Anthropology

at Northern Kentucky University

H. Thomas Foster II

headshot

Lecturer of Anthropology

Curriculum Vitae

Northern Kentucky University
Department of Sociology/Anthropology/Philosophy
212 Landrum Academic Center
Highland Heights, KY 41099

Phone: (859) 572-6481
FAX: (859) 572-6086

Email: primary address

Website: http://www.nku.edu/~fosterh1/
 

Academic Degrees

Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University
M.A. Pennsylvania State University
B.A. University of Georgia

Courses

ANT 100 Cultural Anthropology
ANT 110 Introduction to Archaeology
ANT 308 Cultural Resource Management

Research Interests

Archaeology; historical and behavioral ecology; anthropogenic effects on the environment; quantitative models of economic and evolutionary behavior; North American Indians (historic period Muskogee Creek Indians; Mississippian Period Southeastern Indians); GIS and spatial analysis; public education and heritage preservation.

Current Research

fieldwork

I am interested in how people deal with risk or variation in their lives. I am actively involved in research, which measures how the southeastern Native Americans interacted with and altered their biophysical environment. Anthropogenic effects on the environment, particularly forest fire, are some of the most important global problems facing policy makers and environmental managers of the present and future. My research program is designed to identify the economic conditions that have altered the biophysical environment of the southeastern United States. I use historic, archeological, GIS, and botanical information to measure the effects of specific economic activities on the environment. I have published on the effects of agriculture and hunting on the environment, modeling risk management of horticultural economies among the Muskogee Creek, and landscape ecology. I have also published on the use of archaeological and historical data for modern environmental management.

Accolades

2007
President of Anthropologists and Sociologists of Kentucky
2006
Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Northern Kentucky University
2005
Woodruff Families, Archaeological Excavations at the Indian town of Apalachicola, Alabama

Selected Publications

2007
Archaeology of the Lower Muskogee Creek Indians, 1715-1830. University of Alabama Press.
2007
Palynological Evidence of the Effects of the Deer Skin Trade on Eighteenth Century Forests of Southeastern North America. American Antiquity 72(1):35-52.
2004
(with Bryan Black, and Marc Abrams) A Witness Tree Analysis of the Effects of Native American Indians on the Pre-European Settlement Forests in east Central Alabama. Human Ecology 32(1):27-47.