archaeology of Illinois
Anth 441B: Lithic Analysis
Anth 510: Seminar in Archaology of North America (topics in the Archaeology of the Midwest and Midsouth)
Anth 522: Archaeology of Micronesia
Anth 581: Archaeology and the Historic Preservation System

Selected publications

Midwest

2009  Land Between the Rivers: The Archaic Period of Southernmost Illinois. In Archaic Societies of the Midcontinent, edited by T. E. Emerson, D. L. McElrath, and A. C. Fortier, pp. 608-634. SUNY Press, Albany.

2006  (Brian M. Butler and Paul W. Welch eds.)  Leadership and Polity in Mississippian Society. Occasional Paper 33. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

2002  (Charles R. Cobb and Brian M. Butler) The Vacant Quarter Revisited: Late Mississippian Abandonment of the Lower Ohio Valley. American Antiquity 67:625-642.

2001  (Brian M. Butler and Charles R. Cobb)  The Dillow’s Ridge Site and the Production of Mill Creek Chert Tools. Illinois Archaeology 13:57-87.

2000  (Brian M. Butler and Mark J. Wagner)  Land Between the Rivers: the Late Woodland of Southern-most Illinois. In Late Woodland Societies: Tradition and Transformation across the Midcontinent, edited by T. Emerson, D. McElrath, and A. Fortier, pp.685-711. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

1991  Kincaid Revisited: The Mississippian Sequence in the Lower Ohio Valley.  In Cahokia and the Hinterlands, edited by T. Emerson and B. Lewis, pp. 264-273. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. 

1986  (Brian M. Butler and Richard Jefferies)  Crab Orchard and Early Woodland Cultures in the Middle South. In Early Woodland Archaeology, edited by K. Farnsworth and T. Emerson, pp. 523-534.  Center for American Archeology Press, Kampsville.

Micronesia

1995  Archaeological Investigations in the Achugao and  Matansa Areas of Saipan, Mariana Islands.  Micronesian Archaeological Survey Report No. 30.  Division of Historic Preservation, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Saipan.

1994   Early Prehistoric Settlement in the Mariana Islands, New Evidence from Saipan.  Man and Culture in Oceania 10:15-38.

1992  An Archaeological Survey of Aguiguan (Aguijan), Mariana Islands .  Micronesian Archaeological Survey Report No. 29.  Division of Historic Preservation Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Saipan.   

Don Rice

Email: drice@siu.edu

Research Interests

Dr. Don Rice’s research has focused primarily on demographic history, human use of and impact upon tropical environments, modeling of future land use in the tropics, and culture change and ethnogenesis.  He has directed grant-funded, multi-disciplinary research in Guatemala and Peru, participated in studies in Belize and Mexico, and supervised graduate student dissertation work in these countries and in the Dominican Republic.  His current research project is an archaeological investigation, co-directed with Prudence M. Rice, of the development of 10th-17th century AD Maya political geography in the Department of Petén, Guatemala, and of the Spanish conquest of Maya groups in this region.

Courses

• Anth 205: Latin American Civilization
• Anth 304: Origins of Civilization
• Anth 410K: Ecological Anthropology
• Anth 430B: Archaeology of Meso-America
• Anth 511: Seminar in Meso-American Archaeology
• Anth 516: Seminar in Archaeology of Complex Societies
• Anth 576: Seminar in Anthropological Research Design

Selected Publications

2006  Maya urbanism:  concepts, processes, and realities.  In Urbanism in the Preindustrial World: Cross-Cultural Approaches, edited by G. Storey, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

2005  (Rice, D. S., and P. M. Rice)  Seventeenth-century Maya political geography and resistance in central Petén, Guatemala.  In The Postclassic-to-Spanish-Era Transition in Mesoamerica: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by R. Alexander and S. Kepecs.  University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

2005 (Rice, P. M., and D. S. Rice)  The final frontier of the Maya:  Central Petén, Guatemala, A.D. 1450-1700.  In Untaming the Frontier in Anthropology, Archaeology, and History. edited by R. J. Parker and L. Rodseth.  University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 

2004   Rice, P. M., and D. S. Rice)  Late Classic to Postclassic transformations in the Petén lakes region, Guatemala.  In The Terminal Classic Period in the Maya Lowlands:  Collapse, Transitions, and Transformations, edited by A. A. Demarest, P. M. Rice, and D. S. Rice.  University of Colorado Press, Boulder.

2001  Yaxhá (Petén, Guatemala).  In Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia, edited by S. T. Evans and D. L. Webster, pp. 841-842.  Garland, New York. 

1999  Ambiente y agricultura:  tierras bajas mayas.  In Epoca precolombina, edited by M. Popenoe de Hatch, pp. 445-458. Historia general de Guatemala, Vol. 2, J. Lujan Muñoz (gen. ed.), Asociación de Amigos del Pueblo; Fundación para la Cultura y el Desarrollo Guatemala.  

1999  (Rice, P. M. and D. S. Rice)  Período Postclásico:  tierras bajas mayas.  In Epoca precolombina, edited by M. Popenoe de Hatch, pp. 365-380.  Historia general de Guatemala, Vol. 2, J. Lujan Muñoz (gen. ed.), Asociación de Amigos del Pueblo; Fundación para la Cultura y el Desarrollo Guatemala.  
         
1998  (Rice, D. S.; P. M. Rice, and T. Pugh)  Settlement continuity and change in the central Petén lakes region:  the case of Zacpetén.  In Anatomía de una civilización.  Aproximaciones interdisciplinarias a la cultura maya, edited by A. Ciudad Ruíz, Y. Fernández Marquínez, J. M. García Campillo, M. Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León, A. Lacadena García-Gallo, and L. T. Sanz Castro, pp. 208-252.  Publicación número 4, Sociedad Española de Estudios Mayas, Madrid.

George Gumerman

Past Director/Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Anthropology

Education: PhD Arizona 1968;

Archaeology, archaeological cooperatives, paleoenvironmental reconstructions, conservation archaeology; southwestern North America, Micronesia. (No longer in residence)