Hall, Valerie M. J.

Bio

Valerie Hall is a PhD student in Anthropology. Her research interests include exploring human-animal relationships, engendered tasks, and landscape change in the Chesapeake region through analysis of archaeofaunal remains and other proxy data. She is specifically interested in the use of stable isotope analysis and geometric morphometrics as tools to elucidate cultural and environmental shifts. Valerie received a Summer Research Fellowship from UMD's Graduate School in 2019 to fund training at the University of Georgia's Center for Applied Isotope Studies. She received an International Graduate Research Fellowship, jointly awarded by UMD's Graduate School and the University of Exeter in 2022, to study geometric morphometrics with the Centre for Human-Animal-Environmental (HumAnE) Bioarchaeology, Department of Archaeology and History, at the University of Exeter, UK. Valerie also was awarded an Ark and Dove Scholar in Residence Research Fellowship from Historic St. Mary’s City in collaboration with the Society of the Ark and Dove in 2019. Valerie is a three-time recipient of the Gloria S. King Fellowship in Archaeology, awarded through The Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.

She is a 1997 graduate of the Pennsylvania State University, with a BS in Education, and she taught at the elementary level before becoming interested in archaeology. She received her MA in Anthropology and Archaeology from the Illinois State University in 2012. Prior to joining the department, she explored her interests in archaeological outreach, public education, and collections management as Curator at the Museum of the Grand Prairie in Mahomet, Illinois. Upon returning to Maryland, she served as Artifact Laboratory Manager at the Veterans Curation Program, teaching unemployed veterans to rehabilitate deteriorating archaeological collections while offering career coaching and networking opportunities. Her field experience includes work with the Illinois State Archaeological Survey, as well as excavations at Historic Jamestowne, a 16th-century Cherokee site in eastern Tennessee, and locations across Maryland. She served as co-director of the Outer Hebrides Archaeological Project, and archaeological survey of mound sites on the island of South Uist, Scotland.