Canadian Rockies, 1988

A St. Louis native, I grew up in Illinois, upstate New York, New Jersey, and Clayton, Missouri. My Dad is a computer consultant and my Mom is a nurse. They took my brother and I camping, hiking, biking, horseback riding, canoeing, and sailing. Before I was fifteen, I had been taken to nearly every National Park,  province of Canada, and many state parks. Before graduating from high school, I attended Outward Bound in New Mexico and NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School). I became a certified water safety instructor, a PADI certified diver, and learned to kayak. My parents encouraged me to go to college which I paid for by working. Some of my first jobs while attending Washington University included illustrating tourmaline crystals for Dr. Robert Dymek and sorting zircon crystals for Dr. Sam Bowring. I had intended to be a geologist, but I discovered archeology in 1985. I double majored in Earth Sciences and Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, graduating with my B.A. in 1987. My 1990 Master's Thesis in anthropology involved the identification and interpretation of animal bones from a habitation site dating to circa A.D. 900 in highland Bolivia. I graduated with a Ph.D. in anthropological archaeology from Washington University in 1996. My dissertation involved the analysis and interpretation of Early Paleoindian (Clovis-era) stone tool technology in the region surrounding what is today metropolitan St. Louis. I owe much of my formal training in anthropology and archaeology to Drs. Patty Jo Watson, David Browman, and Fiona Marshall.

Since 1988, I have conducted archaeological investigations in Arkansas, Arizona, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Ohio, Mississippi, and Washington. My primary research focuses on the Peopling of the New World/American Indian Origins and Early Paleoindian through Early Archaic period archeology (circa 11,000 to 8,000 RCYBP).  Since 1991, I have studied, lectured, and published primarily on Clovis-era technology, migration and land-use patterns, subsistence, and religion.

Excavating at the Bullseye site, Illinois, 1989

                                                               Excavating at the Greenbrier site, AR, 2000

Currently I am the Station Archaeologist at the Arkansas State University-Jonesboro station of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey. In addition to conducting research in Paleoindian and Mississippian archaeology, I teach two classes each spring semester, investigate archeological sites in Arkansas in co-ordination with landowners and the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma, give public lectures, and provide information to agencies and individuals seeking knowledge about the pre-contact era of the Central Mississippi Valley.

Measuring artifacts from the Anizck site, Montana, 2001

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This website is maintained by Dr. Julie Morrow, jmorrow@astate.edu 

This page was last updated on August 10, 2005