As we gear up for the 2017 field season, we have been reflecting on all of the awesome students we have been fortunate to work with at Singer-Moye. This is the first in a series of posts featuring former field school students, many of whom have gone on to careers in archaeology or are now furthering their archaeological education.

For this first installment of “Where are they now?” we are featuring Adam Coker.

UGA field school students at Singer-Moye, 2013. Adam is standing in the upper left (or is it north?) of the unit.

What did you do after field school and where are you now?

Following the 2013 field season, I spent the next two years working for the Georgia Archaeological Site File. In the spring of 2016, I was accepted into the Ph.D. program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

What projects are you working on? 

My current research is on the formation of Mississippian identities from the perspective of households and communities. I am specifically focused on the negotiation and enforcement of social identity through practice and the built environment. In that sense, I am treating households as the sum of individual agency and community as the nexus in which social identity is negotiated, reinforced, and changed.

How did field school help prepare you for this trajectory? 

It may be easier to say what the field school hasn’t helped with. As a student in 2013, the field school taught me what it means to be a field archaeologist as well as providing the foundation for what would eventually become the focus of my graduate research. When I returned as field supervisor in 2016 the field school provided even more. I participated in the planning and execution of the investigation of a potential structure identified in geophysical data. I also had the opportunity to present the results at the Southeastern Archaeological Conference (SEAC) and gain valuable experience with conducting myself as a professional in the field.

Adam will be re-joining the SMASH team at Singer-Moye in summer 2017, when he will be gathering data for his Masters research!

Adam (right) directing the crew under his supervision in 2016.