Kelli is an undergraduate senior majoring in Anthropology with a double concentration in Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology.  She has minors in American Indian Studies, Chicano Studies, and History.  She is interested in studying hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies.  Kelli enjoys studying historical, political, economic, and social factors of numerous past and present people of the Americas.  Of particular interest to her is the peopling of the Americas and the Paleo-Indian time period on the High Plains.  She is interested in prehistoric technology, especially lithics, and has an interest in experimental archaeology and flintknapping.

     Kelli also has a great enthusiasm in learning about formative cultures of the Southwest including the Ancestral Pueblos and their descendants.  In addition, she is fascinated by Mesoamerican and South American cultures, particularly pre-Columbian indigenous groups.  She would especially like to study the religious, political, and social lives of these cultures before, during, and after colonialism in addition to their changing subsistence strategies.  Kelli is interested in comparing and contrasting the sophisticated technology and social and political organization of various groups in North America and Mesoamerica before and after the conquest of the Americas.  She is also interested in researching a pan-Indian identity based upon historical and contemporary indigenous experiences in the Americas including racial and ethnic interactions and relations between native communities and colonial and post-colonial government systems.    

     During the summer of 2006, Kelli had the opportunity to do fieldwork for the High Plains Archaeology Project near Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, at the Vore Buffalo Jump site in northeastern Wyoming, and at the William Springs site near the Wyoming/South Dakota border.  She is delighted to have found such a passion for anthropology and is looking forward to continuing her education as a graduate student.