Biography
Kathryn Sampeck (BA, MA, University of Chicago; PhD Tulane University) investigates pre-Columbian practices and material worlds, how they both shape and are transformed by colonial dynamics, and their lasting legacies.
Teaching Interests & Areas
Dr. Kathryn Sampeck teaches classes in historical archaeology, Afro-Latin America, landscape archaeology, archaeological theory, and anthropology of food. Her field school in eastern Tennessee explores the nature of sixteenth-century Spanish and indigenous interaction and how to detect political, social, and economic organization in archaeological landscapes.
Research Interests & Areas
historical archaeology, archaeology of Spanish colonialism, race and racialization, political economy, ethnohistory, food history, with a focus on the cultural history of taste, cultural landscapes, cartography, literacy, race, money and monetization, and commerce in American commodities in the Early Modern world.
Journal Article
Thayn, J.B, K. Sampeck, and M. Spaccapaniccia. (2016) Refining Hernando de Soto’s route using Electric Circuit Theory and CircuitScape. Professional Geographer. 68(4) 595-602.
Map/Diagram/Artwork
Historical Archaeology, 3rd Edition. Oser, Charles V. (2017) Pearson Press. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. ISBN: 978-0-205-97213-5.
Presentations
Sampeck, K. and J.B. Thayn. (2014) Mapping Colonial Recipes: Tastes for Chocolate and the Project of Colonialism. 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory. Indianapolis, Indiana, October 10.
Thayn, J.B., K. Sampeck, and H. Earnst. (2014) Tracking Hernando de Soto using the Space Shuttle. Cherokee Archaeology Symposium. Cherokee, North Carolina, September 25-26.
Grants & Contracts
Global Professor. The British Academy. Other. (2023)
UK Scholar - Eccles Centre at the British Library. IIE Fulbright Program. Federal. (2021)
Afro-Latin American Archaeology. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnohistory. Private. (2019)
Associate. Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University. Private. (2019)
Digital Fellowship for Former Fellows. John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. Other. (2018)
