Kathryn L. Gleason is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania. She holds degrees in landscape architecture from Cornell and Harvard, and a doctoral degree from Oxford in archaeology. Her research on techniques of excavating ancient gardens and on the interpretation of the remains of ancient landscape design has been undertaken at Sardis, Turkey; Castle Copse, England; and, currently, on the Palatine Hill in Rome, as well as at Masada and Caesarea in Israel.
Anne Yentsch received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Brown University in 1980. She is a Research Fellow in the Dept. of Archaeology at Boston University, former director of the landscape archaeology project at Historic Morven in Princeton, and a founding member of Landscape Archaeology Research Associates. In 1991 Dr. Yentsch was awarded the first James Marston Fitch Research Fellowship in Preservation by the Fitch Charitable Trust to apply the techniques for garden archaeology discussed in this article to other 18th century gardens in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. She has published extensively and is the co-editor, with Mary C. Beaudry, of a forthcoming series of essays on historical archaeology entitled Material Culture, World View, and Culture Change.
Lydia Mihelic Pulsipher received her Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University. She is a cultural/historical geographer with particular interest in human adaptation in the New World since 1492. For the past 18 years she has done regular field research in the eastern Caribbean, including a decade spent studying Gaiways Plantation. During this time she has taught at Hunter College, Dartmouth College and, for the last ten years, at The University of Tennessee where she is an associate professor. She is an advisor to the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History on the up-coming exhibit “Seeds of Change” and on other projects having to do with contact and exchange between the Americas and the Old World.
Gail E. Wagner has been associated with the excavations at Sun Watch Village for the past 20 years. As the project paleoethnobotanist, her work involves the identification and interpretation of plant parts, seeds, and woods used by the village inhabitants. Wagner obtained a Ph.D. from Washington University in 1987, with a dissertation on corn and Fort Ancient plant remains. She has been involved as a paleoethnobotanist on projects in the Midwest, Southwest, Palestine, and India. At present, she is collaborating with The Charleston Museum on plans to re-create a late 18th to early 19th century South Carolina Iowcountry plantation garden. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.
Steve Ford, Mark Bowden, and Vince Gaffney are graduates in archaeology from the University of Reading. Steve Ford now manages a consultancy, Thames Valley Archaeological Services. Mark Bowden works in Newcastle for the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. Vince Gaffney is completing a doctorate, having carried out work on sites in Yugoslavia. Geoff Mees (pictured here) is a biologist with an amateur interest in archaeology.
Naomi F. Miller received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. She is now a Research Specialist at the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA) at The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on environment, agriculture, and plant use in the ancient Near East. She is currently working on archaeobotanical remains from The University Museum’s excavation at Gordion, Turkey, and has worked on plant materials from sites in Turkey, Iran, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, and elsewhere.