Heather Walder, UW-La Crosse
Title: Chronology, Exchange, and Technology: New Insight on Intercultural Interaction in the Upper Great Lakes

Dr. Heather Walder will discuss the introduction, exchange, and social implications of two complementary lines of evidence for intercultural interaction in the Upper Great Lakes region: reworked copper and brass objects and glass trade beads from 38 archaeological sites dated from around 1630 to 1730. Anthropological questions of regional interaction, technological continuity and change, long-distance trade and population mobility are the focus of her research, which has identified material correlates for the chronology and scope of socially-structured exchange networks that facilitated intercultural interaction.

Dr. Walder is an anthropological archaeologist and honorary fellow in the Anthropology department for 2015-2016 at UW-Madison. She also works at the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center in La Crosse, WI as a research associate. Her research focuses on intercultural interaction and exchange in colonial contexts and in the Upper Great Lakes region in particular.