People in California Archaeology Laboratory
Analysis of archaeological materials from sites in California, primarily from the greater San Francisco Bay Area.Location: 55 Kroeber Hall
- Kent G. Lightfoot, Professor
- Kent Lightfoot's general research interests include North American prehistory, coastal hunter-gatherer societies, the emergence of early village communities, and culture contact between Native peoples and European explorers and colonists. His current work focuses on how indigenous peoples responded to European contact and colonialism, and how the outcomes of these encounters influenced cultural developments in postcolonial contexts. This involves the study of long-term culture change and persistence among coastal Native peoples that transcends prehistoric and historic boundaries. He is currently experimenting with an approach that incorporates a long-term diachronic perspective for comparing and contrasting the spatial organization of daily practices and cultural landscapes of coastal hunter-gatherer groups before, during, and after culture contact episodes.