Christina M. Carolus

Graduate Student

Division:

Archaeology

Adviser(s):

William Honeychurch

Degree(s):

B.A. Anthropology, 2015, UC Berkeley

c.carolus@yale.edu

Website

Christina Carolus is an anthropological archaeologist and paleoethnobotanist with interests in human-environmental interaction, domestication processes, human-nonhuman (i.e. multispecies) relations, archaeological scientific methods and theory, foodways, identity, and cultural heritage issues. Since 2010, she has carried out field research in North America (USA), Central America (Belize; Mexico; Guatemala), South America (Peru; Argentina), Polynesia (Hawaii), and East Asia (Mongolia).

She is co-director of a multi-year archaeological project situated in the southeastern Gobi Desert, where she conducts excavations and specialized paleoethnobotanical research concerning the relationships between emergent social complexity, dietary/subsistence economic transitions, and paleoecological shifts within Mongolia from the Late Neolithic through the Xiongnu Period. Her dissertation research employs a targeted set of multiscalar analyses (macrobotanical analysis, microbotanical analysis, isotopic analysis, lipid residue analysis, and proteomics) on a range of materials in order to investigate these complex relationships.

She also manages a series of collections-based research projects in association with the Yale Peabody Museum as well as several collaborating international research institutions (University of York, Trent University). These projects range thematically from materials characterization and sourcing to analyses of faunal skeletal remains.

On a broader level, she is interested in the combined power of interdisciplinary collaboration and a four-field anthropological approach as a means to explore alternative histories, forge new perspectives, and provide unique and essential insights into the challenges that face humanity. She is also committed to the continued development and integration of multidisciplinary scientific methods and multi-proxy approaches within archaeological study.

Selected Publications

Frahm, E. and Christina M. Carolus (in press). Identifying the origins of obsidian artifacts in the Deh Luran Plain (SW Iran) highlights community connections in the Neolithic Zagros. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Frahm, E. Christina M. Carolus, and Asa Cameron et al., 2022. Introducing The BRICC (Bricks And Rocks For Instruments’ Ceramic Calibration) Sets: Open-Source Calibration Materials For Quantitative X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis. Journal Of Archaeological Science: Reports, 43.

Frahm, E. and Christina M. Carolus, 2021. End of the line? Obsidian at Umm Qseir, a Halafian farmstead in the Syrian steppe. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 38.

Skoggard, I., Ember, C., Pitek, E., Carolus, C., Jackson, J., 2020. Resource Stress Predicts Changes in Religious Belief and Increases in Sharing Behavior. Human Nature, 31(3), pp.249-271.