Rocky Research
Christina Perry '09
Christina Perry spent the past two summers hiking and scaling steep boulders in the rugged terrain of the Rio Grande Gorge in Taos, New Mexico. But Christina wasn't there for the exercise or the scenery. She was on an archaeological team uncovering clues to the spiritual beliefs and everyday practices of the area's inhabitants over the past seven millennia.
Led by Severin Fowles, assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard, the team has been conducting an unprecedented multi-year survey of canyons now controlled by the federal Bureau of Land Management, in an area historically home to the Pueblo Indians, the Apaches, and other Native American peoples. One of Christina's responsibilities was to make drawings of the engraved images they found on the rocks--images ranging from ancient petroglyphs to modern graffiti. Because the images don't photograph well, her drawings were essential to the survey.
For her senior thesis in anthropology next spring, Christina will discuss the findings of this ambitious project. Also next spring, at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, she and two other students will present a poster on their team's research.
Christina became interested in anthropology and archaeology as a high school student in the Philadelphia suburb of Drexel Hill. When she and her classmates were encouraged to examine career possibilities, she found herself fascinated by the wide-ranging definition of "anthropology" (which, according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, is "the science that deals with the origins, physical, and cultural development, biological characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of humankind"). Observing the career of her father, a college professor, she liked the idea of living the academic life herself.
"Barnard's strong anthropology department is part of what drew me here," she says. She also wants to write fiction and creative nonfiction, and believes that an understanding of various cultures will help her in that field as well.
In fact, as she fulfills the requirements for an anthropology major, Christina also is completing an independent creative writing project as a Barnard Centennial Scholar. For that project, which will comprise poetry, short fiction, and other literary genres, she will draw on her experiences during a recent trip to Japan. There, as in New Mexico, visits to historically sacred sites spurred her to ponder the relationships between the past and the present, physical landscape and culture, tradition, and modernity.
Next summer, after graduation from Barnard, Christina hopes to rejoin Professor Fowles's research team in New Mexico. Then she'll return to New York and take a year off from school before entering a graduate program. She would like to work for a museum during that gap year, and cites the American Museum of Natural History as one of her favorite places. A job there, or on an excavation, would be perfect, she says.
Christina's research during the summer of 2008 was supported by a Tow Foundation Research Fellowship. In 2007-2008, Christina was the recipient of the Gladys A. Reichard Anthropology Scholarship Fund, an endowed scholarship at Barnard that supports outstanding anthropology majors.
—Anne Schutzberger
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