Kayla Worthey

PhD Student
kbworthey@arizona.edu

About Kayla Worthey

I am a PhD student in the Archaeology program. I received my B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Washington in 2014 and my M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 2017. I have conducted fieldwork at late Pleistocene and early Holocene sites in the Pacific Northwest, Northwest Mexico, France, and Morocco, and laboratory work on archaeological faunas from Turkey. My methodological foci include stable isotope analysis and zooarchaeology. My dissertation research focuses on paleoenvironmental reconstruction and the stable isotope analysis of animal teeth and snail shells from Middle Stone Age Moroccan sites.

Selected Publications

Worthey, K.B., Stiner, M.C., Quade, J., Rowland, J.C., Açıkkol, A., Baykara, I, and Kuhn, S.L.. Paleolithic Human Responses to Changing Aridity at Üçağızlı I cave, southern-coastal Turkey: Application of a Novel Carbon Isotope-Based Method. J Archaeol Method Theory (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-022-09553-x

Sahesseh, E.M., Fernandez, P., Kuhn, S., Stiner, M., Mentzer, S., Colarossi, D., Clark, A., Lanoe, F., Pailes, M., Hoffman, D., Benson, A., Rhodes, E., Benmansour, M., Laissaoui, A., Ziani, I., Vidal-Matutano, P., Morales, J., Djellal, Y., Longet, B., Hublin, J., Mouhiddine, M., Rafi, F., Worthey, K. B., Sanchez-Morales, I., Ghayati, N., & Bouzouggar, A. (2021). Early Middle Stone Age personal ornaments at Bizmoune Cave, Morocco. Science Advances, 7(39).

 

Courses Taught

ANTH 160A1, World Archaeology (TA)

ANTH 160D2, Origins of Human Diversity (TA)

ANTH 170C2, Animal Minds (TA)

ANTH 235, Principles of Archaeology (TA)

Anth 261, The Human Species (TA)

Projects

Üçağızlı, Turkey

I am currently analyzing stable isotopes in herbivore teeth from Üçağızlı Cave I, Turkey, to learn more about how people used the landscape and what the environment was like in the Northern Levant ~45,000 years ago, when modern Homo sapiens were newcomers to the region. This is part of a larger project initiated by directors Drs. Erksin Güleç (Ankara Üniversitesi) and Steven Kuhn (University of Arizona), who excavated Üçağızlı Caves I and II between 1997 and 2005.

Bizmoune, Morocco

Excavations are ongoing at Bizmoune, a cave site located ~15 km from the Atlantic coast in southwestern Morocco. The site has a long archaeological sequence, containing MSA/Aterian, Iberomaurusian, and Neolithic components. I am participating in the excavations and in the stable isotope analysis of land snail shells found at the site.

El Fin del Mundo, México

El Fin del Mundo is a Clovis site located in north-central Sonora. I am analyzing the fauna from Locality 1, which includes the remains of two gomphotheres found in association with Clovis artifacts. El Fin del Mundo Locality 1 was excavated from 2007 to 2015 under the direction of Drs. Guadalupe Sánchez (UNAM) and Vance Holliday (University of Arizona), and is significant for 1) providing the first known association of gomphotheres with Clovis hunters, 2) being one of the oldest reported Clovis sites, and 3) being the northernmost gomphothere locality known at the terminal Pleistocene.