R. J. Sinensky
Biography
Food Production and Consumption by Mobile Farmers and Early Sedentary Societies
My research explores how and why diverse foodways and property management arrangements developed in early farming societies, and how communal food cultivation, storage, processing, and consumption practices contributed to the maintenance of such institutions. Archaeology provides one of the few opportunities to study the long-term sustainability, resiliency, and equitability of different resource management arrangements in precapitalist societies and can provide a greater historical context for modern strategies. My research also explores stability and change in food cultivation practices, preparation techniques, and consumption practices prior to and immediately following the appearance of sedentary villages in the US Southwest and Mesoamerica.
Research
Prehispanic archaeology of the US Southwest and northwestern Mexico; Indigenous archaeology; early agriculture; low-level food producing societies; small scale societies; mobility; early village formation; agricultural demographic transitions; agricultural in marginal zones; anthropogenic ecology; paleoethnobotany; ground stone analysis; GIS, quantitative analysis; data visualization; Ancestral Pueblo; Kayenta; Tusayan; Hohokam; Mesoamerica; Late Archaic; Early Formative; cultural resource management; community archaeology
Publications
Sinensky, R. J.
In Press Ground Stone Technology and Routine Food Processing at Paso de la Amada, 1700-1300 BCE. In Excavations at Paso de la Amada, Mexico: Subsistence, Social Organization, and Inequality in an Initial Formative Community, edited by Richard G. Lesure. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles.
Lesure, Richard G., R. J. Sinensky, Tomas A. Wake, and Kristin Hoffmeister
In Press Subsistence Change at Paso de la Amada and the Development of Agrarian Societies in the Soconusco. In Excavations at Paso de la Amada, Mexico: Subsistence, Social Organization, and Inequality in an Initial Formative Community, edited by Richard G. Lesure. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, Los Angeles.
Sinensky, R. J., and Gregson Schachner
2019 Early Pueblo Period Population Aggregation and Dispersal in the Petrified Forest Region, East-Central Arizona. Kiva 85(1):49-80.
2018 Diversity-Disturbance Relationships in the Late Archaic Southwest: Implications for Farmer-Forager Foodways. American Antiquity 83(2):281-301.
Awards & Grants
PaleoWest Foundation Graduate Scholarship, 2018
Society for American Archaeology Fred Plog Memorial Fellowship, 2018
Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society Research Grant, 2018
Wenner Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, 2017
UCLA Graduate Research Fellowship, 2016
PaleoWest Foundation Graduate Scholarship, 2018
Society for American Archaeology Fred Plog Memorial Fellowship, 2018
Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society Research Grant, 2018
Wenner Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, 2017
UCLA Graduate Research Fellowship, 2016
