Marieka Brouwer Burg
Assistant Professor
Co-Director, Digital Anthropology Laboratory
BIO
Marieka Brouwer Burg is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in landscape archaeology by harnessing interdisciplinary methods and data to address questions about dynamic human-environment relationships. She received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her M.A. (2007) and Ph.D. (2011) from Michigan State University. She has been involved in research in North America, Central America, and Europe. She is primarily focused on investigating hunter-gatherer land use strategies and interactions within changing landscapes and shifting climatic regimes. Marieka received a Fulbright fellowship to study at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, the Groningen Institute of Archaeology at University of Groningen, and the Faculty of Geosciences at Utrecht University. Her current research in Belize continues to probe the effects of paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic change on past human land use and decision-making. To do this, she conducts archaeological field research that is enhanced by Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based geospatial modeling of human-environmental interactions.
Marieka is the Co-Director of the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project (brea-project.org) and PI of the collaborative NSF Senior Archaeology award Investigating Adaptive Strategies in Variable Environments (2021鈥2025, $152,092). As such, she leads field and laboratory research in the BREA study area that is exploring Late Archaic period (~2500鈥900 BCE) occupations on and around the island of Crooked Tree in Northern Belize. This work is evaluating a wide range of hyper-local Archaic adaptations to a diverse landscape using multidisciplinary means, including paleoecological analyses, augering and coring campaigns, systematic surveys and test excavations, materials analysis, geospatial modeling, and radiometric dating. Recent publications detailing some of the findings of this work by Brouwer Burg and colleagues include 鈥,鈥 published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology (2024) and 鈥,鈥 published in Science Advances (2024).
In addition to research, Marieka is strongly commitment to excellence in teaching and promoting student engagement through out-of-the box methods and experiential learning. As part of her pedagogy, she facilitates student-driven and joint faculty-student research through her role as Co-Director of the Digital Anthropology Laboratory in the Department of Anthropology. Recent projects have involved conducting x-ray fluorescence (xrf)-based provenience studies of granite and obsidian artifacts and generating iterative cost path surfaces to explore broader sociopolitical and ideological dimensions of past movement and exchange.
Publications
Area(s) of expertise
Landscape and environmental archaeology; Hunter-gatherers; GIS and geospatial modeling; Paleoenvironment/Paleoclimate; Ancient Mesoamerica; European Mesolithic
Bio
Marieka Brouwer Burg is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in landscape archaeology by harnessing interdisciplinary methods and data to address questions about dynamic human-environment relationships. She received her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her M.A. (2007) and Ph.D. (2011) from Michigan State University. She has been involved in research in North America, Central America, and Europe. She is primarily focused on investigating hunter-gatherer land use strategies and interactions within changing landscapes and shifting climatic regimes. Marieka received a Fulbright fellowship to study at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, the Groningen Institute of Archaeology at University of Groningen, and the Faculty of Geosciences at Utrecht University. Her current research in Belize continues to probe the effects of paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic change on past human land use and decision-making. To do this, she conducts archaeological field research that is enhanced by Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based geospatial modeling of human-environmental interactions.
Marieka is the Co-Director of the Belize River East Archaeology (BREA) project (brea-project.org) and PI of the collaborative NSF Senior Archaeology award Investigating Adaptive Strategies in Variable Environments (2021鈥2025, $152,092). As such, she leads field and laboratory research in the BREA study area that is exploring Late Archaic period (~2500鈥900 BCE) occupations on and around the island of Crooked Tree in Northern Belize. This work is evaluating a wide range of hyper-local Archaic adaptations to a diverse landscape using multidisciplinary means, including paleoecological analyses, augering and coring campaigns, systematic surveys and test excavations, materials analysis, geospatial modeling, and radiometric dating. Recent publications detailing some of the findings of this work by Brouwer Burg and colleagues include 鈥,鈥 published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology (2024) and 鈥,鈥 published in Science Advances (2024).
In addition to research, Marieka is strongly commitment to excellence in teaching and promoting student engagement through out-of-the box methods and experiential learning. As part of her pedagogy, she facilitates student-driven and joint faculty-student research through her role as Co-Director of the Digital Anthropology Laboratory in the Department of Anthropology. Recent projects have involved conducting x-ray fluorescence (xrf)-based provenience studies of granite and obsidian artifacts and generating iterative cost path surfaces to explore broader sociopolitical and ideological dimensions of past movement and exchange.
Publications
Areas of Expertise
Landscape and environmental archaeology; Hunter-gatherers; GIS and geospatial modeling; Paleoenvironment/Paleoclimate; Ancient Mesoamerica; European Mesolithic